The tears started leaking, and Liz sobbed.
“Now Liz,” her mother said, running up with a tissue. “You’ll look fine. Brea did a good job disguising the bump.”
“And this is with the late-term belly,” I said, tapping the rubber form around Liz’s midriff.
“It’s really astounding what you can do with fabric,” Mrs. Davenport told me as she consoled her daughter.
“It’s all in the tailoring. You don’t look that large at all, Liz.”
“Wes will like it for sure!” Kate piped up.
“I want him to love it and be wowed!”
“He will be,” Dana said.
“What do you think, Mark?”
“Wes is going to love anything you wear,” he assured Liz smoothly.
“You’re just saying that,” she choked out around her sobs.
“It’s true.”
“Yes, butwhichdress do you think Wes would like the most?” Liz begged.
Mark narrowed his eyes. “I think…” he began.
I cringed inwardly. It was Weddings in the City policy to never give an opinion on what dress the bride should have. It was a recipe for disaster, because she would blame us if she had wedding jitters or second thoughts later.
“I think you should get all three,” Mark stated.
“Three wedding dresses?” My eye was twitching again.
“Ball gown for the ceremony,” Mark said, ticking them off on his fingers, “the short dress for the reception, then to the long flowing one for a nice photo shoot later. You can do one of you before the baby is born then after. It would be very classic.”
I froze. Time-wise, I had budgeted a certain number of hours to construct the dress. With all the fitting, piecing, and embroidery, the ball gown was already going to be a big task. The ball gown plus two other dresses in less than a few months? I started to panic.
“Is that too much?” Liz asked me, eyes wide.
“Of course not,” I assured my friend. “You’re worth three wedding dresses!”
Ivy walked Liz and her entourage through the wedding plans thus far while I stormed up to Mark and dragged him off to a hallway.
“You’re such a dick!” I hissed.
“Is this about the audiobook?” he asked in confusion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. If you’re the type of person who wants to listen to books about alien penises that are clearly experiencing some sort of parasitic infection, that’s your business.”
“What the—? Fuck. Right, the book.” I was never going to live that down, but now I had bigger problems. “You purposefully told Liz to have three dresses so I would have to scramble!”
Mark glared down at me, his face dark. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but I provided the only good answer to a terrible question. I was not going to be the person to tell Liz which dress to buy. You’re supposed to be the seamstress extraordinaire, the best in the business—you figure it out,” he spat then turned to leave.
“And actually,” Mark said, spinning back to me, “I’m insulted that you think I would stoop to manipulating my cousin’s pregnant fiancée just to pull one over on you in some sort of petty little contest. Grow up.”
16
Mark
Brea was grating on my every nerve.
