I tilt my head and look, and the problem is immediately obvious—the boning sitting a half-inch too high for her ribcage, pulling the whole structure out of alignment when she shifts.
Don't say anything, Tessa. You are a fake girlfriend at a dress appointment, not a seamstress.
"Could you try raising your arms?" I say, because apparently I have the self-discipline of a puppy.
Eleanor raises them. The fabric bunches exactly where I predicted.
“The boning isn’t sitting correctly,” I say before I can stop myself. “It’s too high for her frame, so the whole bodice shifts when she moves.”
Margaret’s head turns toward me with the sharp, recalculating focus of a woman updating my file in real time.
A moment later the consultant materializes at my shoulder, agrees in a tone that suggests she would have preferred to arrive at that conclusion herself, and disappears to hunt down a different sample.
"How did you evenseethat?" Beth whispers.
I take a long sip of champagne instead of answering, because the honest answer isthree years of dressing women to meet billionaire expectations will attune you to structural failure very quickly.
While Eleanor is back in the dressing room, Beth asks about my work as a matchmaker.
I give her the polished version, the one with chemistry and intuition and helping people find the right fit. I do not tell her that most days involve contracts, scheduling, legal phrasing, and administrative follow-through.
Relationships, as it turns out, are often held together by paperwork and strategic calendar management.
Then Eleanor reappears.
The second dress is different in every way, softer where the first was structured, French lace falling in long unhurried lines that seem to quiet the entire room on contact. The silence that follows has a different quality to it, less analytical, more held-breath reverent.
I feel an unexpected prickling at the corners of my eyes, which is alarming and frankly inconvenient, and I blink it away quickly.
Eleanor turns to face the mirror and goes completely still.
"Oh," she says, quietly.
Beth reaches over and squeezes my arm without looking at me, an easy, unthinking gesture of shared feeling, and the simple familiarity of it startles me more than it should.
I am not part of this family. I have known these women for less than two hours. And yet something in my chest is behaving as though I am one of them.
Eleanor finds me in a quiet corner while the consultant is on her knees pinning the hem, pulling me close with the conspiratorial air. Her voice drops. "I keep having this dream where I get to the aisle and nothing feels the way I thought it would," she admits, and her smile falters just slightly at the edges, showing the real worry underneath.
I set my champagne down. This moment doesn't deserve a prop in my hand.
“I think that’s your brain reminding you that the important part is the person waiting at the end,” I say, “not whether every second before that unfolds exactly the way you pictured it.” I mean it completely, which surprises me a little.
Eleanor studies me for a long moment with an expression I cannot immediately read. "George said you were straightforward," she says. “I didn’t realize until right now that he meant it as a compliment.”
I tuck that comment away before I can turn it over too much and make a mess of it in my own head.
Beth reappears at precisely the right time, announcing bridesmaid dress discussions with the energy of someone deploying a rescue flare, and I suddenly find a swatch book thrust in my hand.
The women seem torn between two colors for bridesmaid dresses.
"Be honest. Dusty rose or sage?"
"Sage," I say, without a moment's hesitation, because dusty rose is unforgiving and Beth has warm undertones and I have strong opinions about colour theory that I am constitutionally incapable of suppressing.
Beth points at me. "Ilikeher."
Margaret settles into the chair beside me, and I know before she opens her mouth that we are now in the more serious portion of the afternoon.
