“If I planned this wedding the way I wanted,” Gwen says, scooping up a little red toy car and running it along the floor to entertain Toni, “the colors would have been blush, champagne, and green. All soft and pretty. Not saying dusty blue and lilac aren’t beautiful colors…” She shrugs as if the difference doesn’t matter, but I can hear the faint irritation.
“I mean, purple, blue, and yellow are my favorite colors,” I murmur, staring at my reflection, my voice trailing as if it’s lost somewhere between my head and my heart. I try to sound casual, but my ears have been ringing since the second Nadia mentioned those exact colors—dusty blue, lilac, and gold—because those are not just pretty.
Those are perfect.
They’re the exact palette from the last wedding my mother planned before she died giving birth to me. I’ve seen the photographs in old albums: the invitations she drafted, the fabric swatches tucked neatly into a binder. She was still working while pregnant, and those colors were everywhere. It was the last wedding she ever touched.
And somehow… Aleksandr picked them.
I bite the inside of my cheek, my chest tightening with a strange, dizzy mix of grief and something dangerously close to hope. Whatever secret power Aleksandr has to reach into corners of my life I never talk about—to pull out the small things that matter—is terrifying. And perfect.
He knows me.
Knows me in a way that no one else does, like he’s been quietly watching and listening since we were kids, cataloguing every detail while the rest of the world forgot.
I mean, Nadia should know. She’s my best friend. But she hates this kind of thing. She never cared about flowers or color palettes. She knows I like girly things, sure—but not this. Not the specific things I used to linger on when I was little, flipping through my mother’s binders, tracing those fabric swatches with my fingertips like touching them could bring her back.
“I picked out a huge princess gown for you,” Nadia says suddenly, breaking through my thoughts. She comes to stand beside me, hands on her hips, her reflection sharp in the mirror. “Cinderella theme. Layers of tulle. You would have looked like a frosted cupcake. And Aleksandr took one look at it and said no.”
She lets that sink in, then adds, “He said it was wrong for you. That you’d hate it. And that you’d like this one better. ” Her eyes meet mine in the glass, steady and assessing. “Which I don’t understand because you are a total princess girl, but I mean the dress is gorgeous.”
“And the location?” I choke.
“My choice,” Gwen smiles down at Toni, pulling him onto her lap. “But he did drive all the way to Harlem to get that cake for you.”
“Is it fromCarrot Top?” I whisper looking at Nadia through the mirror.
“Yeah, that shop your mom loved right?” She turns to Gwen and smiles. “Lily gets her birthday cake from there every year.”
“Oh, yeah,” Gwen nods, smiling as the sarcasm drips in her tone. “Thissofake wedding.”
I half-listen, half-watch myself in the mirror. The dress feels like me, like something my mother would have picked for a client she really liked. Aleksandr picked everything so perfect I feel like I have never seen him clearly.
I’ve only seen--I’ve only known the echo of him—his choices, his fingerprints on every detail I thought no one else remembered. How long has he been paying attention? How long has he been quietly collecting the pieces of me I never thought anyonewould care enough to keep? The colors, the bakery, the dress—none of it is random. These aren’t just nice ideas or convenient decisions. They are fragments of the life I always wanted with my mother, delicate and deeply personal, the kinds of things I assumed were too small, too sentimental, too quietly buried for anyone—let alone Aleksandr—to notice.
And the worst part is, all this time, I believed I wasn’t enough for him. I told myself he wouldn’t want the sweet girl. Not someone soft. Not someone who still believes in things like vampires, Final Girls and such a large book collection that my apartment is more book than furniture, and fairy tales buried in the spine of an old wedding binder. I thought he wanted someone sharper, someone louder. A woman with fangs and fire in her blood. Someone who could take up space in his world without flinching. Someone who could match the weight of the Petrov name without folding beneath it.
But he sees me.
Not just the version I show everyone else—but me. The girl who likes tulle and horror books and delicate details. The girl who still keeps a binder full of her mother’s last wedding, full of colors and lace and dreams she never got to finish.
The tailor crouches behind me, pinning the back, fussing over the fall of the skirt so it lays just right over the curve of my ass, which, in this gown, is impossible to ignore. I can feel the heat climbing my cheeks with every tiny adjustment.
From the side mirror, I catch my own reflection—the contrast of delicate lace and the suggestive slit of silk makes me look like someone else. Someone sexier than I am used to being.
“Also the shoes are Louboutin, coming in this afternoon,” she says, flipping to the next page like that’s the most natural thing in the world. “Don’t worry, they’ve been in the freezer since the morning and you can take them off at the end of the aisle, but the heels of the shoe have both your and Aleksandr’s initials on them.”
“That’s a nice touch,” I smile.
“An Aleksandr touch,” Gwen winks, and I almost choke on my spit because how did he do this in less than 24 hours. I mean I know they're rich, but Aleksandr isn’t magic! All this takes time, and notice.
“Jewelry is still being finalized, but that choker is one and I think a jeweler will be here in an hour with some earrings Alek got restored for you. Oh, and I’m thinking hair up in those medium wand curls?”
“Turn,” the tailor murmurs, and I do, the train whispering across the floor behind me as the room falls briefly quiet. Even Nadia, for once, seems to run out of words.
Nadia finally looks up from her memo pad, eyes sweeping over me from head to toe. For a second, she goes quiet. “Shit, I owe Aleksandr my fucking Ducati,” she says finally, a small, smug smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“You bet your motorcycle on this?” Gwen shrieks.
