“Now time for the princess to wear her gown,” Katrin announces and the girls cheer. One of the shop assistants guides me back into a lavish fitting room and helps me remove my clothes in a way that doesn’t mess up my makeup or my newly-styled hair.Then she helps me into that beaded, shimmering gown, and she zips me up.
I stare at myself in the mirror, stunned.
I’m me, but a different version of me—a beautiful woman who is wearing this incredible gown like she was made for it. A woman who is confident and assured and glamorous.
I have never in my life felt like a princess—not as a kid, not at prom, sure as hell not at my wedding, when I already knew Rob would never see me that way.
But I feel it now.
My heart is hammering with that thought as I walk back out into the main room of the shop, where all the cameras are waiting, the producers and sound guys and Katrin and my girls. I wonder if this is how Cinderella felt walking into that ball, seeing all eyes turn to her.
“Mommy, you’re so pretty!” Rosie gasps, andThea looks awestruck. Katrin clasps her hands together with a broad smile.
I let my gaze flick quickly over to Nate. Is it all in my mind, or does he look awestruck, too? His lips are parted, and then they close again. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down with a swallow.
“What a lovely princess, don’t you think, girls?” Katrin asks.
Thea nods, her eyes still wide, but then signs back. “Do you get to keep the dress?”
Katrin chuckles. “Sadly, the magic will wear off at midnight and this dress will become rags.”
Ha.That’s a better answer than, “Sorry, honey, the show’s not paying thousands of dollars for your mom to keep a designer dress to wear while she vacuums the living room.”
I expect Rosie to pout at this answer, but she is in some elevated state of princess euphoria and starts belting “Let It Go” like it’s the only way to express her depth of feeling.Thea rolls her eyes, but she smiles at me. “You look beautiful,” she says. “And you don’t need any glitter.”
God, I want to look over at Nate again; does he still look so admiring? Did I read too much into it?
But I can’t keep doing that. I can’t be so obvious, for his sake as well as mine.
Before Rosie can transition into another princess song—I think she’s gearing up for “Part of Your World”—Katrin gets a signal from one of the producers and announces that the princess needs to leave to meet Prince Charming, which means she needs to say goodbye to her little fairy apprentices.
Another producer—the guy the contestants call “Mustache Dan” for self-explanatory reasons—steps in to inform us that after I leave, a car is waiting to take the girls back to their grandparents at the hotel. My heart sinks.This day has been so incredible, but I’m not ready to let my girls go yet. I know I need to, though. I was lucky to get this much time with them. We hug and I mess up my lipstick kissing them on their cheeks, but I don’t care.
Then we say goodbye to Katrin, and I’m ushered out of the boutique, where Preston is standing in front of the carriage. It’s evening now, and the gold buttons and epaulets on his jacket gleam in the light spilling out from the store windows.
His smile broadens as he looks me up and down. “You look incredible. Stunning, in fact.”
“Thank you,” I respond. “The fairy godmother and her apprentices worked their magic.”
“I don’t think they needed much of that,” he says and takes my hand, leading me up into the carriage.
My hand feels too heavy in his, not right. But I force a smile anyway, because I’m on a date with Preston, and I need to at least try to be present and appreciative of that fact.
How much longer can I keep doing this?
My whole body feels too heavy as we sit in the carriage, and it’s not just because I think the beads on this gown have the combined weight of an elephant. Preston sits right next to me on the padded bench and there’s a cameraman opposite us. We talk as the carriage starts moving—Preston tells me how great it was to meet the girls, how adorable they are and how much they clearly love me.
“I get the feeling, though,” he says, “thatThea’s a bit . . . hesitant about you dating again.”
I fight a cringe, because I know very well that she’s not. I remember her coy smile, telling me about how she’d asked Nate if he wanted to kiss me. “I think she can be, um . . . protective of me.”
“I imagine she misses her dad a lot,” he says. “Probably no one else is going to be good enough for her mom. Not even a prince.” He nudges me playfully with that last bit.
“Well, you know kids,” I say awkwardly.
The carriage lurches to a stop, and a footman opens our door. Which of course, makes me think of my door-opening etiquette conversation with Nate—but I have to admit, despite my opposition to women waiting around in cars for their doors to be opened for them, it does make getting out of a carriage in a ballgown considerably easier.
We’re at a park—a different one than whereThea and I sat—and I can see a table set out on the grass, ringed by hanging lanterns and the string lights this show is so fond of. Preston leads me out there, and we sit at the table.There are plates of food already set up for us—some sort of beef loin and rhubarb dish—but I know that we’re not really expected or encouraged to do much actual eating on these dinner dates.They don’t want footage of the princesses stuffing themselves (The contestants come back and do that later, with the cracker and cheese trays that destroyed Londyn’s regularity.)
