“Is this everyone?” a saleswoman interrupts, taking the platform like it’s a stage.
“Yes, sorry about that,” Gin says.
Sorry about me, I think.
Our saleswoman claps her hands and holds them clasped at her chest. It lands somewhere between a cult leader calling a meeting to order and the head cheerleader ready to kick off a routine. Either way, we’re at attention. “Hi. I’m Rose. This, of course, is Kilpatrick’s. Which one of us is the bride?”
Gin lifts a sheepish hand, but the light bouncing off her ring is less quiet about it.
“And who’s the lucky guy?”
Or girl, I think. Gin just smiles and says, “Rishi.”
Any unease in Gin’s voice dissipates when she says her fiancé’s name, like it’s the password we’ve been trying to guess, the secret ingredient we couldn’t quite identify. My heart stalls in my chest, and I miss the rest of what Rose has to say. I can only hear Gin’s voice; those two little syllables of her fiancé’s name and her whole demeanor changed. It’s magic. It’s love, and it makes my heart ache. I want that. Someone who makes everything better. I want to make everything better for someone else, too. It feels like all I ever do is make things worse.
Gin and Rose chat dress styles and price points, and I try to pick out scraps of vocab.Mermaid. Trumpet. Tulle.When Rose steps away to pull some options, I pounce back on the conversation.
“I am so, so sorry I was late, Gin. And that I look like…” I gesture to my whole messy self. “And Renee, I can’t apologize enough. I swear I set a bunch of alarms, but I picked up a shift at the studio last night, and I usually don’t get up until—”
“Hey.” Gin holds up a hand like a crossing guard, but her voice is gentle, and there’s a twinkle in her eye. “Slow down. Okay? You’re fine. You made it. Renee made it, too. We’re okay.”
“Okay,” I sigh, and Gin’s lopsided smile gives me a little hope.
Renee’s dagger eyes do exactly the opposite.
She fixes her face, though, when Rose wheels in today’s main event: a silver rolling rack holding six white dresses, each a little poofier than the one behind it. Rose leads our bride into her changing room and into the first choice, a dress that seems to match Gin’s original vision: It’s fitted from the beaded straps to the bottom of the lacy bodice. Maybe a little too fitted, though, considering the way her boobs spill out the top like biscuits from a tube.
Gin takes a few hesitant steps toward us, and when she turns to face the mirror, we get a view of all the industrial-looking clips and clamps fitting the dress to her frame. Business in the front, mechanic’s shop in the back. I watch her eyes in the mirror as they follow the lines of her silhouette, her soft smile not clueing me in on what’s happening inside her head.
“I really like this style.” Gin swivels her hips, shifting the waterfall of fabric.
With the first word of approval, Renee snaps a picture. “For reference,” she explains. “So we can keep track and refer to the photos later when the dresses blur together.” She stands and untucks the tag, snapping a photo of that, too.
“That’s so smart,” Gin marvels. “Thank God for you.”
A frustrated knot pulls tight in my belly. Why does it feel like Renee is competing with the rest of us, gunning for the title of Best and Most Beautiful Bridesmaid? Did she interpret Gin’s lack of a maid of honor as a challenge for us to vie for the role? A second thought rustles in the bushes of my mind, one I don’t want to look in the eye: Maybe it only feels like Renee is doing the mostbecause I’m not doing nearly enough. I straighten up in my plush pink throne. I can step it up.
“How do we feel about the boob situation?” Gin studies her cleavage in the mirror. “I’m going foron display but put away.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call them put away,” I offer thoughtfully. Chrissy giggles, but Renee shushes me, and my head snaps toward her with a look that asksWhat the hell did I do wrong?Her stare intensifies, underlining its message.Everything, Alice. You’re doing everything wrong.
As the appointment goes on, every dress further establishes the pattern: Gin waddles out, silently assesses herself in the mirror, and makes a ruling on the dress that we’re all supposed to agree with, actual opinions be damned. I mostly keep quiet, nodding and smiling whenever it feels appropriate, although I do blurt out a few comments I can’t quite squash, feeling increasingly stupid each time I can’t keep a thought inside.
“How many more do I have?” Gin whines from her changing room. After a resounding no on three dresses in a row, our bride’s morale is dangerously low.
“Just one more,” Rose says. “But it could be the one! It’s the one with the sleeves.”
“I love the one with the sleeves,” I say to Chrissy, perhaps a bit louder than the whisper I intended.
Renee shushes me again, and not quickly either. She hangs on to the hiss for at least a count of three.
I cast a pleading look in Chrissy’s direction, but she looks straight down at her lap, both hands up as if to sayLeave me out of this.
“No opinions until the bride has already expressed her own,” Renee scolds. “That’s the first rule of wedding dress shopping.”
“Sorry.” Under my breath, I mutter, “How many rules are there? Forty-eight?”
“It’s common sense,” Renee whisper-shouts. “Kind of like showing up on time and dressing appropriately?”
