- 8 vintage rugs (4x6 feet to create an aisle)
- sound system (Alice’s work???)
- 2 handheld microphones (Alice’s work???)
- speakers (Alice’s work???)
- 30 cloth napkins (pale green)
- 30 place cards (Renee, you have the best handwriting—would you mind?)
- 7 terrarium centerpieces (I’ll send the link to the DIY instructions)
Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks in advance you guys <3
Fourteen
I read Gin’s text on the bus home from work—my second shift back since the Cold Sweat session. Aidan has yet to mention how things went with my former band, which is fine. Preferable, actually. As is, I’m slapped with reminders of their upcoming Chicago show at every turn—the posters, the targeted ads. But I have enough to worry about without agonizing over a band I’m no longer a part of. For example: this massive, ultraspecific list of wedding requests. I fear that our bride may have overcorrected, but Renee asked for specifics, and she certainly won’t be disappointed.
As promised, Gin sends links and reference pictures to guide us, then instructions for the terrarium project, which looks doable, albeit messy. It’ll take up most of a Saturday, and…how many Saturdays do we even have left? I swipe open my calendar and count off the weeks—six, seven…eight. Eight weeks until Gin and Rishi walk down the aisle, and we have zero of the required vintage rugs to create said aisle. On my second read of the list, I feel myself sinking into it, like I’m being lowered into a hot, bubbling cauldron ofthe feeling—thatanything for the bridefeeling I’ve been afflicted with since the engagement dinner. But it’sdifferent now. I’m more determined. Beneath the obligation, there’s a thrilling undercurrent, a scavenger hunt–adjacent rush. It can only mean one thing: I’ve being sucked into the wedding vortex, where everything else is irrelevant.
I don’t realize I’ve missed my bus stop until we’ve passed it, and it feels like divine timing that I look up just as we lurch to a stop at Village Thrift. It’s like the list is in charge now, directing my steps off the bus and through the automatic doors into a cloud of thrift-store smell—a distant whiff of a musty basement shaded with ammonia. I reach for a basket, then stagger back when I spot a familiar profile near the used books—a gently upsloped nose and full lips, blond hair twisted back with loose tendrils framing her face. Renee leans against a bookshelf, eyes skating over the pages of a worn hardcover. When I’m close enough to read the title of the book, a laugh fires out of me like a shot from a cannon.
Renee startles, eyes wide and wild at first, then softer when our gazes catch. She tucksControlling the Controllables: A Guide to Inner Peacebeneath her arm and smooths her sleeveless linen blouse in her signature red. A second laugh flies out of me when she glances down at her slingback kitten heels and, more notably, the shopping basket beside them piled high with green cloth napkins.
“Is something funny, Alice?” Renee arches a brow.
“Oh, nothing.” I nudge her basket with the toe of my sneaker. “Nice napkins. Are there thirty of them?”
I watch for Renee’s signature eye roll. Instead, a smirk toys with the corner of her lips, and a pleasant shiver rolls through me. I grab a basket of my own and try to match her pace as Renee patrols the fluorescent aisles of secondhand housewares.
“So the list,” I say.
“The list,” she echoes, then clicks her tongue once. “I told Gin to be specific, but who knew she’d take it so far?”
No sooner has she said it than Renee snaps her mouth shut in resignation. Because this is Gin we’re talking about. Going above and beyond is all that she knows. Now it’s on us to do the same.
With an hour until Village Thrift closes, Renee and I narrow our focus. Tablecloths. Tonight, we are only looking for tablecloths. We scour the racks of linens, discussing the subtle difference between eggshell and ivory. Village Thrift has neither. In fact, they have no tablecloths at all, only bedsheets that fool us again and again.
“This store has given me a stick-on handlebar mustache, cowgirl boots, and a dozen neon swimsuits,” I list off. “But tablecloths? That’s where they’re drawing the line?”
“We could come back on Tuesday when they restock,” Renee suggests.
“Controlling the controllables. Did your book teach you that?”
This earns me that eye roll I was looking for, but she pairs it with a smile. “The joke will be on you,” she insists, “when I achieve inner peace. Just you wait.”
She certainly has a long way to go, though. When we file into the checkout line, Renee is visibly anxious about leaving with only the napkins. She spins her rings while perusing the list, which she’s already pasted into a note on her phone.
“We’re gonna be fine.” My hand instinctually floats to the space between her shoulder blades, but I pull it away. “This was just the first, super-spontaneous shopping trip. We’ll plan better for the next one.”
“We just don’t have a lot of time,” Renee mutters, and she’sright, but she’s forgetting something critical. Our secret weapon of connections.
“We have something better than time,” I remind her. “We have Chrissy.”
Renee’s laugh is like the shake of a tambourine, and it shimmers through me, spilling goose bumps down my arms. It’ssucha good laugh. Hard to earn, which makes it that much sweeter.
When the line shifts forward, she sidesteps closer to me, and I breathe in her clean scent. Eucalyptus, I think? It’s a delicious disruption from the musty thrift-store smell.
