I crammed four inches of heaven into my mouth, chewed, breathed through my nose, and took the other four inches, then grinned, calories and twenty-four years of silent “go fudge yourself, Mother” rioting through my bloodstream. It was a heady mix. Swallowing, I calmly licked my fingertips, never taking my eyes off my mother.
True to form, she remained cool. “Terrance, I wonder if you’d be so good as to set up in the living room? I imagine the hairdresser will be here any moment, and I want to make sure everything is as it should be,” she said with a regal dip of her head.
Terrance shot a stifled grin my way, snagged a cinnamon twist of his own, and went where he was told.
I was alone with my mother.
“Now, Chloe, I’m sure you didn’t mean to be as rude as you just were. What must our wedding planner think? A gorgeous bride, stuffing her face just hours before she’ll be sewn into the wedding gown we’ve spent months preparing your body for. As it is, we’ll be lucky if the buttons don’t pop.”
I let out a tiny but defiant burp.
My mother sighed and looked at the counter. And as she did, I realized it was the single most reliable expression she had on her face when it came to me. She was always sighing, if she wasn’t pushing. She was always sighing, if she wasn’t shushing. She was always sighing, if she wasn’t detailing exactly what I had done wrong.
I loved my mother, but it sure was hard to like her sometimes.
“Chloe?” I heard, and I realized the sighing was over.
“Yeah?”
“Is that how a young lady responds to a question from her mother?”
I straightened up automatically, tummy in, chest up and out, head balanced on a tiny cloud floating on top of my spine. Good posture is the calling card of good breeding, after all. “Mother, I’m sorry I was rude. I’m sure I’ll fit into my beautiful gown.”
She studied me carefully, her pretty face carefully composed, her pretty hair carefully composed, and finally nodded once. “Now go apologize to Terrance, dear, and please don’t eat another thing until your new husband offers you some wedding cake. This is going to be a beautiful day—I’m so happy for you.” As she turned to head outside, where the gardener was once again positively ruining her prize begonias, she called over her shoulder, “I’ll put a water pill on your bedside table, dear; let’s see what we can do about that puffiness around your ankles.”
It took everything I had not to kick something with my allegedly puffy ankles. If I could manage to lift my giant elephant legs off the floor. I relaxed my posture, licked a traitorous bit of sugar from the corner of my mouth, and headed in to see Terrance and the rest of the “help.”
“You know,” Terrance said, “I have seen it all. Mothers of the bride getting in screaming matches with the mothers of the groom. Grooms getting drunk at the reception and falling into the wedding cake. Once I even saw a father of the bride trying to make out with a groomsman.”
The glam squad was going full throttle. I had someone curling my hair, someone painting my nails, someone applying my makeup, and someone touching up my pedicure. In the background, happy music played and happy bridesmaids danced while sipping mimosas. The entire house was Happy Wedding Central, bursting with feminine giggles. Yet I, the one the frivolity was revolving around, was ready to burst into tears. Something that seemed to have escaped everyone’s attention. My bridesmaids had been my friends for years—friends I once had something in common with, but from whom I’d been feeling more and more distant in the last few months as I was marched toward this wedding cliff. As I looked around at their perfect faces, I realized I didn’t care a whit about any of them. No one was noticing my dark mood except my wedding planner.
“And I’ve seen my share of nervous brides and cold feet,” Terrance continued, leaning down in front of me, between two nail techs and a makeup artist. “So you wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Terrance was six feet six inches of fabulous stuffed into five feet two inches of tiny shoes. Which I was pretty sure were stacked. Caramel skin, tiny dreadlocks, and an enormous personality, he’d planned the weddings of every major socialite and debutante in Southern California for the last ten years. He alone had listened to what I wanted for my wedding, and even though I eventually gave in to what my mother wanted, he had fought for me all along. And seemed to see things that others didn’t—or chose not to. And now he saw that the tears that were building in my eyes were not, in fact, due to the false lashes recently applied, as I had tried to spin it.
Since I’d gotten out of bed this morning, a ball of awful had been kicking in my stomach. And it wasn’t nerves. I’d been in pageants since I was four years old and I knew how to deal with butterflies in my tummy. As each hour passed, that ball of awful was getting bigger and bigger, and it was starting to affect the rest of my body. There was a ringing in my ears. My fingers and toes felt buzzy. My tongue felt thick. And my eyes kept filling with tears. My pulse was racing, my hands were clammy, and words were thundering up my throat, literally begging to get out.