Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“Sophie Anne! Stay focused,” Mom barked like a drill instructor. “Get your ass out of this car.”
I hated when my mom was right. My nerves were making me stall, when I really needed to get my shit together. I’d slept until eleven—my last-night-as-a-single-girl sleepover with Holli had kept me up really late—and now, the clock was ticking.
A cluster of my female relatives were waiting in the Royal Terrace suite. The place was bridal central; two salon chairs were parked in the grandly appointed sitting room area. The scent of congratulations and well-wishing flower arrangements filled the air, as did Aunt Marie’s raucous laugh and enough aerosolized droplets of hairspray that I wondered if we would all get some kind of awful lung disease. April, the hair stylist, had already done Holli’s hair, curled and shaped into a pin-up girl style, and now, she called, “Mother of the bride?” and pointed firmly to the empty chair. Debra, the make-up artist, shooed me toward the lighted mirror.
“We’ll get you done now and do touch ups right before you go backstage,” she said, like it wasn’t completely bizarre to refer to “backstage” as part of a wedding. She had come recommended by Holli, so I assumed she worked in the theatre or television. “You just relax.”
Relax. It would be so much easier to relax if I could just see Neil. I needed him to reassure me. Or to be my focus, I guessed. I pulled my phone from my purse as I sat down and brought up my photos. The last seventeen were of Holli and me trying to take a drunk best friends selfie, but after that, I had a picture of Neil on the beach in front of our house. He wore a gray t-shirt and a pair of comfy-looking, broken-in jeans, the cuffs rolled up above his hairy ankles, and he was smiling at me, squinting into the sun. I took a deep breath and decided I would focus on those times—Neil and I being a normal couple—to get me through the overwhelming production of the day.
“Ooh, that’s a nice picture,” Debra said, in the voice that all stylists used when trying to make small talk with a client. “A lot more casual than when I Googled you guys.”
“You Googled us?” I asked with a snort of laughter. “I hope we didn’t bore you.”
“Not at all,” she said with raised eyebrows as she shook up a bottle of moisturizer. “There are some really interesting rumors out there about you guys. But you already know that.”
No, I did not know that.
Nope. Not today. I was not going to worry about Google rumors or awful books or any other problem. I’d already embraced all of that nonsense to be with Neil. I wasn’t going to let it turn me away from him now.
It felt like it took an hour to get my face on lockdown, which was somewhat worrying; what did I look like normally if it took so much careful contouring to make me acceptable? Every time I tried to peek at myself, Debra firmly turned the chair from the mirror. I guess she didn’t like having people watch her work. When she finally let me see myself, I gasped. I didn’t look like Sophie Scaife. “I look like Kim Kardashian!”
Aunt Marie’s face lit up with recognition. “I have her phone game.”
“Is looking like Kim Kardashian a bad thing?” Debra asked, peering at me over the slim rectangles of her magnifying glasses.
“Are you kidding?” I turned my face from side to side, examining all angles. “She’s a goddess.”
Pia arrived with the dress and a tackle box full of sewing supplies at three. My female relatives and Holli were all dolled up with hair and makeup, but I still had curlers in.
“They’ve got the mirrors upstairs,” Mom said, pointing Pia toward the stairs. “Do you need help with anything?”
“Yeah.” Pia awkwardly managed the huge box under her arm and juggled the tackle box to hand it off to Mom.
Aunt Marie hurried any non-essential personnel from the room, so I could take a break to eat something. “You don’t want to pass out on the way down the aisle, dummy,” Holli scolded me. Though the croissants were delicious and the fruit was as fresh as if I were eating it in the orchard it had been picked in, I could barely hold any of it down.
I hoped the few bites I got in would be enough to keep me from fainting during the ceremony.
There was a knock on the door, and Emma called, “Is everyone decent?”
Holli went to the door and let Emma in. Olivia was snuggled in her arms, dressed in the most adorable little pink shantung party dress with seed pearls and delicate embroidery on the front and more pearls scattered over the sheer organza skirt.