One
MRS. RICHMOND’S WEDDINGgown was itchy, for one thing.
The kind of itchy that eclipses everything else.
And there was no way to get out of it.
And that was nobody’s fault but my own.
The problem was: I was marrying her son, Pearce—my college boyfriend and fellow math major—at long last. Pearce Richmond: a certified Perfect Man. He was ungettable, and I got him. He was unstoppable, and I stopped him. He was untamable, and I rode him into the sunset.
So to speak.
And then, in a burst of postengagement irrational exuberance, I’d agreed to wear his mother’s wedding dress at the ceremony. I’m sure the lace that was now strangling my neck had been the forefront of polyester technology when it was formulated thirty years ago… but now, after sitting so long in storage, it had disintegrated into a prickly-pear-cactus texture that would be giving me a full-body rash, guaranteed.
A rash. On my wedding day.
I could feel the microfibers boring into my skin.
And, yes—I did just say “neck.” This atrocity of a wedding gown had a dog-collar-like choker of lace, which attached to a bib of more lace, which attached to a sweetheart neckline that held the whole thing up. And by “whole thing,” I mean the loosest, puffiest, most sad-prom, princess-fantasy, pumpkin-skirted getup in history.
It was like aparodyof a wedding gown.
A parody that Pearce’s mom refused to have altered. Even with a whole handful of safety pins hidden in the pleats, it was still so loose that without the collar it might’ve slid right off. And the poofy skirt wasso very poofyit was like I was wearing one of Maria von Trapp’s curtains—as a curtain.
Light a fire under me, and I could’ve floated off like a hot-air balloon. For real.
But there was no getting out of it.
Literally.
Because the zipper had caught in my hair right at the neckpiece when I zipped it up, and now it was stuck. I had cut away my hair with scissors, but now the slider was cemented in place like we’d glued it. Right at the top.
I’d be noosed in this thing until Pearce—or, really, not picky at this point:anyone at all—ripped it off me.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
In theory, this was the biggest day of my life. In theory, I should be savoring every second. In theory, I was smack in the bull’s-eye of the pinnacle of human happiness.
In reality?
I was itching.
Not to mention stinging—from matching blisters on the backs of my heels from my new shoes.
That was the situation: A supremely bossy mother-in-law-to-be. A growing rash. Twin blisters. And a dress that made me question my human dignity.
Yeah. I wasalreadyready for this day to be over.
Not to mention the venue: a church built in the sixties that they’d forgotten to add windows to, with a building-wide commitment to fluorescent bulbs instead of warm white and an odd décor obsession with beige.
Tonally off for a wedding, right?Beige?
I don’t know what color joy is, but it sure as hell isn’t beige.
But here we were.
Even my bouquet of “champagne”-colored roses could qualify as beige.
