I blink fast. Lucia will kill me if I cry.
There’s a mirror directly across from me, above the sink.
Satin robe. Hair perfect. Face perfect. The woman in the mirror is polished and assembled correctly.
She looks like someone else.
I lean forward and study her.
Maybe this is better. Maybe if I always looked like this—full makeup, hair done, the whole production—maybe he’d be easier. Maybe if I gave him the version he wants to come home to, things would feel less like a constant negotiation I’m always on the losing side of.
I could try that.
Maybe that’s the issue. I haven’t been trying hard enough.
Get it together, Piper.
I press the heels of my palms against my knees and make myself breathe.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Then, from the other side of the door, in a gentle, recognizable soprano:“Do you want to build a snow—”
“Don’t you fucking dare finish that, Rowan.”
There’s a long pause before two voices try and fail to whisper.
“Is she shitting herself?”
“I think she might be shitting herself.”
“What do we do if she shits in the dress? Can we fix that?”
“Madison, don’t. It’s not worth the images. Don’t put the images in my head.”
“I amnotshitting myself!” I shout. “I am freaking out. There’s a difference.”
“We know, babe,” Madison says with the practiced calm of a woman who has been talking people down from ledges since childhood. “We know. Take your time.”
I open my mouth.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
This knock is more formal somehow.
“Piper? It’s Matilda.”
I stare at the door.
Matilda?
Who the absolute fuck is Matilda?
Oh.
Right.
Matilda is one of the three—or maybe four, I lost track—wedding planners that Ezra’s mother hired. She’s the one with the headset and the color-coded binder. She introduced herself yesterday, and I immediately forgot everything about her except that her binder had six tabbed sections and she said the wordtimelinefourteen times in twenty minutes.
