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Her attention snapped to me. “Yeah?”
“I don’t want you to feel you have to, but, um…do you want to stand up with me?”
Kimberly, who had been texting up a storm on her BlackBerry, was suddenly all ears. I had to give her points because she didn’t shoot the idea in the foot straightaway and instead waited to hear what we were going to say. Her fingers primed to send another text at any second.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Eugenia was blushing a fierce shade of red. “It’s so last minute, I don’t have anything to wear. I’m sure I’d stick out like a sore thumb.”
I had yet to be a demanding bride, and given how much I suspected Lucas was paying Kimberly, surely finding a single yellow Alfred Angelo bridesmaid’s dress couldn’t be too much to ask. Without a word my gaze drifted from my sister to the frozen wedding planner.
“Kimberly?”
For one long second she just batted her false lashes at me until she registered I was now asking her something. Then she was a flurry of motion and efficiency. “What size are you?” she asked Eugenia.
“I…” The poor girl looked down at her borrowed dress. “This is a six?”
Kimberly didn’t say another word to her, she was too busy tapping away on her BlackBerry muttering, “Sizes run high… Best to get an eight too… Wonder where Nancy got to…” She walked from the room with her head down, and for a moment I was afraid she might run straight into the wall, but the woman was obviously a pro at text-walking because she sidestepped the doorframe at the last second and marched her Manolo-clad feet out into the hall.
“She’s scary,” Eugenia said.
“You think she’s scary? You lived on an island in the swamp populated with feral werewolves and were raised by a witch,” I reminded her.
That got everyone’s attention, including the totally human beauty team, whose curling irons all stopped in unison.
Eugenia’s eyes bugged out.
I winked. “In a manner of speaking.” Then I laughed. “Geez, everyone. Did we not budget for senses of humor?”
My sister let out the breath she was holding, and Brigit joined the prep team in laughing, while Kellen and Mercedes shook their heads, incredulous that I would use two verboten W words in one sentence.
“Oh, honey, we were all raised by witches.” This from my stylist, Carter, whose dark hair was styled into a hip-looking pompadour with the sides shaved short. He had a habit of winking at me in the mirror whenever he spun the chair so I could see his progress. In the grand tradition of male hairstylists everywhere, I foun
d it impossible to determine if he was gay or straight, but I knew I liked him. Otherwise his hands with their black-polished fingernails wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near my hair.
“Are you thinking up or down?” he asked once he’d worked through all the knots of my just-woken bedhead.
“Kimberly wanted up.” I rolled my eyes and shrugged.
“Yeah, well, Kimberly also wants to be Donald Trump’s ninth wife and wants a pony dusted with platinum to bring her a Park Avenue white knight. I asked what you wanted.”
The three other stylists once again stopped dead, this time gawking at Carter instead of me.
Yeah, I really liked him.
“Can you make a ponytail look fancy?”
“Sweetie, I could make a rat tail look fancy. You leave this to me.”
We were almost finished with our hair when the makeup team arrived. By that point Eugenia had been coaxed into a chair and her long dark hair had been transformed into something youthful but elegant. Mercedes’s unruly curls had been softened and turned into sophisticated, old-Hollywood waves. Brigit’s mane had been left long and straight. Her stylist had just backcombed the crown and pinned it back with a sparkly, canary-yellow barrette.
Kellen was the only girl to opt for an updo. As she explained it, “Any opportunity for an updo is a good one.” Braids trailed back from her temples, and a woven gold headband had been pinned in, resulting in a messy Greek-inspired style that made her cheekbones more prominent and her neck appeared longer somehow.
Carter, true to his word, had made my standard ponytail pass as wedding appropriate. He’d tamed my curls and added some sort of pomade that made them look like they were edged with gold. Several small braids were hidden in the mix, each one threaded with gold wire to both strengthen it and make it more beautiful. He’d wrapped the base of the side ponytail with my own hair so there was no tacky elastic in sight.
When hair and makeup were done, Kimberly re-emerged carrying several garment bags.
She took one glance at me and frowned at Carter. “I thought we agreed on an updo?”
“I am at the mercy and whims of the bride,” he replied without skipping a beat.
