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Victor said I had no idea how many people in town loved me and my family, and that I would be surprised, but I still had a hard time believing him. With the store having struggled financially in recent years, I thought it was all due to a lack of interest by the town of Murdock. The combination of new and emerging markets and superstores were smoking us out, and after my parents died, people seemed to be slowly losing the connection to the local store that they once had.
But Victor insisted I was wrong. That the love for Brewer’s Grocery was as high as it had ever been and that customers had simply taken the store for granted recently, and the storm and losing the original building was going to bring them back. I had my doubts.
Then the store opened, and it had been a bonanza every day. With a wedding to prepare for, I couldn’t be there all the time, but thankfully I didn’t need to be. Norma and Amy stepped up in their new roles, and a host of new hires were making it easy on me to be an executive and do the big picture stuff I had always wanted, while also having an actual work-life balance that meantI got to go home after eight hours instead of sleeping in the spinning chair in the tiny office the old store used to have.
When Victor suggested that we get married in the empty lot behind the store, and that we shut down for it and invite the whole town, I thought it was a sweet, if silly idea. Our friends would come, sure, and maybe a few of the regulars. But inviting the whole town was borderline embarrassing. Who else was going to show up?
As it turned out, everyone.
It seemed like the whole town was there, and from my view from inside the store in the office, I could see that cars were parked on the sidewalks all the way down Broad and Main and all the side streets around them. The whole town had come to a standstill, and everyone was filing into the lot, wearing suits and dresses and enjoying the atmosphere.
Carmela was with me, sitting in the spinning chair that had somehow survived the storm and the transition to the new store. It had been found two streets away, sitting in the middle of the road, completely unharmed. Norma took it home, and when the new store opened, brought it back. She said she couldn’t imagine the store being complete without that chair in the office, even if the office was now twice as big and connected to a suite for Victor and me to work out of.
I paced between the two rooms, going from the office to the suite and back, my stomach in knots as I watched people file in.
“Babe, you are going to sweat yourself right out of your makeup,” Carmela said, standing and bringing me a cold bottle of water. “Why don’t you sit down in the chair?”
“I can’t sit,” I said. “Not in this dress. This is not a sitting dress.”
“All right,” she said, not skipping a beat, “then why don’t we walk around the store a little? Watching people file in isn’t going to help your nerves. The other girls are out there. We can go have a little glass of wine and relax.”
“The girls aren’t there,” I said. “I just looked.”
“What now?” Carmela asked. She ran to the door overlooking the floor and then turned back to face me, a big fake smile on her face. “Well, that’s… that’s a thing.”
“How long do I have?” I asked.
“Umm, since I can see Amy waving at me frantically, I would say you have about, oh, a minute. Gotta go, babe. You look amazing. This is it!”
With that, she darted out of the door, my Matron-of-Honor and a woman that I now considered my best friend, heading to the aisle that wound from the back door of the store across the empty lot and to the stage that Ryan had built for us.
I followed her out, watching her leave through the door and seeing Amy beaming by the door. She had taken on a role as an assistant wedding coordinator and had an earpiece on connecting her to the woman that we’d hired from Austin to handle the details. Amy had confided in me that planning weddings was her biggest dream and that she was hoping to learn something from the experience that she could put to work one day.
I would hate to see her leave the store, but watching her as I walked closer, I knew I would be happy for her too. She was clearly having a blast. She began to wave with one hand as she held her finger to the speaker in her ear. Outside, I could hearthe music stop. That meant there was another song about to play. The one picked out just for me.
“Are you ready?” Amy asked.
“To be married to Victor? Absolutely,” I said. “To do this? Maybe not so much.”
“Well, get ready because you are on in five, four, three, two…”
The wedding march song came on over loudspeakers placed on the roof of the store and in the yard of the lot across from us. Amy pushed open the door, and I heard gasps from the crowd as I stepped out.
I thought there would be no one walking me down the aisle, but as I got outside, I saw something that was different from what we’d rehearsed. All of the boys that Victor grew up with were standing at various places along the aisle, Graham right at the door. He offered his arm and walked with me until I reached Camden, who then took my arm and walked me farther along. By the time we reached Ryan, I was struggling to hold back tears, and when we reached Mark, they were streaming down my face. All four of them stood where my father would have had be been alive and gave me away in his place before taking their places beside Victor on the stage.
“Hello, princess,” Victor said as I reached him.
I blushed in spite of everything. It was a silly nickname he’d given me early on and occasionally called me, usually sarcastically. But at that moment, it felt genuine. Maybe that was because in that dress, in front of the entire town of Murdock, I actually didfeellike a princess. Never before had I felt so beautiful, and with Norma joining Allison, Mallory, and Carmela as my bridesmaids, I’d never felt stronger and more supported.
Never before had I even really had time for a best friend. My closest friend in school had moved away two years before my parents passed, and I’d never bothered to have a circle of them in school after. The only friends I bothered to keep were ones that were either employees or regulars at the store, and they came and went with time.
But Carmela had ingrained herself into my life in a way that no one else ever had. She was funny and smart and sassy and had brought me out of my shell a lot. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it anymore. Allison and Mallory were also great, along with friends of theirs that were regularly around, but Carmela and I had become like two peas in a pod and having her directly behind me as I held Victor’s hand made me feel like I could handle the thousands of eyes staring at me.
The ceremony was quick and simple, and before I knew it, there was a pause as everyone waited for me to say the only two words that meant anything on a day like this.
“I do,” I said.
Victor repeated the ritual and said all the things that I was sure I had also said but already couldn’t remember doing, and then slipped a ring on my finger.
