Something Borrowed (2 page)

The bridal-shop woman had been busy on the phone for the past few minutes. But now she came bustling over to check on us. She was one of those quintessential Main Line ladies of a certain age: carefully frosted and coiffed hair courtesy of Toppers Spa or
some such place, clothes so conservative that you just knew they had to be expensive, and a touch of plastic surgery to pull it all together.

“How are we doing over here, ladies?” she asked in what I could only describe as a brisk coo. “Miss Hamilton, the gown looks fabulous! Though I think we may need to take it in a smidge more at the bust . . .” She pulled a tape measure out of her pocket and went to work.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes at Teresa. If there's one thing even more fun than trying on a fugly pink dress, it's standing there with a complete stranger poking at your chest while basically telling you you have no boobs. Isn't that exactly how any girl would love to spend a gorgeous summer Sunday afternoon?

“Hey, Ava, I think I hear your phone ringing.” Teresa glanced in the direction of the dressing room. “Want me to grab it?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “Let it go to voice mail. It's probably just Mom again, complaining about Camzilla's latest breakdown.”

Teresa grinned. “Right. What was it last time? Problems with the cake?”

“Keep up; that was last week. Today it
was something about canapés, I think. Mom didn't go into detail in her message, but I'm pretty sure it involved the end of life as we know it.”

The bridal-shop lady glanced at us both with a sort of
tut-tut
look on her face, though she was far too well-bred to say anything. Or maybe it was because she'd met my sister and realized what we were dealing with.

It seemed like forever before the bridal lady was satisfied that, yes, the Pink Thing could be properly molded to my B-minus boobage. Finally, she stepped back and tucked away her tape measure.

“All right, Miss Hamilton,” she said, “we'll be sure to have your dress ready to try on again by the next fitting.”

“What if it still doesn't fit right?” I asked with a sudden burst of hope. “The wedding is two weeks from yesterday. Is there any chance it might not be ready?”

Her reassuring smile made my new-found hope fizzle out. “Our most talented seamstress will be working on it. It will fit; don't worry. Just leave it on the hook in the dressing room, and we'll see you again on Thursday for the final fitting.”

“Come on, Ave. Let's go get you changed and get out of here.” Teresa grabbed my hand and dragged me off the little platform. We pushed our way past a rack of plastic-shrouded bridal white and through an arched doorway into the dressing room.

In the same way that “dress” means something completely different in Bridal Shop Land, so does “dressing room.” Instead of the toilet-stall-like individual enclosures you usually find at the mall, this place had just one big, open room, complete with framed wedding photos on the walls, several tasteful white upholstered sofas and chairs scattered around, and a couple of those little platforms with accompanying three-way mirrors. The day Camille tried on her gown for the first time, there had actually been another bride, her mother, and about half a dozen giggling friends in there with us. I'd expected Camille to blow her top at that, but she'd been so busy freaking out over how the (pure white) buttons didn't
exactly
match the color of the (pure white) fabric that I'm not sure she even noticed.

Today Teresa and I had the place to ourselves, and I was glad about that. The fewer
witnesses to my pink shame the better. I'd dropped my clothes on one of the white tufted chairs, and they were right there waiting for me, although apparently Bridal Lady had sneaked in and folded them while we were outside. Folded or not, I'd never been so glad to see them.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the deluxe dressing room also included a couple of those giant three-way mirrors. That meant I was subjected once again to the view of myself encased in the Pink Horror.

“This is really going to happen, isn't it?” I asked Teresa as I stared at my cotton-candy-colored reflection. “I'm actually going to have to wear this thing in public.”

“
And
be memorialized forever in the wedding photos,” Teresa said. Apparently realizing it wasn't the most tactful comment in the world, she reached over and squeezed my arm. “But don't worry. If anyone can pull off the look, you can. Besides, you'll probably forget you're wearing it once the reception starts and you're dancing the night away with Lance.”

“That's true.” I brightened a bit at the thought. Lance and I had been together for nearly three months. As Teresa would say,
that was practically a record for me, Ms. Short Attention Span. But Lance was pretty special. For one thing, he was super hot, with this spiky white-blond hair and biceps that would make Michelangelo drool. But it wasn't his looks that made me really fall for him. And it certainly wasn't the fact that he was Boring Bob's stepcousin. No, the first thing I adored about Lance was his incredible passion for cars.

Not that I was any kind of gearhead myself. I didn't even have a car of my own—my parents always said that if I wanted one, I could pay for it myself, and somehow I'd always found better things to do with the paycheck from my part-time job than spend it on boring stuff like insurance and gas. Besides, why go to all that trouble? I had enough friends with cars that I could almost always get a ride. And in a pinch my parents would usually let me borrow one of theirs as long as I promised to top off the tank.

In any case, even if my own motor didn't race at the very sight of a perfectly restored '65 T-bird, I could appreciate that kind of passion in Lance. I liked guys who had strong interests, who went out and
did
things. Okay, so after about the fourth time,
those impromptu drag races weren't that exciting anymore. And maybe spending at least half our dates listening to Lance talk about rotors and spark plugs was getting a
teensy
bit dull. But even so, after almost three whole months, I was still smitten. Or at least interested enough to stick with Lance for a while—definitely through the wedding, for sure. After that, we would just have to see.

For now the important thing was that he was almost as crazy about me as he was about cars. And that he'd look awesome in a tux as long as he got the axle grease out from under his fingernails. That reminded me—I really needed to talk to him about the fingernail thing. . . .

“Turn around,” Teresa ordered. “I'll get your zipper.”

“Don't forget the stupid little pearl buttons at the top,” I reminded her as I turned my back. “Camille had them special-ordered from, like, Zimbabwe or somewhere. If we lose any, she'll freak.”

“How will we be able to tell?” Teresa joked. Her graceful fingers made short work of the pearl buttons and the zipper. “There you go. Free at last.”

Well, not quite. See, the Pink Blob was
designed in such a way that it was almost impossible to shimmy it off over my hips and butt, despite the fact that I'm not exactly J.Lo in that department. That meant it had to go off the same way it had gone on: over my head.

“A little help here?” I said to Teresa. “And no comments about the SpongeBobs this time, please.”

Teresa grinned but stayed quiet as she stepped forward. I just happened to be wearing a pair of garish and slightly baggy SpongeBob SquarePants panties that day. That was what happened when you let yourself get behind on laundry because you were so busy bridesitting. Still, it was one more reason I was really glad we were alone in the dressing room this time.

The Pink Horror was halfway over my head, stuck somewhere around my shoulders and completely blocking my vision, when I heard footsteps approaching from nearby. I froze, picturing Ms. Tastefully Coiffed Bridal Shop Lady walking in with a bride or two in tow and fainting dead away at the sight of my bright yellow panties.

But what I heard next was far more horrible than anything I could have imagined.
“Hey, are you guys almost done in . . .”

I yanked down the dress as fast as I could. I recognized that voice. Sure enough, Teresa's boyfriend was standing in the dressing-room doorway, slack-jawed and staring at me in all my butt-hanging-out, SpongeBob-underpanted glory.

“What are you
doing
in here, Jason?” Teresa exclaimed, horrified. “This is a women's dressing room!”

“Sorry.” Jason snapped his mouth shut. We'd left him out in his Prius in the parking lot reading a book. Since neither Teresa nor I had access to a car that day, she'd sweet-talked him into playing chauffeur. “I wasn't expecting—” he stammered. Jason was the type of guy who was rarely at a loss for words. But he was now. Score one for me and SpongeBob. “That is, at the mall the dressing rooms are usually . . .”

Meanwhile, I was frantically trying to cover various body parts with pink satin. This was just my luck. I let my laundry pile up for a day or two and I end up flashing the world with the novelty panties my friends got me as a joke.

“What do you want, anyway?” Teresa asked Jason impatiently.

Jason cleared his throat. From the expression in his greenish-gray eyes, I couldn't quite tell if he was amused or frightened.

“Never mind,” he said, shooting one last glance in the direction of my now-mercifully-hidden underpants before turning away. “I'll just, um, wait in the car.”

My face was probably still bright red (NOT pink!) when my cell phone rang. Again.

“That's like the fifth time since we got here,” I muttered, digging through my pile of clothes to find the phone. After Jason left, Teresa had helped me finally remove the Pink Eyesore, so now I was in nothing but my bra and SpongeBobs. “Even Crazy Camille can't manage to come up with that many crises in forty minutes, can she?”

“Don't be too sure,” Teresa joked. “She's managed to have three breakdowns so far over the flowers alone.” She started ticking things off on her fingers. “Then there was the invitation emergency, the various dress debacles . . .”

“And the canapés. Don't forget the canapés.” My hand finally closed on the cool, smooth shape of my phone. It had stopped ringing by now, so I checked the return number on the last message. To my surprise, it didn't belong to either my mother or my sister. “Hey, it was Lance.”

I'd tossed the Pink Horror on a chair, and Teresa got busy hanging it up and smoothing out the wrinkles. “I thought he was down the shore this weekend,” she said.

“He is. He's spending the weekend in Wildwood with his buddies.” I grimaced as I watched her fiddle with my dress. “That's where I'd be right now too, if it hadn't been for this stupid fitting.”

I scrolled through the other messages on the phone. Except for the one from my mother that I'd already heard, they were all from Lance.

“Weird,” I murmured. Lance wasn't the type of boyfriend who called me all the time just to say hi—certainly not four times in forty minutes. Especially on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon when he could be outside taking apart an engine with some of his gearhead beach buddies. Which reminded me: After a whole weekend of that, I could
only imagine how gross his fingernails would look. . . .

“So? Go ahead and call him back already,” Teresa said.

I nodded. Still thinking about how I was going to clean up those repulsive fingernails before the wedding, I sank down onto the nearest chair, the white brocade fabric feeling cool and scratchy on my bare legs. I punched Lance's speed-dial number, then held the phone between ear and shoulder as I grabbed my shorts and pulled them on.

The phone only rang once before Lance answered. “Yo,” he said. “Lance here.”

“Hey, cutie. It's me.” I zipped up my shorts and reached for my T-shirt. “Sorry I didn't pick up before. I was at the bridal shop being tortured. Speaking of which, I was just thinking—how would you feel about a his and hers day at the salon the day before Camille's wedding? You know, facials and manicures, just the two of us—could be fun, right?”

“Um, I don't think so,” he mumbled. “Listen, Ava. I really need to talk to—”

“All right, all right, no his and hers salon day. Check.” I'd known that that one was a long shot. “But maybe—hang on a sec.”

I removed the phone from my ear just long enough to shrug on my shirt. I wasn't ready to give up on my quest to make sure Lance looked as good as he could for the big day. As I'd mentioned to Teresa, this wedding was going to be a huge deal. I definitely didn't want to end up memorialized in the photos—not to mention in my family history—as the girl who showed up with Dirty Fingernails Guy.

He was talking when I put the phone back to my ear. “. . . and so I didn't think it should wait until I—”

“Hello?” I interrupted. “Sorry, I didn't catch that. Did you change your mind about the salon yet, big guy?” I used my most enticing hey-there-hot-stuff voice for the last part. Lance loved that voice—I could talk him into almost anything with it.

There was a long pause. “Um, Ava?” he said at last.

It finally dawned on me that he sounded kind of grim. “Lance? Is everything okay?” I asked with a somewhat belated rush of concern. “Wait, you didn't, like, crash your car in some stupid street race and get hurt or something, did you? Is that why you called? Are you in the hospital?”

Across the dressing room, Teresa glanced over, looking alarmed. I shrugged at her.

“No. I called to tell you I don't think this is working.”

“What isn't working?” My mind was still at least partly on his fingernails. For one bizarre moment I thought he was warning me that he wouldn't be able to get them clean in time.

“You and me. I think we should, uh, maybe see other people.”

The truth finally landed on me with a dizzying thud. “What?” I exclaimed, clutching the phone tighter. “Wait. Are you—are you
breaking up
with me? Seriously? I mean,
seriously
?”