The Wedding Wager (McMaster the Disaster) (8 page)

I couldn’t help but giggle at the thought of the thick, brown liquid oozing down the back of her pristine, off-white coat.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked, finally turning to look at me.

But I was too busy noticing how very familiar the street looked. I felt like I’d been in a place just like this…

…oh my God. Just yesterday.

We were standing in front of the very same giant dress store where Mattie had first taken me yesterday.

And I so did not have it in me to try on any more dresses.

Not to mention what the hell the people working there were going to think. They’d be so ticked at me for wasting their time.

I started pacing across the sidewalk.

“Josie? Josie, what is going on with you? We have to get inside. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get an appointment with these people? The only way I could do it in the first place was to drop Jake’s name. You would not believe how helpful people become when a movie star is involved in a wedding.” She clucked her tongue. “You’d think he was the queen or something.”

I laughed nervously.

“You know, I don’t really have the right shoes for trying dresses on,” I said, scrambling for excuses, Mattie’s words echoing through my head.

My mother looked to the heavens. “Of course I thought of that Josie. Do you really think this is my first time shopping for a dress? I’ve got four different pairs right here.” She patted what I now saw was a gigantic bag slung over her shoulder.

I don’t know how, but she’d managed to make even a huge sack look elegant and inconspicuous.

I hung back even longer, sipping my coffee as slowly as possible while my brain wheeled at warp speed through non-believable excuse after non-believable excuse. Eventually, my mother tugged on my arm hard enough, forcing me into the building. I dawdled as much as I could, but her impatience was growing by the second. We reached the sparkling door and I cringed as it opened.

“Welcome,” the same lady from yesterday said.

If she was surprised to see me she didn’t let on, her face as calm and serene as ever. Maybe she didn’t really get a good look at me or didn’t remember me. I mean, it would be strange not to notice two appointments under the same name so close together… perhaps they really were femme-bots and had no powers of recollection.

This might not be so bad. Yesterday was pretty fun, after all.

And I could guarantee my mother would not pick out the same dresses as Mattie. I’d definitely break the bad news today, but… what would it hurt just to try a couple more on?

We were led to the staging area just like yesterday, my mother gawking at her surroundings, much like I’m sure I did my first time through.

The first dressing room housed the largest wedding dress I had ever seen. Its jeweled bodice led down to a large skirt with huge folds of fabric layered in the back, draping out for what seemed like miles behind it. I couldn’t figure out how on Earth a person could move around in something like that, let alone dance or you know, God forbid, go to the bathroom.

But it was nothing if not spectacular and my insides practically quivered to try it on, at least as an experiment… if only to test the maneuverability.

And once I got it on and the millions of crystals down the front caught the light, I suddenly understood how Cinderella must have felt. In the dress, I stood up straighter than usual, pulled my shoulders back more, and I swear, may have grown an inch or two. Something about it just made you want to carry yourself a little better, just to live up to the extravagance of it.

I felt like I’d traveled back in time, born into royalty as I walked the hall back to my mother.

I expected a positive reaction, but I certainly hadn’t expected tears. Sure, mothers often cried when they first saw their daughters in wedding gowns, but my mother was not like other mothers. She didn’t cry at weddings. Cripes, she didn’t cry at funerals. In fact, now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t come up with one time that I remembered seeing her cry at all.

Until that moment.

Okay, it’s not like she was out and out bawling or anything, but her eyes were seriously glistening, so much so that she turned away for a moment and wiped a tear, I suppose thinking she was fooling me.

I nearly broke down right then and there and if I hadn’t been wearing a dress that I was terrified of messing up, I probably would have.

My mother sniffed across the room and tried to compose herself. “That is beautiful,” she finally said.

“Thanks.”

I stood there, not sure what to do so I took a bit of a walk around the room so she could see the magnificence of the train. The fabric was heavy, but not unbearable and I began to picture myself walking down the aisle to gasps and ladies wiping their eyes.

I may have been getting a bit over my head with the thoughts of people fawning and crying over me, so when I snuck back into the next change room, I realized I needed a quick peek into the Disaster Diary to help bring me back down to scale. Sheesh, I was probably already a day late checking in considering the expansion of my head since Mattie’s dresses.

Dear Disaster Diary,

I absolutely love going to the airport. People completely excited about going to someplace exotic, or someplace warm when it’s winter. And then as people return, even though they’ve likely had a lovely trip, they are always happy to be back home, hugging loved ones or meeting up with friends they haven’t seen in a while.

There is just so much promise and possibility at a place like that, which is why I always volunteer to pick up and drop off pretty much everyone I know. In all the excitement, I admit, I tend to get a little excited myself, which is why I may not always have my head on as straight at the airport as I normally would, you know, even for me.

When I was about seventeen, my sister Rosie, my father and I went to pick up Mom from the airport. She’d just gone to visit her sister in Oklahoma. I was so busy watching all the happy faces around me that I may not have noticed all the things around me, including the exact spot where we were standing.

Of course, with excitement, trips to the washroom tend to follow, and that day was no exception. I snuck off, hurrying so I wouldn’t miss my mother’s face when she came through the gate. Now everybody knows there’s an art to picking the correct bathroom stall. Many choices are obvious, you want to get the cleanest one possible, though at public places like airports, clean is often a stretch. I’d heard somewhere that people tend to gravitate toward the end stalls, so I’d gotten in the habit of choosing the middles, just to be on the safe side.

That day was almost a miracle, the middle stall was empty and it actually looked decently clean. I quickly did my business and turned to flush. Then sighed. The stinkin’ thing wouldn’t flush.

I pressed the button over and over again, really getting close to get some leverage as I pushed as hard as I could. Which was when, of course, it finally flushed with a whoosh so powerful it could have cleared a pool in six point five seconds.

As I was starting to stand back up, the bowl began to refill just as violently as it had emptied and splashes of water sprayed up, tiny droplets of public toilet water sprinkling my face.

I screamed, wiping at my face, as if that would do any good.

I lunged for the door, pulling the slide lock as quickly as I could, desperate to get to the sinks and some soap. Makeup be damned, I was going to get my face clean.

And that’s when things went from bad to worse.

The lock wouldn’t budge. Like seriously wouldn’t give even the slightest bit.

I began to panic.

Okay… I began to panic more.

I tugged and pulled and banged on that lock, already feeling the toilet bacteria practically growing on my face. I wanted to cry but there were other people in the washroom, so I just kept tugging, pulling from the top of the stall door, trying everything possible to un-jam it.

Thoughts of having to crawl under the door swirled through my head.

I looked down.

Dirt, bits of toilet paper, and tiny puddles covered the grimy surface.

I gagged, still clawing at the door.

My breathing deepened, hyperventilation about to kick in.

And then, as if by a miracle, the latch clicked open ever-so-easily, as if I had been insane all along and nothing was even jammed.

The people in there looked at me like I was crazy.

I’m sure scrubbing my face as if I was trying to get the skin off probably didn’t help that impression too much.

CHAPTER 9

The dresses my mother picked could not have been more different from Mattie’s, but I had to say, each of hers was just as perfect for me as his: a simple satin fitted bateau neckline dress with a flowing skirt draping over a bustle in the back; a gorgeous princess dress with full tulle skirt and sheer sleeves; and to my utter shock, she even picked out a slinky, even somewhat sexy, sheath halter dress.

The trying on was fun, but I had to break the news to my mother soon, only… now I wasn’t so sure I didn’t want her doing it. I mean, Mattie’s ideas were so exciting and fresh and fun, but Mom’s were almost magical, tradition all the way, which sometimes held more meaning.

I sighed as my mother led me down the block to a nearby florist. Thank God she hadn’t set up four different dress shops in one day like Mattie had.

We entered to the jingle of the tiny bell above the door, and immediately a lady peeked out from a back room.

“Oh hi!” she said, waving an arm in our direction. The other arm appeared to be holding about two hundred roses. “I’ll be right with ya.”

My mother seemed to tense, though I liked the woman right away. There was something down-home about her, she reminded me a bit of some of the ladies back in the town where I stayed outside of London while I was ghostwriting.

We started looking around the shop while we waited. The flowers were amazing. Any elegance the woman may have lacked in person, she more than made up for in her designs. I was drawn to a table centerpiece, standing tall, above my head, even though it sat on a regular height table. It was a high candelabra, tightly packed with romantic, varying roses of cream, white, and light pinks. Pearls and crystals weaved throughout the design, with a few crystals dripping down for added sparkle.

The whole thing was like nothing I’d ever seen before.

“This is amazing,” I whispered to my mother, already picturing dozens of them on round tables in a lavishly decorated grand hall.

“Very nice,” she said, “I guess Lacie didn’t steer me wrong after all.

I suppressed an eye roll, knowing my mother had hoped the recommendation from her friend Lacie Becker would be a dud. There was nothing those two liked more than to show each other up.

“Oh yes,” mother said, moving across the room. “These are the ones Lacie’s daughter had at her wedding.” She let out a little smirk as she said it.

The flowers in question were beautiful; small gatherings of orchids in clear, square vases, but they had nowhere near the flair that the grand centerpieces had, and I almost felt sorry for Lacie Becker for a moment. Of course, when I remembered back to the time when her daughter Giselle had shoved me into the pool at my first boy/girl party, a matching smirk on my face may have entered the room.

I turned back to the roses, unable to tear my eyes away for more than a few moments.

“It’s a pretty one, isn’t she?” the lady said, coming up from the back to help us.

I nodded. Pretty didn’t even begin to describe it. “It’s gorgeous.”

“You’re getting married?” she asked, a sparkle in her eye that you just don’t see very often.

I suppose working around flowers all day, some of the most gorgeous flowers in the world, tended to keep a person in good spirits.

The smell was absolutely magnificent too. The only other place that might beat it would be a bakery.

I briefly wondered if Mom had any cake tasting on the menu for today, as my stomach growled just thinking about it.

Mom pulled out the monstrosity of a book from the huge bag where she’d produced my shoes back at the dress shop, and flipped it open to a tab marked flowers and wrote the name of the shop down. She pulled her iPhone from her pocket and began clicking a few pictures, mostly of the same centerpiece I couldn’t stop staring at.

“I can tell this one’s your favorite,” the flower lady said and I smiled.

“Yup, it’s a pretty popular one to look at here in the store, but it can be a bit pricey. Most folks can’t really afford too many of them.”

“Price is not an issue,” my mother said, looking down her nose and sniffing.

“Excellent,” the lady said, not missing a beat, “because they are $999 a piece.”

I nearly choked on my own spit.

A thousand bucks for a centerpiece?

I breathed through my nose as slowly and evenly as possible, waiting for my mother’s head to explode.

But it never did.

She simply said fine, and wrote the details down in her fancy little book. “What else have you got? What about bouquets?”

The woman pulled out a few photo albums for us to browse through. It was pretty relaxing, with very little pressure from Mom, since it was so early in the game and no final decisions had to be made yet. I just sipped the tea the lady gave us and enjoyed the flowers in the photos before me.

The afternoon lazed away, my shoulders more and more relaxed, and my mother even being completely bearable for once.

“Shoot, I have to get going,” I said, checking the clock on my phone.

“I guess it is getting kind of late,” she said, checking her watch.

“Yeah, but I’m supposed to meet Jake and I’ve got to change and get ready.”

Alarm crossed my mother’s face. “Well for Pete’s sake, get going! You do not just leave a man like that waiting. My God, Josie. Are you trying to kill me? You cannot go looking like that.”