“You made it!” Caryn said. “Lily, you’ll be honest with me. What do you think of this one?”
Before I could answer, the older woman who had been holding the train of the dress dropped it and gasped, rushing to my side. “Clear liquids only around the dresses,” she snapped, starting to grab the cup from my hand.
“Uh, hang on,” I said, taking a huge gulp from the straw before she wrestled it away from me, holding the cup like it was full of red paint instead of a mostly melted latte.
I made a face at Caryn, who shrugged. “What do you think?” she repeated.
“It’s—nice?” I said. It wasn’t. A princess ball gown was fine if you were into that, but Caryn, queen of the perfectly tailored work clothes, looked uncomfortable and silly.
“It’s gorgeous,” the blonde in the pale-pink dress purred. That was honestly the only way to tell them apart. Pale pink, baby blue, mellow yellow, and dark pink, all with floral or floral-and-paisley designs. They could have all been sisters. Put Caryn in a green floral sheath dress and she would be the missing quintuplet. All angles, bones, and pin-straight blonde hair, each with at least two carats of unethically sourced diamond weighing down their left hands.
Caryn wrinkled her nose. “It’s lovely. But it’s not me.” She turned to the simpering saleswoman. “It’s too young. I’d like something a little more elegant.”
“I have just the dress,” she said, ushering Caryn back into the changing room.
Another salesperson arrived out of nowhere with a tray of champagne glasses and offered me one, which I took gratefully. Although at ten in the morning, I would have preferred my coffee.
I was still standing, awkwardly, with the rest of the bridesmaids not seeming to notice that I was one of them. “So, uh, hi,” I said to the seated posse. “I’m Lily. I work with Caryn.”
They hesitated, looking me over, then Olivia, Caryn’s sister and maid of honor, introduced herself, and the rest followed suit. Caroline, Mia, and Dana had all attended the same prestigious private high school together. And Caroline, in the yellow dress, was Greg’s sister.
I sat in the open chair and their conversation immediately returned to dress designers. I recognized the name Vera Wang, but beyond that, I was lost.
“Really, I don’t know why she didn’t plan a weekend trip to Kleinfeld’s for this,” Mia said. “She could have been on Say Yes to the Dress!”
Caroline shuddered, tilting her already surgically upturned nose even further in the air. “Kleinfeld’s is so generic. And Caryn isn’t tasteless enough to want to be on that.”
“Of course,” Mia said quickly, deferring almost apologetically to Caroline’s judgment. “It would have been nice to spend a girls’ weekend in New York though. The bridal salons up there are just so much more chic.”
“We’ll talk her into it if she doesn’t find anything down here,” Olivia said. “I doubt any of us would object to a weekend getaway!”
I had less than nothing to contribute, and no money left in the budget for such a trip.
Eventually Caryn emerged in the next dress, which was skintight to the knee, where it flared into a sea of feathers.
Olivia started to cry, and I commiserated. Okay, I thought crying was a little extreme, but it was heinous. It looked like a swan had exploded at the bottom of her dress. “It’s just so perfect,” Olivia said, her eyes glistening as she dabbed at the corners to avoid smudging her makeup. I had never seen anyone pretty cry before. Ugly cry? Sure. But Olivia actually looked better when she cried. It wasn’t fair.
Wait, did she say it was perfect?
I looked around. The other girls were nodding in agreement, their faces cast from the same mold.
Caryn burst into laughter. “Lily, you have no poker face! At all!”
They all turned to me and I tried desperately to arrange my face into something resembling theirs. Unfortunately, I still had my original nose and ability to move my forehead, so that wasn’t possible. I settled for trying to look like I didn’t hate it.
“You don’t like it?” Mia asked, incredulous.
“I—um—Caryn, do you like it?”
“You pinned one just like it,” Caroline said pointedly to Caryn before she could respond. “The Versace? Remember?”
Caryn studied herself in the three-way mirror and shook her head. “It’s beautiful. But the feathers are a little too much, I think.”
“Something a bit simpler?” the saleslady asked. Caryn nodded and retreated back into the dressing room.