I went back into the kitchen and threw away the bread, the cookies, and the bag of M&Ms that I had stashed on top of the refrigerator. If I waited until morning, I wouldn’t have the willpower.
Baby steps, I told myself as I climbed into bed. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand to set my alarm early enough to make sure I didn’t arrive with Helena Bonham Carter hair and saw I had a text from Alex.
Good luck tomorrow.
Thanks. Do you have anything fun going on this weekend?
Not really. Having brunch with Tim and Megan tomorrow.
Ouch. I hadn’t been invited to that. I wondered if that was deliberate on Megan’s part. Then again, she knew I was going bridesmaid dress shopping with Sharon, so she probably assumed I couldn’t come anyway. I hadn’t had time to do anything other than wedding stuff in forever.
Much more fun than I’ll be having. The bride wants me to tell her mother that she doesn’t want us to wear black.
Why doesn’t she tell her mother that?
I lay back against my pillows and texted out the short version of the story.
Remember not to dissolve the body in the bathtub.
I sent a laughing emoji. You seem kinda fixated on this dissolving bodies thing. Should I be worried?
Nah, I’m more like Dexter. I have a code for my kills.
If the FBI is watching your Netflix account, you may be in trouble.
He sent back the emoji with a finger to its lips and I shook my head, feeling better. I’m going to sleep. Gotta be well rested to battle the dragon tomorrow.
You’ve got this, he replied.
I was smiling when I put down the phone.
I was not still smiling when I arrived at the bridal salon. But I was wearing my newly purchased Spanx, so come what may, less of the conversation would be about my need to drop a few pounds. I hoped.
“Good morning,” I said as I got to Sharon’s group.
“Hey,” Sharon said, jumping up to greet me. She gestured toward the one woman I didn’t know. “Elyse, this is Lily, she was my college roommate. Lily, this is Josh’s sister, Elyse.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. Then I turned to Sharon’s mother and sister. “And good to see you, Mrs. Meyer. Bethany.”
Mrs. Meyer looked at me appraisingly and I thought I saw a glimmer of approval at my slightly slimmer physique. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
Apparently she had called ahead and asked for the dresses she liked to be pulled into the dressing rooms for us before we got there. And we had three fitting rooms reserved, so we could all try on dresses at the same time and then switch. None of the dresses in my room were black and I felt my spirits rise. Maybe that had only been a suggestion and other colors were on the table after all.
I tried on the first dress—it was one I had tried for Amy already, but it had been rejected as “too old” by Amy and “too matronly” by my mother. But Goldilocks over here thought it was just right age-wise. Which I suppose spoke more to my actual age and what my mother felt my marital status should be, but whatever.
And I had to admit, as I turned this way and that in the dressing room mirror, it looked better with the Spanx under it than it had the last time I put it on.
But this was Mrs. Meyer we were dealing with, so I took a deep, calming breath before I exited the fitting room.
Bethany and Elyse were already out of their rooms.
Mrs. Meyer was walking around the other two girls to view the dresses from all angles. She adjusted the shoulders on her younger daughter’s dress, then held a curled finger to her mouth to take me in as well.
“The one Elyse is wearing is a maybe,” she said. “The rest can go back.”
I looked at Sharon and cocked an eyebrow, trying to silently communicate the question, “Do you like these?” She shrugged her shoulders so faintly that had I not been looking for it, I wouldn’t have detected any motion. But this wasn’t my first rodeo, so I knew how to read her body language and returned silently to my dressing room for the next round.
The next dress was far and away my favorite of all the dresses that I had tried on for any bride. It was fitted to the waist, then had a slight flair, and a neckline that cut straight across, but angled up toward the neck from the edges. Had it been black, I would have felt like Audrey Hepburn, the irony of which was not lost on me. I twirled around for my own benefit and smiled at my reflection. This was a dress that I would actually buy to wear as a guest to a wedding. This was one I would wear again.
The lineup was already underway again when I came out. Apparently the other two girls knew to operate on the same military style of dress time that Mrs. Meyer preferred. She circled us again, a shark examining its prey.