“Oh, Wren, it’s beautiful.” I lift my hands to my mouth as Wren steps out of the dressing room at Blush Bridal on Madison Avenue Friday morning. Two weeks ago she passed by this shop and stopped in to try on an off-the-rack gown she spotted on a mannequin in the window. It was entirely on a whim and it ended up being the perfect dress for her.
“Can you tell?” Wren smooths her hand over her tiny bump.
This is her final fitting, and we’re here so she can try it on before she carries it out of the boutique. We’re all just praying it fits because it’s already been altered twice, and her big day is tomorrow.
Well, it’s not exactly a big day, per se. Wren and Chauncey will get hitched City Hall-style with me as their witness, and then we’ll all reconvene at Luciana’s on Fifth with a small group of friends and family.
“It honestly just looks like you ate a bunch of tacos before you came,” Topaz says, glancing up from her phone.
Wren laughs. “Why tacos?”
“Um, why not tacos?” she fires back, like the answer should be obvious.
“You can’t really tell,” I say.
“I’m showing so much earlier than I did with Enzo.” Wren tilts her head, examining her reflection from every angle in front of a trifold mirror. “I’ll be fourteen weeks tomorrow.”
“How’s Chauncey’s mom taking everything?” I ask.
“In stride,” Wren says. “Her excitement is overriding everything else right now, so she hasn’t freaked out about us throwing tradition out the window and doing everything out of sequence.”
“Good,” Topaz says. “Tradition is for the weak.”
Wren’s dress has a slight empire waist and tiny lace cap sleeves. She’s wearing a small veil attached to a Jackie O-style hat, and it’ll cover half of her face, stopping just beneath her nose.
“You’re going to look so chic and classic,” I sigh. “You need a red lip and a chignon and you’re golden.”
Wren gives me a thumbs up as the attendant pulls and gathers fabric in her hands, checking measurements and tugging select areas into place.
“What kind of flowers are you going to have?” Topaz asks.
“Roses,” Wren says. “Classic red.”
“Love.” Topaz grins at her phone, firing off a text.
“Who are you texting?” I ask her.
“Oh.” Topaz looks up, her gaze flicking between Wren and me. “Just this guy I met last week.”
My left brow inches upward. “Why haven’t you told me about him yet? What’s his name? How’d you meet?”
She rests her phone in her lap, sighing. “I met him at a photo shoot and his name is Gianluca. And I hadn’t told you yet because I thought it was a one-time thing, but he’s been blowing up my phone all week wanting to see me again.”
“Let me guess, you’re freaked out and he’s pushing you away because he’s too available,” I say.
Topaz nods, mouth forming a straight line. “Pretty much.”
“Do you have a picture?” Wren asks.
“Just Google ‘Gianluca.’ He’s this world-class fashion photographer,” Topaz says. “He’s a real Renaissance man. He plays guitar. Writes poetry. Even makes these little grainy eight-millimeter films in his spare time. The man travels all over the world and he knows Western Europe like the back of his hand.”
“Are you bringing him to the reception on Saturday?” Wren asks.
Topaz freezes for a moment. “I wasn’t planning on bringing a plus one.”
“You can,” Wren says. “And you should. He sounds interesting.”
“I feel bad.” Topaz looks directly at me. “Aidy’s not bringing anyone. We were going to be each other’s dates.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Really. You should bring him if you want to bring him.”
I haven’t seen Ace in five days now, and I know it isn’t a lot of time, but it feels like an eternity. He blew up my phone Sunday into Monday, and on Tuesday I took a last minute red-eye to L.A. All it took was a single phone call, and a friend of a friend lined up some work for me out there. Some Netflix show is filming beginning next month and lasting six weeks, and their makeup artist dropped out at the last minute. My friend raved about me and the producers wanted to see my work in person, so I hopped on the next flight out there and came back the next day, job offer in hand.
As I unpacked my things that night, I realized my phone had been radio silent since Monday. Either Ace was giving me space or he was letting me go. Either way, there was something heavy and final in the silence, and if I listened heard enough, I was pretty sure I could hear the sound of not one but two hearts breaking.
It made the most sense if he was letting me go. I’ve read the journal I found on his doorsteps. I saw how much that man loved the girl with the violet eyes. She showed up at his door, and I saw the way he reacted. Sure, he told her to leave, and he got angry, but the root of anger is almost always love.
You don’t react that way if you don’t still care about someone. Simply the sight of Kerenza made him nearly punch a wall.
I think about that moment, and the moment that followed when I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened had I stayed. And then I tell myself I’d be playing second fiddle the rest of my life, living in the shadow of the woman Ace will always love a little bit more than any other.
“I don’t even know if he’ll want to go. He just met me. He might think I’m crazy asking him to be my date to a friend’s wedding reception.” Topaz’s gaze hones in on the lit screen of her phone once more. She fights a smile, firing off another text.
“If he’s texting you this much, he’s obsessed,” Wren says. “He’ll totally go.”
Topaz rolls her eyes, groaning. “Fine. I’ll ask him. Just promise you two won’t embarrass me. He’s really, really cool, and all I can think about is the last time I brought a guy around, you and Wren got drunk and started pulling up pictures on her phone from when I had that really awful pixie cut and went through that black lipstick phase. Never heard from him again after that, and I actually kind of liked him.”
“Lucky for you, I’ll be sticking to sparkling cider this weekend, so . . .” Wren pats her belly before turning to me. “Aidy, you’re awfully quiet over there. You doing okay?”
“Yeah, just thinking about next month,” I lie. “The big move.”
“Ugh, I’m so jealous.” Topaz crosses her legs and turns to me. “You have no idea how lucky you are to get to live in L.A. for six weeks. You should take me with you because I could really use a change of scenery. I can trade in the Chrysler building for palm trees, and I wouldn’t even think twice about it. We’d be back in time for Thanksgiving, too. Lord knows I can’t miss my Macy’s parade.”
I rub my lips together and take a deep breath. “I don’t know if I’m coming back.”
“What?” Topaz’s face crinkles. “I know you talked about moving out there, but I never thought you were serious about it.”
Shrugging, I say, “I want to build Glam2Go on the West coast, and with it still being in its infancy, I don’t want to delegate that to someone else. And there’s more work out west than there is here, we all know that.”