I started to take another fortifying but relieved sip of my wine.
“And Father says you need to be my maid of honor.”
I choked on my wine.
It managed to go up my nose and down the wrong tube, and after I set it on the little round table beside me and pounded my chest a few times, I managed to get out, “What?”
“I know it’s late notice, but the good news is, all the showers and stuff are already done, and I don’t want a hen night because they’re vulgar. So you don’t have to plan anything. You just have to show up.”
Another translation: one of her other friends had organized her shower, and possibly her hen night, and I wasn’t invited, not only to the shower (obvs), but to ring out her singledom in style.
“I’ve ordered your bridesmaid gown,” she informed me. “You’re still a size sixteen, right?”
I fluctuated between a size twelve and fourteen.
I had never been a size sixteen.
My sister was my height and had my same build, and she was a size four.
So…yeah. There was that.
“No, I’m currently a size twelve.”
“Then you’ll have to find someone to do alterations. I’ve also ordered your shoes. The tracking says the dress will arrive next Tuesday, the shoes next Wednesday. So you have plenty of time to deal with that. You can PayPal to pay me back.”
“Uh…Blake—”
“The wedding date is the twenty-seventh.”
Not, Can you make it?
Not, Let me send you pictures of the shoes and gown to see if you think you’ll be comfortable wearing them.
Not, Would you do me the honor of standing up with me and making the memory of the day all the more special because you’re a part of it?
None of that for Blake.
Just a phone call a little shy of two months away from the day I was supposed to show up across the country to be there.
“The rehearsal is the day before, rehearsal dinner that night,” she kept on. “It’s not formal-formal, but it’s New York. I should probably send you a dress and shoes for that too.”
“Blake—”
“I will,” she decided. “And you can PayPal me for those as well.”
“Hey, listen—”
“Dad says you can stay with him.”
Oh God.
I kept trying. “If I could—”
“Do you need him to send the plane?”
“Really, Blake, what I need is for you to—”
“I’ll get Cathy to talk to him about that and arrange it.”
Cathy?
“Who’s Cathy?”
“Daddy got me a PA to deal with…things while the wedding planning was going on.”
“You mean a wedding planner?”
“I have one of those too.”
I nearly started laughing.
So Blake had no job (she had no problem living off her substantial trust fund, doing it rent-free in Mum’s apartment in NYC, which was enormous and unused because Mum preferred her townhome in London and the country estate she’d inherited from her father in Somerset). Nevertheless, Blake had an assistant to help her deal while she was not exactly planning a wedding because she had a wedding planner.
It was a wonder I wasn’t talking to Cathy.
Though, I wished I was.
“I’ll get Cathy to send you an itinerary that includes a dress code for each event,” Blake went on, providing me the somewhat terrifying hint that there were more “events” than just the big one and the dinner the night before. “But don’t buy a dress for the rehearsal dinner. I’ll take care of that.”
I wanted to roll my eyes at the “dress code” comment, but I didn’t because that was always a sure bullseye for Blake.
Like I’d said, I knew how to put on mascara, I even knew how to put on false eyelashes (though I couldn’t do it in fifteen seconds flat, like Blake could—seriously, I’d seen her do it).
But even if I owned some of it (thanks, Mum…and Dad), I didn’t dress in Chanel.
I could appreciate fashion, it was art, it was a form of self-expression, so of course I could.
It just wasn’t my thing.
I wasn’t like them.
I wasn’t about appearances. I wasn’t about every day in every way making the point (subtly, of course, any other manner would be crass) that I had more than pretty much everyone around me.
The thing was, I might not be as classically, and classily, beautiful as my sister…and, incidentally, my mother.
But I wasn’t a slob.
I wasn’t an embarrassment (though, to them I was).
I wasn’t backward or gauche (maybe a wee bit awkward, but only because I was quiet, and even though I could find the good in most people, I liked my solitude, and when I was around others, I didn’t like there to be a bunch of them).
In other words, I was just…
Me.
And I wanted to be strong in the fact that I was me and not let their many insinuations that they weren’t thrilled with that get to me.
Sadly, I had not managed to arrive at the place I could do that.
And one of the things that always hit me where it hurt was Blake implying I had no style.
I had style.
It was just my style.
Blake kept speaking.
“Now, do you need a plus one?”
Her tone on that question was unpleasant.
Even cutting.
Because she knew the answer.
And that would be no.
Instantly, visions filled my head.
Visions of me wearing whatever confection of bridesmaid dress was winging its way to me, walking down the aisle, turning my head, and seeing Rix sitting in a pew, smiling the same big smile he’d shot my way when I’d voted for the same furniture he did.
Visions of sitting by my sister’s side, being ignored, at the bridal table, looking out into the reception, and seeing Rix there, winking at me encouragingly.
Visions of how my sister and my parents would react when I arrived beside Rix as he walked, or wheeled, I didn’t care which, with me when they first met him, seeing him in all his tanned, fit, ridiculously gorgeous glory.
I’d say things like, “This is Rix Hendrix. He works with me at Trail Blazer, Hale Wheeler’s new charity. He’s the Director of Programs because most of the work is based out of doors, and Rix has visited at least one state park or forest in every state of the union.”
Or proudly announce, “He used to be a firefighter. He’s saved countless lives of people and wildlife and innumerable dollars’ worth of property. Gave his legs doing it, but he was down for an insanely short period of time before he was using a handcycle on the trails or hiking in his prosthetics.”
They would not approve of him in the slightest.
But all three of them, for three different reasons, would admire him, even if they’d never admit to it.
Though, I would stand tall, Rix at my side.
Dancing with Rix, even if I was sitting in his lap while he was in his chair.
Being Rix’s.
And Rix being mine.
“Alexandra,” my sister snapped.
“Yes.”
“Yes, you’re there, wasting my time by not speaking? Or yes, you need a plus one?”
“Yes, I need a plus one,” I blurted.
Silence.