Chapter 1
Trying on wedding dresses was supposed to be a fun, once-in-a-lifetime experience. But the fun part was easily cut short by bringing my opinionated grandmother to the party.
“No, no. Not that dress. You’ll look like a floozy in it.”
The saleswoman lifted a beautiful lace-bodiced dress to me, but Malene frowned dramatically. “The only thing that lace is good for is doilies and floozies.”
I fingered the delicate shoulder straps. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do,” she replied with a huff. “Why don’t you try that gown on?”
She pointed to a dress that looked like it had exploded from a tulle factory. “That one? Um, isn’t it rather…much?”
“Not much enough.” My grandmother marched over to it, grabbed it from the hook and pressed it against me. “She’ll try this one on.”
I could already tell that I was going to look like a gauzy Christmas present minus the bow.
I shot a look to Urleen, one of Malene’s best friends, that silently screamed, Save me!
My grandmother’s bestie rushed over. “Why don’t you try them both on?”
“Great idea!” Before Malene could argue, I pressed the gown into the saleswoman’s hands.
“Let me get your fitting room ready.”
Urleen smiled kindly. “You’re going to look beautiful, Clem.”
“You sure are,” Norma Ray, my grandmother’s third partner in crime, added. “Once you do as Malene wants.”
She grimaced, realizing that she’d said the quiet part out loud. The quiet part being what you weren’t supposed to say, ever.
“I agree,” my grandmother said triumphantly. “Let’s see what else we can find for you.”
As my grandmother moved to discover other, hideous gowns that were better suited as an eighties prom dress than something I wanted to march down the aisle in, a group of chittering women strolled into the store.
“Oh, Mama, isn’t that one divine?” came a voice that I instantly recognized.
My gaze snapped on Shelby Lewis, a local real estate agent. She spotted me, and her jaw dropped. “Clem! Are you getting fitted today, too?”
I grinned. “Yes! Don’t tell me you’re here for the same reason.”
“I am, of course.” Shelby’s brown hair was loosely curled around her face. She wore slim jeans and a gold shimmery sleeveless top that showed off her well-toned arms. “Meet my mama and aunts.”
She introduced us, and then I introduced Malene, Urleen and Norma Ray. When I was finished, Malene whispered to me, “Better not get too cozy with the competition.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“The competition. You might be on good terms now, but just wait until you want the same dress for your wedding. You’ll see how quickly Miss Nice becomes Miss Psychopath.”
“Oh, Malene.” I rolled my eyes. “That is not going to happen.”
“Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”
I excused myself to try on the dresses that I’d picked out. It was nearly impossible to find the opening of the tulle explosion dress, but I managed. I put it on first, hoping that once I got the ugly one out of the way, then we could focus on more serious options for my wedding.
It being Saturday, by the time I appeared to show my family (I considered Norma Ray and Urleen kin) the dress, the store was full, with three other women shopping for their perfect wedding gown.
I stepped up onto the dais and spun. Malene, who had a flute of champagne in hand, sipped it while nodding. “Yes, I think it’s perfect. How much is it? Your grandfather won’t mind buying it.”
I could feel the blood draining from my face. There was no way that I was walking down the aisle in this monstrosity. “Um, I’m not sure.”
Urleen flicked her hand at Malene. “Why don’t you let her try on the other one before you start selling off the silverware.”
“All right,” she said begrudgingly, “but I can’t imagine that she’ll find a better dress than that one.”
“I can,” Norma Ray muttered.
I bit back a laugh and headed to the dressing room to try the other gown. On my way, I nearly collided with Shelby, who giggled.
“Oh, sorry, Clem. I guess that I’ve already had a few too many sips of champagne. You know how stressful days like this can be—everyone wants you to wear the gown that they want as opposed to what you want.”
“I know,” I replied with a heavy sigh. “But don’t worry. You’ll find the right dress.”
Her heavy-lidded gaze trailed down the gown that I wore. She leaned in. “Is that…is that the one?”
“This? Um, no. Not if I can help it.”
I slipped into the room and into the other dress. It looked good. That much I could tell from the dressing room mirror. But it wasn’t the one.
Yet I still showed it to Malene and the gang anyway. “What do you think?” Urleen asked.
“It’s pretty, but I don’t think it’s right.”
“Me neither. Go back to the first gown,” Malene chimed.
“There is another dress that I’d like to show you,” the saleswoman, whose name was Rhonda, told us. “We just got it in yesterday, and it’s beautiful. If you’d like to see it, I can show it to you.”
“Yes, please,” I said.
Even though we’d only been at the dress shop for thirty minutes, it already felt like a lifetime.
“Come this way.”
I followed her through the racks to where a dress hung flat against the wall. It was a fitted ivory gown with small flowers appliqued in along the hips and on the skirt. Though the dress for the most part was simple, it had an overskirt that was almost like a separate train—long, flowing, dramatic and gorgeous.
I immediately loved it. “Oh, I’d like to—”
“That’s it,” came a voice from behind me. “That’s the dress I want to try on.”
Shelby had said it.
I turned to see her reaching for the dress. “That’s the one. I have to try it on. Isn’t it just divine?” That was when she spotted me standing beside it with a smirk on my face. “Oh? Were you going to be fitted with that one, Clem?”
“I was thinking about it.”
Her expression fell. “Why don’t you try it on, then?”
“Soon as I’m done, I’ll give it to you.”
“There’s no need,” Rhonda said. “We have more. You can both try it on.”
She handed me the dress, and I headed into the changing room. While I was in the room, I heard what could only have been a herd of women storming through the racks, oohing and ahhing at dresses.
“That’s the one that I want to try,” said one soon-to-be bride.
“That’s the dress for me,” said another.
By the time that I was cinched into the gown and heading back out for Malene and the gang to get a good look at me, it was a good ten minutes later.
As soon as Malene, Urleen and Norma Ray saw me, tears filled their eyes.
Malene pulled a tissue from her purse. “If only your mother could see you. You look beautiful.”
Norma Ray snorted. “More beautiful than she did when she looked like a human cotton ball?”
“I liked that dress very much,” my grandmother informed her in a clipped voice.
“So did my fingernail polish. Lots of surface area for easy removal.”
I bit back a laugh and stepped onto the dais. When I saw myself in the mirror, I gasped. This dress—how it hugged my body, the way that the overskirt flared out in back, it was both dramatic and absolutely elegant. It was perfect.
While I was looking at myself in the mirror, Shelby stepped out to be with her family group. Yes, she wore the exact same dress, and yes, it looked great on her, too.
“Oh, Shelby,” her mother said. “I think that may be the one.”
And while Shelby admired her reflection, two other brides-to-be stepped out also wearing the same gown. They did the same gasping and oohing over how they looked as well.
That was when the other three brides took a look around and the four of us realized that we were all wearing the exact same gown and were all loving it exactly the same amount.
I recognized one of the other two. Cinnamon Sinclair had long red hair and had been a former Miss Peachwood. She’d won the title five years in a row. It was rumored that she’d had the contest rigged four out of five of those years. Not sure why she hadn’t just gone ahead and had the contest rigged the fifth time. Maybe she hadn’t needed to. No matter. What did matter was the sour look on her face.
“Y’all, I saw this dress first,” she said to the rest of us.
Was she really suggesting that she had ownership of this gown even though four of us were wearing it? “I had it on first,” I informed her. “Ask my family.”
“It’s true,” Norma Ray piped up. “She had it on first, and she looks the best in it.”
Oh, Norma Ray. She could always be counted on to say the absolute worst thing at the wrong time.
Cinnamon’s mother stared fiery laser beams of death at Norma Ray. “She doesn’t look that good in it. She’s got too big a hips for the gown. My Cinnie looks perfect.” She flashed a smile to her daughter. “Like an angel.”
“An angel in death,” Malene muttered.
“What was that, Malene?”
“You heard me, Cynthia. You can’t bribe anyone to make sure that your daughter looks the best in a wedding gown. This time it’s pure genetics that’s gonna be the winner here.”
Cynthia placed her flute of champagne on the table next to her chair and rose. She was a tall woman, easily just shy of six feet, and wore her dark hair streaked with gray piled high on her head. Cynthia was olive complected, and it was well-known that she came from Creole folks in Louisiana. Lots of people in town were afraid of her, thinking that because she was Creole that she worked black magic that could put warts all over their butts. Maybe that was why Cinnamon had won Miss Peachwood five years in a row—simply out of fear of being spelled.
Now Cynthia looked mad enough to hex feathers off a chicken. “Malene Fredericks, how dare you insult my family.”
“I’m not insulting anybody. I’m just saying the truth.”
Malene blinked at Cynthia as the tall woman kept her gaze locked on my grandmother.
“Ladies,” Rhonda said. “Can we all calm down a bit? There’s plenty of dress to go around.”
“But we can’t all wear the same gown,” Shelby insisted. “We can’t. Not this season.”
“Why not?” Rhonda asked.
Shelby looked at Cinnamon, and Cinnamon glanced back. Both women burst into laughter. The bride-to-be that stood between them, a meek little thing with glasses and long dark hair that trailed down her back, kept her head down. Her mother was also there. She wasn’t dressed to the nines like the Sinclairs, nor did she have her hair fluffed to the ceiling like Shelby’s family.
It was just the bride and her mother, both of whom appeared lower on the Richter scale of wealth and entitlement than the families on both sides of them, who had hair colored and coiffed as well as makeup that looked to have been professionally applied, and wore clothes that appeared tailor-made.
The bride and her mother looked familiar. It took a few seconds, but I recognized them. The bride-to-be’s name was… It escaped me, but I was sure that I knew them from the roller rink because one day Malene had gotten a hankering to go roller skating even though she could’ve broken a hip doing so. I sat out and watched while she, along with Urleen and Norma Ray, boogied to seventies classics.
But back to the dresses. It was Cinnamon who answered Rhonda’s question about the gowns. She exhaled a truly annoyed breath, rolled her eyes, folded her arms. “We can’t all be seen wearing the same dress because that just wouldn’t do. Can you imagine what our pictures in the Peachwood bridal magazine would look like? Everyone would appear to be copying me. It would be tacky. T-A-C-K-Y.”
“Besides,” Shelby added, “I’ve got my business to think about. So do you, Clem. If we’re all wearing the same gown in our professional pictures, it’ll look terrible. I’ll be the laughingstock of real estate. So will you, Clem. Not real estate, of course. But in contractors and designers.”
Cinnamon shook her head. “So I guess that just means that y’all will have to take your dresses off and let me be the one walking down that aisle in this,” she told us smugly, lifting the skirt and dropping it for emphasis.
“No way,” Shelby corrected smartly. “I’m gonna be the one in this dress come wedding day. So you can just go ahead and take it off too, Cinnamon.”
Cinnamon’s face turned bright red. “What did you say?”
Shelby folded her arms. “You heard me. Take it off.”
“Over my dead body.”
“We’ll see about that.”
And that was when Cinnamon pounced.
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