* * *

  • • •

I adored brunch. It was relaxing, a meal meant to be eaten over a good hour or two, savoring drinks and coffee and carbs in all forms. But brunch with Emily Parker was something else entirely. She had a paper planner already stuffed with printouts and brochures, and her tablet was on her Pinterest page of wedding dresses, which we flicked through while we waited for our waffles and eggs.

“Are you sure you don’t want to get married in costume?” April shook a sugar packet into her coffee before stirring in the cream. “You’d look so cool as a pirate’s bride.”

Emily shook her head, not looking up from her tablet. “Simon vetoed that pretty much immediately.”

“Too bad.” April sighed dramatically. “Because that would have made Stacey and me your . . .” Her voice quavered, and when I looked over at her, she was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “. . . your bridesmateys.” She barely got the word out before she sputtered into a laugh, and my own giggle burst out before I could check it.

Emily snorted a laugh of her own but shook her head. “You’re the worst,” she said around a grin. “Now, can we look at these dresses, please?”

“You’ve been engaged for like a week,” I said, wonderingly. “How did you do all this?”

“I work fast.” Emily flicked through her tablet before passing it to her older sister, April. “This one!”

April frowned at it. “You’re too short for that.”

I took a sip of coffee to cover my laugh, and Emily tsked at her sister. “I am not! Show Stacey; she’ll back me up.”

April passed me the tablet, and it was my turn to frown at the picture. It was a relatively traditional wedding gown, but April was right. The model in the photo was easily half a foot taller than Emily, if not more. Lots of lace, a train, and puffy sleeves . . . Em would be lost in a dress like that.

“Sorry, Em. I have to go with April on this one.” Thankfully the waiter arrived with our mimosas to soften the blow, and I tipped mine to April in acknowledgment. “I mean it. It’s very pretty, but you’ll look like you’re drowning in your grandma’s linen closet if you wear that. You want . . .” I could imagine perfectly the kind of dress she should wear, but none of her choices matched the vision in my head. I set down my drink to head down a Pinterest rabbit hole, tapping and swiping and tapping again until I found a good approximation. “Something like this.” I passed the tablet back to her. She peered at my choice, April leaning over her shoulder, and I chewed on my bottom lip and tried to read their faces.

Emily’s face hardened at first, and my heart sank. But then she tilted her head, and the more she looked at the picture, the more her face softened. “You think? It doesn’t look too . . . I dunno, casual?”

“Nope.” I shook my head with no hesitation. “Think about it. You’re getting married outside, so you don’t want something that’s going to drag all over the ground. Not to mention, it’ll be what, July? August? The hottest time of the year. You don’t want all those layers of fabric.”

“I like the skirt.” April gestured in an up-and-down zigzag motion. “It calls attention to the lace better than that other dress.”

“I do like the lace.” Emily bit her lip. “And the skirt is really cute.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The handkerchief hem shows off the lace better, and when it’s in a couple layers like that it’ll give you a fair amount of swish.”

“Swish?” Em looked up at me now, her eyes twinkling. “Is that a technical term?”

“Sure is.” I grinned back at her over the rim of my mimosa flute.

“Yeah, I think Stacey’s right,” April said. “But maybe more of a halter style up top, and keep the silhouette close. It looks like something . . .” She shrugged. “I dunno, like in a fairy tale. If you’re getting married at the Ren Faire next summer, that’s not a bad look to emulate, right?”

“And you have to have flowers in your hair,” I said. “Like a flower crown. Or maybe a tiara would be better.”

A smile played around Emily’s mouth. “I like flowers. Good idea.” As our food arrived she looked down at the picture again. When she tapped on it to save it to her board, I felt a surge of triumph.

“You’re good at this,” April said. She watched me carefully while she took another sip of her mimosa. “You’re one of those people who’s been planning their wedding since they were four, aren’t you?”

I had to laugh at that. “Hardly.” Weddings weren’t my thing. But clothes were. And I knew what looked good on people. To me it was automatic. One look at someone and I knew whether they should be wearing a ballerina or sweetheart neckline, a tea-length or a maxi skirt. It came together as a picture in my head, complete and sudden, like a snapshot. It was a talent that I didn’t get to use a whole lot these days, so when I had the opportunity, I pounced on it.

“You are good at this, though,” Emily said. “I mean, you picked out my costume last summer when I did the Faire for the first time too. Maybe you should dress me all the time.”

I shrugged and tried to look casual, but that sense of triumph only increased, like victory trumpets sounding in my brain. “It’s what I do. Or used to.” Back in college. Back when I’d had a future. Bad memories surfaced, and that little surge of triumph fizzled and floated away.

“Well, I hope you still do,” Emily said. “We have to decide on bridesmaid dresses, and besides, we’re getting new outfits for next summer, remember? You know I’ll need your help for that. Without you I’ll keep calling a corset a bodice. Then I’ll pick out something that’s ten years out of date and Simon will probably call off the whole wedding in retaliation.”

I didn’t even try to suppress a giggle; Simon really was a perfectionist when it came to Faire. “Don’t worry,” I said as the food arrived. “I’ll have your back.”

“Thank God for that.” Emily took a bite of her omelet before spearing some potatoes with her fork. “Okay. Now, flowers. Stacey, did you have a chance to ask your mom . . . ?”

“I did, and she wrote down the names of the florists she likes for you.” I reached around for my little backpack, which was hanging on the back of my chair. I dug out a slip of paper and passed it across the table. “She also had thoughts on caterers. Of course, she has no idea what kind of food you want for the reception, so I think this is just a list of her favorite restaurants, but it’s a start.”

Emily nodded. “Great. I’ll start making some calls next week. I was thinking something like . . .”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” April put down her fork. “We don’t need to plan this entire wedding in one day, do we? This will probably be the thing we talk about the most for the next year or so, so can we just stick a sock in it for now and enjoy the morning?”

Emily blinked at her sister, a little startled, and I just smiled into my mimosa. April was definitely the more direct of the two sisters. I didn’t know her all that well, but I found her bluntness to be refreshing. Too many people danced around what they wanted to say, myself included.

To my surprise, Emily didn’t fight her. “Point taken. Sorry.” She raised her glass to the two of us. “I promise I will do my best to not turn into a Bridezilla.”

I toasted her back. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Me too.” April took a healthy sip of her own mimosa.

“Okay, then. New topic.” Emily took another bite and turned to me. “Stace, what’s new with you?”

“Nothing.” The word came out a little harsher than I’d intended, and I focused hard on cutting into my waffles. Nothing pretty much summed it all up, didn’t it? That unanswered Facebook message flashed through my mind, along with that fizzled-out reminder that I wasn’t doing anything exciting with my life.

“Nothing?” Emily echoed. Her smile was still in place, but her eyes looked quizzical. “That can’t be right. You’re always going out. You’ve always got stuff going on.”

For a split second I imagined telling her. Telling them both how my life had stalled out. Saying, I need to get my shit together. I’ve been doing nothing but existing for the past few years, working an uninteresting job and going to happy hour and karaoke nights like that’s all I want out of life. Because it’s all I’ve got. I pictured filling them in on Drunk Stacey and her laptop a couple nights ago, but I couldn’t decide if they would be amused or horrified.

But I wasn’t ready to share any of that. It was all too messy, too complicated, to be able to fill her in over one brunch. So instead I put my smile back on. Fixed it in place so I could hide behind it. That was the Stacey that had been invited to this brunch. “That’s me,” I said, as I forked up a bite of waffle. “Always something going on.”

“I detect sarcasm,” April said.

Emily snorted. “That’s because you’re the master of it.” April pretended to look offended, but instead just grinned into her drink.