Beth lifted her eyebrows. “A white leather corset? The things my cousin comes up with.”
“She’s been selling her handmade corsets from a little merch wagon that’s pulled behind Sinners’ tour bus. Her wares are so popular, she has to turn customers away. Have you seen them?”
“No. I didn’t know she was running a business now. I thought she was still stripping in Vegas,” Beth said.
Jessica laughed. “You two don’t talk much, do you?”
“Her mom and my mom don’t really get along,” Beth whispered. “Aunt Tabitha’s the black sheep of the family. And then Aggie… Well, she’s just kind of different. Intimidating?” Beth’s dark brows scrunched together. “Or maybe the word is scary. Yeah, Aggie is scary.”
Jessica grinned and shook her head. Aggie just pretended to be scary, but underneath the leather and cold stares, she was a pussy cat. “Aggie’s fabulous. You really should get to know her better, Beth. Don’t let the whips and leather scare you away.”
Beth laughed. “Do you even hear what you’re saying?”
“You’re the one who sent me to Vegas to be taken under her wing, remember?”
“Yeah, well…” Beth shrugged. “Maybe I was living vicariously. All I do is study, study, study. At least you get to have a life. I don’t think I’m ever going to pass the bar.”
“You’ll pass,” Jess said, patting her on the back.
“Easy for you to say, brainiac who passed on her first try.”
“Jessica?” The unmistakable high-pitched voice of her mother carried through the entire cottage. “Jessica?”
“Oh shit,” Jessica said. “She’s here? I thought she’d be kept occupied at the reception hall until the ceremony.”
“Jessica, where are you?” her mother called.
“I don’t want her to know my dress doesn’t fit,” Jessica whispered to Beth. “You know what she’s like. She’ll never let me live it down.”
Wide-eyed, Beth glanced around the room and then pulled the quilt from the bed. She tossed it over Jessica’s back, who crinkled her brow at her in confusion.
“Pretend you’re cold,” she said just as Jessica’s mother entered the room.
Jessica pulled the quilt more securely around her shoulders, huddling into it as if she was in the Northwest Territories in January instead of Southern California in June.
“There you are,” her mom said, breezing into the room. “Why didn’t you answer when I called?”
“You called?” Jessica played dumb. “I didn’t hear you.”
“The reception hall is all ready to go. I told you that you could count on me to make your day perfect.”
Jessica’s day had been far from perfect thus far, but she smiled at her mother.
“Thank you for working so hard on the reception arrangements.”
The woman had tried to take over the entire wedding. And then Sed’s mom had gotten in on the planning, and the preparations had turned into a constant argument. Sed’s mom thought they should get married in a church. Jessica’s mom thought they should fly everyone to Paris and get married there. Jessica had cherished memories of her and Sed atop the Eiffel Tower replica in Vegas, but Paris? She wasn’t sure where that idea had come from. She’d certainly never mentioned wanting to visit Paris, much less wanting to get married there. She assumed her mother had always wanted to get married abroad and was attempting to live vicariously through her only daughter. The entire time they were planning the wedding, Jessica had felt pulled in a thousand directions. She’d tried to find a compromise, but sometimes there just wasn’t one to be had. Luckily, Sed gave her the support necessary to tell both mothers where she wanted to get married. On the beach.
Sed’s mother had taken the news without batting an eyelash and had immediately starting collecting information on possible locations. Her mother, on the other hand, said a beach wedding wasn’t grand enough for her daughter. Jessica wasn’t sure when her mother started thinking she had much value. Probably the minute she’d become engaged to a rich rock star.
“Why are you wrapped up in a blanket?” Mom asked, eyeing her speculatively.
“Just a little cold,” Jessica said, tugging the blanket closer and pretending to shiver.
“Are you sick?”
“No,” Jessica said, shaking her head. “I think it’s nerves.”
“Well, don’t get cold feet now. The deposits are nonrefundable.”
“My feet are perfectly warm,” Jessica assured her.
“I know you’ll be disappointed, but Ed isn’t coming,” Mom said. “He had something important to attend to.”
A date with his favorite sports channel, Jessica presumed. She nodded, not really caring that her stepfather wouldn’t be there. They weren’t exactly close. She’d only invited him because it was expected of her. Ed was pretty much a creeper and had been since her mother married him just after Jessica had turned seventeen.
“That’s all right, Mom. I know how hard he works.” To help you live above your means, Jessica added silently.
“Where’s Monica?”
Jessica shrugged. Unlike her mother, who needed constant recognition for the smallest of tasks, Sed’s mother got things done and required no supervision.
Sed’s youngest sister, Elise, spoke up. “Mom’s out with the florist helping with the arbor over the altar. They’re trying to figure out how to keep the flowers in place with all the wind.”
“She probably needs my help,” Jessica’s mom said and she turned to go.
Jessica felt a touch sorry for Monica, but at least her mother would be out of her hair for a while.
“I wonder if Sed is here yet,” Jessica said. She hadn’t spoken to him all day. She missed him. Usually when he wasn’t on tour, they were inseparable. And when he was on tour without her, she was miserable. It had only been twelve hours since she’d seen him last, yet it felt like ages. Maybe she should have watched him sleep for a while that morning instead of covering her eyes with her hands when she sneaked out of bed to avoid seeing him before the wedding.
“You should text him,” Beth advised. “Make sure he got up.”
Sed had still been asleep when she’d left. She trusted that he’d gotten out of bed on time, and if he hadn’t, she knew Brian would retrieve him if necessary. Before the bridal party left that morning, Brian had given her his word to keep Sed in line, though the thought of anyone keeping Sed in line was rather ludicrous now that she thought about it. Perhaps she should have enlisted the aid of his mother. But Monica had enough to keep her occupied as she was in charge of overseeing the setup of the beach for the ceremony. Still, Jessica couldn’t resist texting Sed. Not to check up on him. Even though today was about celebrating their closeness, she felt very far away from him at the moment.
Happy Wedding Day, she texted. I can’t wait to marry you.
After she sent the text, she helped Beth zip up the long red bridesmaid gown she’d chosen. All of Jessica’s bridesmaids would wear the same color but because each member of her bridal party was unique, she hadn’t forced them all to get the same dress. They’d picked gowns they liked, that she hoped they could wear again. She wasn’t sure how Sed would feel about the sexy dresses his little sisters had chosen, but she wasn’t going to tell them they couldn’t wear them. They were grown
women, not the girls in pigtails he still thought of them as. Jessica had had enough angst thrown in her direction over the decision when her mother had found out that the bridesmaids weren’t going to be dressed as clones. Mom had thrown a huge fit about them looking like a mismatched group of beggars. Jessica had ultimately won that battle, however. And though they were all dressed differently, the deep red color made them look harmonious enough. She liked that they didn’t all look exactly the same.
Jessica was pacing by the time Aggie returned over half an hour later with the corset. What if she was too fat to get into the contraption? And why hadn’t Sed texted her back? And was her mother still harassing Sed’s mom? She hadn’t returned yet. And why was Malcolm crying again? She needed the baby to be in a good mood today. Or at the very least, asleep.
“Did you really make this, Aggie?” Beth said in breathless awe as she rubbed her hand over the pale pink orchids embroidered into the leather of the white corset.
“Yeah.”
“Where did you learn to sew like this? It’s gorgeous.”
“Grandma taught me.”
Beth chuckled. “Yeah, she tried to teach me too, but I ended up pricking all my fingers and never finished anything. I guess you had a natural talent.”
Aggie bit her lip. “No, I just persisted because I wanted an excuse to sit with her. She was always too busy to slow down, except when she was sewing.”
“Oh,” Beth said and she smiled, no longer looking terrified of her own cousin.
Jessica tried not to gloat. She slipped out of her dress, with Beth holding it up, and then stepped toward Aggie.
“This was supposed to be your wedding gift by the way,” Aggie said to Jessica. “I had to dig through hundreds of gifts in the reception hall to find it and then the caterer thought I was trying to steal it.”
“Sorry you had to go through so much trouble due to my unquenchable cravings for rocky road ice cream,” Jessica said, poking at her belly that was not all baby. Most of it was her.