Page 3 of Unplanned
“Sorry, Mama. Can we talk about this tonight? I’m about to go into a meeting.”
“While I have you,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard me say that I’m busy, “You need to decide on what to borrow.”
“Borrow?”
“You know. Something old, something new…”
I answered back, “Right. Something borrowed, something blue. Glad you asked, because I have that already.” I smile and feel a little bit relieved that we have this one connection when it comes to the wedding.
“Do you?” She sounds skeptical.
“Yep,” I say quickly, arranging legal pads and pens around the table. “Quincy already offered to let me borrow a tiara from the dance company,” I said of my best friend, who has access to a shared warehouse of gorgeous costumes. She showed me a stunning, hammered brass Greek-goddess-style tiara, and whenI tried it on last week, it felt just right. I got chills—way more chills than I got at the first wedding gown fitting with Iris. No shade to Iris. The dress she’s designed for me is special, but it’s not…me.
What nobody knows is that I have a plan B for my gown. And it’s perfect with the goddess tiara.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Mama says. “Tiara! Please. You’ll wear my veil. And it’s borrowed!”
“Isn’t the whole wedding technically borrowed since everything’s on Daddy’s credit card?” I ask.
Mama hears that and snorts, then goes right back to talking about the veil. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t want to wear a veil. It’s not something I like. Mama is of the opinion that a gown with a long train requires a matching, trailing lace veil. However, I don’t actually want a gown with a long train, either.
“Mama, that’s not what we talked about?—”
She cuts me off, going off on another tangent.
Meanwhile, the senior partners are staring at me.
“We’ll have to talk later, Mama,” I say. I hang up before she can respond.
Yes, we will have to talk later. About the fact that I don’t want to wear a veil. About the fact that I went and bought a gorgeous dress the day after Nico proposed, and Iris is also doing alterations on that one at the same time she’s finishing the Mama-approved dress.
The dress I picked is a simple, white floor-length gown that skims my hips perfectly. No frills, lace, crystals, or pearls. But the way it drapes and folds is a dream. It’s a dress for a grown-up, with an asymmetrical, off-the-shoulder neckline. The style complements the updated updo my hairstylist has practiced on me. The whole look is super chic, both hearkening back to ancient Greece and also modern at the same time.
And now that I think about it, a bouquet of blue hydrangeas would complement the look perfectly. Surprising and unusual, but visually interesting against the unadorned dress.
Champagne roses, on the other hand, only do with the ivory, lacy, embellished getup my mama wants me to wear.
My head is spinning so much over all this, on top of increased pressure at work now that my boss is trying to make partner.
Ten minutes into the meeting, someone’s phone gets a text notification. For a second, my stomach clenches, but then I breathe. Pretty sure I silenced my phone after I hung up with my mother.
While speaking, one of the senior partners looks around the room as if trying to determine who is the idiot who did not silence their phone, but otherwise lets it go and keeps talking.
A minute later, another one comes through.
The senior partners are staring in my direction.
Oh, shit.
I scramble for my phone, which sits face down on the conference table.
“Ms. Wright.”
“Sorry,” I say.
Out of the corner of my eye, my boss, still a junior partner, has one perfectly manicured hand covering her face.
I silence my phone and slide it toward me on the shiny mahogany conference table. How could I forget?
