So that was how she ended up here, standing in what was little more than a glorified hotel coatroom, wearing a full-skirt wedding dress.
Lyla was so pleased she’d been allowed to pick her own dress because the suggestions of the designer were outrageous. Figure hugging, low-cut, all the things that Lyla wasn’t.
Choosing the full skirt, without a train, she had long-sleeves and a high neck. None of that fussy sequins and lace stuff, just plain muslin. After a lot of persuading she’d agreed to let the designer put a plain white sash around her waist that fastened behind in a neat, straight bow. But that was it. She didn’t want fuss.
The hair stylist went berserk with excitement when she took her hair down and her dark auburn waves cascaded to her waist. But when he started going on about flowers and lace and braids, Lyla had to interject. A chignon was just fine with her.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Cece asked.
The hotel was lovely, a grand five-star affair. The wedding was taking place in a marble-floored room with tall columns and ribbon-wrapped chairs. The pictures would be taken in the external courtyard, then the meal would be served in a room upstairs.
Only her parents and her aunt were here representing her family. The teenagers had been sent to school. But from the noise outside her room, which was on the main thoroughfare to the ceremony room, Lyla would guess there were quite a few people here, probably extras brought in to fill out the seats because her guest list was so meager.
Lyla didn’t know much about Trick’s family. More time had been spent drumming his professional accomplishments into her than his personal ones. Lyla had done some research on her own and she knew that his parents weren’t together anymore, though they were still civil from what she’d read. He’d grown up with a sister, Josie, but Lyla hadn’t looked into aunts and cousins because she felt it wasn’t her place to pry too deep into his personal life.
“Yes, Mom,” Lyla said, pulling her skirt around as she turned toward the door. Instantly faced with the camera that had been on her tail all day, she blinked. “Hi.”
Cliff, the assistant director who was assigned to her had a look of concern on his face. “How are you feeling, Lyla?” he asked.
“That depends,” she said, allowing some of her rare sass to slip out. “Did the groom show up?”
She was comfortable enough with her parents that she didn’t have to be aware of them in the room. The cameraman never said anything and the sound guy was always doing his best to stay out of the way, so the crew had begun to fade away into the background. It probably wasn’t a good thing that they were becoming invisible because these people were capturing everything about her life and were prepared to share it with the world, so she should probably be more aware of what she was doing and saying.
When she imagined it was just her and Cliff, it was much easier to be relaxed and answer his questions. He’d always been nice to her and she explained to him that dealing with more than one person at a time often overwhelmed her. He’d done his best to accommodate her quirks, of which she had many.
Cliff laughed. “Yeah, Trick’s out there. He’s making jokes, seems pretty relaxed.”
It was the oddest thing ever that this random guy had met her groom and she hadn’t. “Ok, let’s rock and roll,” she said, feeling oddly calm about all of this, which wasn’t like her at all.
Maybe it was adrenaline, but Lyla felt she had to do this now, while she was still feeling pumped from getting ready. If she got the chance to relax too much she might second-guess her decision.
“You don’t want to make him wait a bit?” Cliff asked. “It’s traditional for you to be late.”
Lifting her eyes to the clock above the door, Lyla read one minute to three. “Three o’clock,” she said. “I’m never late.”
Cliff exchanged a look with the sound guy and shrugged. “Ok, Mom, you need to take your seat,” he said. Turning her cheek toward her mother, Lyla accepted Cece’s kiss and adjusted her veil to cover her face as her mother scurried out. “Remember, Lyla, just go straight ahead into the room. There’s a white screen that will block you from view until you take a right down the aisle with your dad. Ignore the cameras. All of them.”
She’d been told this before, but appreciated that he had a job to do and part of that job was to repeat the same instructions to her over and over. “Cliff, I’m going to be late,” Lyla said, aware that she never missed a deadline.
“Right,” he said.
The sound guy pulled open the door at his back to let the three men reverse out. Her father took her arm and she walked forward, trying to ignore the three men recording her.
They got to the hall and although they were still filming the crew picked up pace to give her some room to walk. This wasn’t how her wedding day was supposed to be. But as she walked forward, she knew it didn’t matter that this was no fairytale. Lyla had never really pictured her wedding day because she never really expected it to happen. Love wasn’t something she’d spent any time looking for, she didn’t need it, she was happy being just her.
“Everybody stand,” someone declared as she and her father began to walk alongside the screen. There was no music, but she knew enough about productions to know that would be overlaid on the edit, now they wanted silence.
Rounding the end of the screen, she saw about ten rows of chairs with maybe six in the row, wow, no way did she know that many people. But before she could try to identify faces, she saw the monstrosity of red roses on the perimeter of the room, how much did they cost? And what were—
“Sorry, can you just stop, Lyla? Can we do that again?” Cliff’s boss, Paul was at the corner of the room, walking forward, waving his hand. She did as told and stopped, waiting for him to come over. But he stopped in front of her mother. “Lyla, honey, can you look at him?”
“Oh,” she said, and her exhale became a nervous laugh. “Right, sorry.” Letting her eyes dart to the altar, she saw what almost seemed to be the illusion of a man standing next to the registrar. Yep, that was Nairn Strickland all right, and man, was he tall, and damn, yes, he was smiling, probably laughing at her for being an idiot. “I was looking at the flowers.”
She hadn’t really meant to say it to anyone in particular, but Trick seemed to think she was talking to him. “They’re lovely.”
“Yes, they are,” she said, though he was still smiling and it was a bit unnerving to see how his eyes glittered with amusement. Yep, definitely laughing at her. “Bit over the top, but what do I know? I’m no set designer.”
“Me either,” he said. “Better than condom trees.”
“Indeed,” she said with an overly formal nod. Was this weird, them conducting a sort of conversation while twenty feet apart in a room of over a hundred onlookers? She wasn’t pulling this back, so she rolled her eyes and bent to hike up her skirt with her flowers still in one hand and her arm still through her father’s. “Come on, Daddy.”
“Reset and go again.”
Yep, they went again and this time she got all the way to the altar before Paul called out for another take, this time he wanted a wide shot. “And you thought we were getting married today,” Trick murmured, she was only five feet from him now, but this time he wasn’t looking at her when he spoke. “Hope the honeymoon’s refundable!”
The joke aimed at the director got a laugh. Glad someone thought it was funny, he wasn’t the one in agony.
“Can I take my shoes off?” she asked Paul who looked horrified at the suggestion. “Six inches isn’t an advantage in this context.”
The room laughed and she turned around to look at them, why were they laughing? Why was that funny? God, had she made a fool of herself? Great, like it wasn’t bad enough that she was screwing up this aisle thing. What kind of woman couldn’t walk down an aisle?
“Lyla!” her mother chastised.
“Sorry, Mom,” Lyla said, and switched her flowers into her other hand so she could hook her wrist over her father’s shoulder to support herself as she could picked up her foot to try to adjust the sling-back of her shoe. Except when she tried to reach down, the damn skirt was in the way.
“Here.” Lyla’s head snapped to the side when she heard Trick’s voice nearby. He was crouching at her side, picking up her skirt to reach underneath. He didn’t go snooping, as she might have expected him to, he just pulled her shoe from her foot and squeezed her heel with his whole large hand. “Where does it hurt?”
Like a rabbit at the end of a hunter’s gun, she said nothing, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. Why the hell was Nairn Strickland kneeling beside her in a tux, holding her foot? “No, you can’t take them off,” Paul said. “Continuity, your height has to stay the same.”
“Sorry, babe,” Trick said, slipping her shoe back on and backing away.
‘Babe’? She was a ‘babe’? When did that happen? Next time it was the registrar that messed up, he coughed and knocked over a flower arrangement, which took ten minutes to be reset. Then there was a bee in the room that sent half the guests fleeing. A series of mishaps saw them resetting another six times.
As she and her father stood at the head of the aisle, waiting for another reset, her mom jumped to her feet and held her phone up. “Lyla, honey, your phone is ringing.”
Course it was. At least it happened while they were waiting and not while she was walking down the aisle. She took one step and her feet screamed, so she gestured to her mom. “Can you bring it over? Who is it?”
Her mother read the screen then looked at her. “Curtis.”
Panic widened her eyes and Lyla shook her hand at her mother, who stopped dead. “No, no, I can’t answer that. Don’t give it to me.”
“Why not?”
Glancing around, Lyla bowed closer, though there was twenty feet between mother and daughter, and there was no way the dozens of guests around them wouldn’t hear her. “I can’t lie to him.”
“You didn’t tell him?” her mother asked.
“I really don’t need your judgment, Mother,” she said, scowling at her, but her mother was the queen of the sneer.
“You should’ve told him.”
The phone stopped ringing, letting Lyla relax a fraction. “I wasn’t allowed to, Mom. This is all a secret.”
Probably because the producers were worried she or Trick would back out. So it wasn’t until the ink was dry on the marriage certificate that the announcement would be made at work and the first commercials for the show were airing the next night.
Everyone on the production had signed confidentiality agreements that had to be adhered to until this was public knowledge. Though at this rate, it wouldn’t be happening because of production issues not personnel ones.
“Ok,” Paul announced to the room. “This is the live one. Mother of the bride, back to her seat.” That was a bit rude, but Lyla was too exhausted to argue with him. “Lyla, smile.” Smile, right. She made herself do her best. “And look at Trick.” Smile. Look at Trick. Smile. Look at Trick. “And Trick—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m ecstatic, can we just do this, please?”
Her mother was in the room and wouldn’t appreciate language like that; Lyla guessed his mother wasn’t as particular. But Trick’s mom was probably used to his mouth by now.
Smile. Look at Trick.
Did it matter if she smiled? She’d been wearing a veil all day, how could they tell? She got that they could tell if her head was facing in the wrong direction to be looking at Trick, but could they really tell if she was looking at him?
The answer to that was no, because she actually focused on a spot behind the man rather than on the man himself, and no one called for a reset. Her father said something to Trick as he put her hand over her groom’s. She didn’t hear what it was because her father leaned right in to whisper in her groom’s ear, but he was talking for a minute before the men shared a long moment of eye contact and her father took his seat.
After that, the ceremony was a bit of an anti-climax. They got all the way through it like they were reciting lines. She was no actress, but maybe she should consider the profession… or maybe she could if she could deal with people.
As it stood, she was too exhausted to really think about what she was saying, so she just said the words as they were said to her without thinking about what they meant or the long-term picture. The good thing about this being like a production was that it had lost its authentic quality. It no longer felt like a real wedding or a real marriage, because they were just doing as they’d been directed to all day. Say this. Do this. Walk there. Hit your mark.
Even when it got to the, “You may kiss the bride” part of the ceremony, there was no big pulse-racing moment. Trick lifted her veil and she tipped her head to accept his lips just at the corner of her mouth.
The kiss was chaste and probably not what he was expecting if the way he’d lunged down at her was anything to go by. But she wasn’t about to put on a show for the grumpy guests when she felt just as grumpy herself.
If Paul was unhappy with it, he’d have asked them to do it again. But as it was, the guy was getting more and more stressed because they’d lost so much time.
“Ok, we’re doing this part in one take, just a wide shot,” Paul said to them as they stood signing where they were directed. “Then it’s outside for the pictures. We’re losing the light, so we’ll do a couple today and probably revisit another time.”
“Another time?” she asked.
“Sure, pictures can be done any time,” Paul said. “We dress you up, everyone takes their places…”
“Right,” she said.
Of course. Nothing was real. It wasn’t about capturing the day or the mood, it was about the show and they would only need a couple of pics to sell the story to the papers.
Trick finished signing and Paul grabbed his arm to pull him to her other side. There wasn’t even any finesse in the way the director grabbed her hand and shoved it into Trick’s elbow. The director could’ve just asked her to take his arm, or asked Trick to offer it, but no, he pulled and tugged on them like they were dolls being positioned.
“Feel better?” Trick asked.
When she glanced at him, she saw he was looking at the director. Her groom’s face was as tight as she felt. It had been a long day for him too and probably a boring one for a guy who was used to being on the go all the time.
“Smiles,” Paul said and backed away grinning, indicating that they should smile.
The director rushed over to his crew, whispered a few things, then asked the congregation to stand as he ran to the end of the aisle and indicated to her and Trick that they should start walking. They did, and she was so relieved that the ceremony was over that she didn’t even think about what they’d just done.
“So you’re Lyla,” Trick said, from the corner of his mouth, behind his infamous smile.
“Yes, Mr. Strickland, I am,” she said, restraining herself from asking what gave it away, the big dress and the vows maybe?
“Think it should be Trick, don’t you?” he said.
Paul growled aloud and waved as he marched down the aisle toward them. “No talking! Can you just smile and walk please?”
“Damn,” Trick muttered and began to walk backward, but he went too fast and she whooped as she tried to keep up.
Her groom’s manners only went so far. Trick’s patience might be stretched, but so was hers. Frustration was no excuse for him dragging her around by her arm that he had clamped under his.
Next time, they both did their best to smile and walked up the aisle without talking. Paul was grumbling and unhappy when they finished the shot, but Trick landed a glare on the director that made her shiver.
Oh yeah, he was pissed and he wasn’t doing it again. That was just fine with her.