I couldn’t believe it. I called instead of texting her back, because I was so upset.
“Tina, why are you even still taking Boris’s calls?”
She whispered, “I don’t know.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“I have finals this week. I can’t study at home, there are too many distractions, such as my refrigerator and Netflix, so I’m in my study carrel at the library. They don’t like it when we talk on our cells.”
“Oh, sorry. I forgot. Do you want to call me back?”
“No. I want you to tell me what it was like.”
“What what was like?”
“Michael’s proposal! Was it romantic? Did he put the ring in a champagne glass? I told him that’s what you wanted. I know it’s kind of cliché, and I explained to him about your fear of choking, but he said he’d make sure you didn’t—”
“It was totally romantic,” I said, smiling. I realized what she needed to hear was something to cheer her up. “And not at all cliché, and super sweet, and he did make sure I didn’t choke. He even got down on one knee—”
She squee-ed, something people often describe themselves doing on the Internet, but that you rarely hear in real life. However, what came out of Tina’s mouth was an actual squee sound.
“He did? Oh, Mia, how I wish one of those spy drones had gotten a picture!”
“Well, I’m glad one didn’t, because it was just between us.”
“I guess that’s good,” Tina said with a sigh. “So have you picked out a dress? Can I go with you to help choose it, like on that show Say Yes to the Dress, when the bride invites all her friends to sit and drink champagne while she tries on different dresses, and then they all hold up signs with thumbs-up or thumbs-down on them?”
I laughed. “It doesn’t work that way when you’re a princess. I’ll be having a one-of-a-kind gown professionally designed.”
“Oh, please?” she begged. “I have nothing to look forward to since my boyfriend cheated on me. Nothing except taking my stupid finals. Then I’ll get to spend the summer with my nosy family, who are just going to hound me about ‘putting myself back out there.’ I don’t want to put myself back out there, I just want to sit around and eat Doritos and watch bad movies on Netflix.”
“Tina,” I said, in a warning voice. “Come on. You have so much to offer the right guy!”
“I found the right guy, remember? Then he tossed me aside like I was a nothing more than a serving wench to use for his pleasure. Now, come on, you totally owe me for helping Michael give you the perfect proposal.”
I’m starting to realize why weddings are so important, and why people like them so much, even me: when our own lives aren’t going so great, weddings give us something to feel happy about. A bride is taking a journey, a magical journey toward a future of happiness and joy, and even though we aren’t taking that journey with her, we want to vicariously enjoy the ride.
“Okay,” I said to Tina. “I’ll see what I can do. But you have to promise, no more texting with Boris.”
She sighed. “Fine, I promise,” and then said, “What?” to someone who’d apparently opened the door to her study carrel. “Oh, sorry,” she said to the person. To me, she whispered, “Sorry, that was Halim. He says the student in the carrel next door complained I’m being too loud.”
Halim is Tina’s new bodyguard, by whom she’s followed around due to her multimillionaire sheikh father’s conviction that she’s going to be kidnapped. Her old bodyguard, Waheem, started his own security business (now the third largest in the world) after he got married. He tried to lure Lars away, but Lars said he isn’t “the management type.”
“Well,” I said. “We should probably talk later, then.”
“Yeah,” Tina said, sounding glum, and hung up.
That’s when I saw someone had left a message while we’d been speaking. I hoped it was my dad—in spite of everything, I still wouldn’t mind speaking to him—but it was only Grandmère. Not surprisingly, she objected to my replies to her “wedding list.”
“Amelia, we have a tremendous amount to do in the next few weeks, so I hope you’re going to take this seriously. No granddaughter of mine is going to serve tacos at her wedding reception, much less something called a mini grilled cheese sandwich.”
Said the woman who’d never had a mini grilled cheese sandwich in her life.
“Now, Lazarres-Reynolds wants to know when you can meet with them,” Grandmère went on. “They’ve assigned us a really top-notch man—I quite like him, he’s the nephew of one of the founders of the firm. He’s free for lunch tomorrow, so I’ve had Dominique make reservations in one of the private rooms at the Four Seasons. You will be there at one.”
Oh, I will, will I? I was starting to catch on to my role in this whole thing. I’m “the bride”—the unpaid star of the show, who shows up when she’s told, and also does what she’s told, but otherwise keeps her mouth shut.
Oh, well. I guess that’s what brides—kind of like princesses—are for. We might think we’re in charge, but when all is said and done, our main purpose is to give people something to admire, and also to make them feel better about the world.
“I don’t understand why you’re so fixated on this Vera Wang person. Obviously we have to use a local. Dominique’s managed to book us an emergency appointment with your cousin Sebastiano. He’s become one of the premier wedding-gown designers in Europe, and is also Genovian, so you know what people will say if we don’t use him—that you’ve snubbed one of your own relatives, and worse, a fellow countryman. He just happens to be in town this week and says he has time to meet you, so make sure to keep all your afternoons clear.”