Chapter One
Present Day
Dallas, Texas.
A Bad Dress
“It won’t zip.” I look over my shoulder trying to see just how much of a gap there is in the zipper.
The seamstress pulls open the curtain and peeks in. “Ohh…” She taps her lips with her forefinger. “Maybe a corset will help?”
“A corset? Like, what they used to wear in the 1800s?” I ask, worried that instead of just looking fat I’ll end up with crushed ribs as well.
“They aren’t quite as excruciating as they were back then. I’ll just go grab one.”
“A corset, Lily!” I yell through the curtain at my best friend. “Did you hear that? I’m so fat that I need to cinch it all in with a corset.” I stick my face out of the edge of the curtain, only to see Lily’s nod.
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Ems. I wear Spanx every day of my life.” She rolls her eyes at me. Spanx isn’t an option for me; I need the big guns of underwear to make this dress even a tiny bit presentable.
I peel the dress off and drape it over the small chair in the fitting room. The dress could be described as ‘daring’, but a more fitting word would be ‘repulsive’. It could cause the ugly swan dress Bjork wore to the Academy Awards to bow its head in shame. Which I think is what it was doing that night, anyway. Hannah must have lost her mind to create this disaster as a bridesmaid’s gown. Maybe the dress itself isn’t that terrible, but on me… it’s appalling.
“Here we go!” The seamstress holds up a white corset. “We’ll just get you tied into this and we should be good to go.”
If only it was that easy. It takes ten minutes of pulling, pushing, and adjusting. I wish I could say that the super-strength, agonizingly uncomfortable corset does the trick. It nearly does, but to really drive home the fact that I still look terrible, we also opt for high-waisted Spanx-like underwear that hits me just below the breast. Then the corset itself, and I swear at one point it felt as if the seamstress has a foot on my back as she pulled the strings as tight as they could go to get it on. Then, as if two pairs of smoothing and self-shrinking underwear aren’t enough, we add some kind of full-length slip to smooth out the uh… lumpy areas. Which give me a bit more flare at the bottom of the skirt, in an attempt to achieve that hourglass shape that this dress so desperately needs, as opposed to the pear shape I seem to have taken on recently.
Sadly, the biggest problem I’m going to have at this wedding isn’t even the fact that I’ll be wearing a lot of body-cinching underwear underneath an ugly, far-too-snug dress created by my almost sister-in-law, Hannah.
My biggest concern is Hannah’s brother: Jack Cabot. My ex-fiancé.
Jack and I dated for five years, and for the last one of those years we were engaged. In all honesty, it was the best five years of my life, right up until that last day. That day is forever burned into my brain and has ruined so many parts of me. That was the day he shattered my heart, and I still haven’t found all the pieces.
I probably shouldn’t have put off the first fitting. Maybe my reflection in the dress wouldn’t be so shocking if I’d started the alteration process a month ago. Or maybe not. I’m sure the whole experience, no matter when I started it, would be just as traumatizing as it feels right now.
I wonder what her other bridesmaids look like body-wise. I’m thinking they don’t sport my size 12 muffin top, C bra cups and thunder thighs. Probably they don’t require a hundred dollars in special underwear to look presentable in this dress.
“Are you sure it’s the right size, Emi?” Lily asks, as I walk out of the dressing room, her face in an awkward gritted smile. She walks over to me and holds out her hand to help me inch my way to the center of the room.
“It is now, after crushing my internal organs into everything I’m wearing underneath it.” It takes me three tries myself, and Lily assisting with a nudge from behind, to successfully position myself up on to the pedestal I’ve been directed to, for further alterations.
“Hannah said it should fit to my measurements.” Measurements that should have equalled a size 12, ish. When I first tried it on this morning I didn’t think it would pull up over my hips without tearing. Somehow, after a lot of chanting to the miracle gods, I got it up. That’s when I started to panic and gave up, deciding that I would cross my fingers and hope the alterations shop could help fix things.
“I mean, it’s gorgeous but it’s just so—”
“Tight?” I finish the sentence for her.
Lily nods her head, her face scrunched into a confused look. “That’s one word.” She sits on the pink velvet couch facing the pedestal I’m standing on, her arms crossed across her chest. “Can you even sit? Or walk without looking knock-kneed?”
The dress is pretty, and on anyone a size 2 and under it’d probably be va-va-voom gorgeous without any extra unseen help. But the medieval underwear does appear to be helping fake that look. My boobs look fantastic. I’m not sure they’ve sat this high on my chest since I was in my early twenties. The rest of it, well… It pretty much fits like a glove. The latex kind. At the knee it flares out to the floor; that section is covered in a mix of gray and black feathers seemingly dipped in glitter. I’d have preferred it to be strapless, but instead it has off-the-shoulder straps that make it impossible to lift my arms more than six inches from my body. But this doesn’t matter anyway, since I can barely move at all.
Then there are the shoes: strappy, sparkly, platform, and at least ten inches high. Well, maybe not ten inches, but it feels that way. The fact that I can only take small steps may make things more difficult. I’ve fallen in the middle of sidewalks wearing no heels at all, so these ones aren’t giving me much hope for grace and poise when walking down an aisle in front of everyone I know.
“I’m not sure I can walk at all with the combo of layers; cinched-up underwear, a skin-tight dress and stripper shoes…” I chew on my lip as I stare into the tri-fold full-length mirrors in front of me, and wonder if this is one of those deceptively flattering mirrors Elaine is always going on about in Seinfeld. Probably instead of looking lovely, I look more like an overstuffed sausage.
“It doesn’t look completely terrible now,” Lily reassures me with a small grin. She was lucky enough to be with me at my apartment this morning when she witnessed my panic of the dress not fitting. “The underwear helps. You do look a little stiff though.”
“That’s one word for it, I suppose. If I take a full breath I’m a little worried I’ll have some kind of underwear malfunction.” The last thing I need is an internet-worthy video surfacing when this wedding is over.
I force myself to look away from the mirror and watch the seamstress, who is kneeling at my feet and already working on the necessary alterations. Swiftly pinning the hem, just above the feathers, so I don’t drag it across the floor. I’m not exactly tall, standing at only 5’3”, and since Hannah didn’t think of how a dress like this hits a short girl, this poor woman has a long night of hemming ahead of her. Her gray hair is piled high on her head and her dress is a plain black version of Mrs Doubtfire’s dresses, including the drabby cardigans. She’s really a little depressing-looking, especially considering the alteration shop we’re in doubles as a bridal store that looks like you’ve just stepped into a giant, sparkly, tulle cloud.
“What’s with the shiny gray material anyway?” Lily asks the question I’ve wondered about myself. Gray I can see, it’s one of my favorite colors. But the muted sheen of the fabric is not helping with the imperfections I’d like to hide.
“Her official wedding colors are black, gray and pink.”
“It’s so depressing, Emi, it just makes me sad looking at it.” Lily is sad yet her camera clicks with a touch of a finger. She’s telling me I look the worst I ever have, and here she is taking pictures so we can remember it forever. “I’ve never seen anything like it. She may as well have wrapped you in foil. I mean seriously, you look like a foil-wrapped burrito.”
Great. “Thanks.” Only a best friend could be as blunt as Lily and add to my list of clothing styles not to wear. I already do a fine job of that myself. When you’re a short girl and wear a size 12 you might as well just have a seamstress on call for alterations of anything you purchase. For some reason clothing designers seem to think that if you’re fat, you’re also unreasonably tall. My boobs are big, my legs are short, my hips are wide and my thighs shudder at the phrase thigh gap.
“Can you let it out at all?” Lily is talking to the seamstress who’s still at my feet.
“No, you don’t let a dress like this out. You take it in,” she says, in a sharp, irritated voice. “Did she order you two sizes above your actual size? Formal dresses always run small. Someone should have told her to order up.” She doesn’t stop pinning while talking, and can somehow speak with a mouth full of pins. If it was me, I’d be on my way to the emergency room, because I’d have swallowed at least one.
“That’s likely the problem. She didn’t order it from a store. She designed it and was supposed to make it to fit.” I glance down at Alteration Lady, who rolls her eyes without speaking and goes back to pinning. She must have dealt with designers before.
“News flash, yours doesn’t fit. Maybe you gained some weight since you sent her your measurements?” Lily suggests.
“Lily, I’ve gained thirty pounds in two years. I threw out my scale a while ago, so I have no doubt that my ass has only got bigger since measurement day six months ago.” It’s not completely my fault I’ve gained some weight. It happens when you own a coffee shop and you love everything you serve. It wouldn’t be right to set out pastries that I hadn’t tested. I mean, what if they were bad? When I test one I know they are the quality that I want to serve. Plus, who doesn’t drink five lattes a day? Opening a business on your own is stressful.
Why didn’t I think of faking my measurements and add an inch, maybe three, to all of them? Probably because I had planned to start going to the gym I bought a membership for so I could lose thirty pounds before having to go face a room full of people I never thought I’d see again. I should have known better, especially knowing this would likely be a custom fashion masterpiece of a dress by the one and only Hannah.
Hannah. That’s her clothing label. No last name, no cutesy Miss Me title, just Hannah. She said she wanted simple, classy, and elegant. I can see almost all of that in this dress, except for the fact that I’m the one wearing it. I guess I’ll never be a fashion model. This is her first real design, besides her own wedding dress. After seeing the bridesmaid dress, I’m wondering just how sexy the wedding gown will be?
“I think you should call her and show her every flawed inch of this thing, without the underwear assistance.” Lily says. “If she plans to run a business doing custom designs, she needs to pay more attention to her clients’ body types.” Her lips are pinched and her eyebrows are raised. “I know if I ordered this from her and it fit the way this one does, I’d refuse to pay her and go somewhere else.”
Lily may or may not be the bitchier one in our relationship. She doesn’t hold back. If you don’t want to know what she thinks, don’t ask. I have an unspoken appreciation for it. Her bitchiness is handy in a variety of situations and she’s somehow become successful because of it. She is head English Professor at a small private college here in Dallas. Let’s just say, she’s the professor about whom students use the phrase “Oh… you got McConnell? Sucky.” She knows it and she loves it. The fear of the kids as they walk into her class is better than a cup of coffee for Lily.
“Grab my phone and Facetime her,” I say. “Let’s see what she thinks. Maybe I’ll get lucky and look so terrible that she’ll decide I don’t even need to go.”
“You know that won’t happen.” Lily taps at my phone before turning it to me making sure it’s a full body shot.
“Ohhhhh! Emi!” Hannah’s face fills the screen without me even hearing the phone ring. “Wow! What do you think?”
“Um… I think I can barely breathe. I definitely can’t sit. I’m pretty sure it’s too small?” I ask it as a question, hoping to God I’m right and she’ll offer to whip up a new one in the next three days.
“No, it’s not. It’s supposed to be very Marilyn Monroe vintage. I think you look gorgeous! It’s exactly how I pictured it!”
Lily’s eyebrows rise again behind the phone and a smirk creeps up on her face. She’s probably glad Hannah can’t see her face because it would give away her disapproval. Obviously, Hannah and I have different ideas of ‘gorgeous’.
“Um, it’s exactly as you pictured because underneath it all I’m tied in as tight as possible! Without the helpfulness of the torturous underwear I definitely would not look this… curvy,” I whine, opting for a word that is code for fat. I run my hands down my sides, enjoying the feeling of fake perfection while I can. “I can’t wear this for more than a few hours, I’ll crush my insides!”
“Shut up. No one thinks you’re fat!” She cracked my code. “You look totally hot. And I, for one, know for a fact that even Jack will be smitten.”
“I don’t want him to be smitten, Hannah,” I snap at her into the phone. She knows as well as I do that any conversation topic that starts with the words Jack, or My brother, are off limits. “I want him to be miserable.” He deserves at least that.
I don’t know why I’m still worried about what he might think about me. Especially since I’ve had every chance to take him back if I’d wanted to. I couldn’t, though. Jack cheated on me, two days before our wedding. Now, I have to face him and hope that this corset doesn’t fail mid-way through the wedding to reveal just how much I’ve let myself go since I left.