The Bride Wore Size 12 (30 page)

38

I
stand at the back of the room, nervously twisting the ribbons on the end of my bouquet. Cooper and I chose Gerber daisies for our wedding because they’re a nice cheerful flower for fall, and they aren’t fussy in the same way we aren’t fussy.

But the place where we’ve chosen to get married certainly is fussy.

“I think this is all a little too fancy,” I say to Patty as she adjusts the bow on the sash on the side of my dress. It’s shaped a little bit like a Gerber daisy, or at least a large, white silk rose. “Do you think this is too fancy? Cooper and I should have eloped. I knew we should have eloped.”

“Hush,” Patty says softly. “The Plaza Hotel is not too fancy for you. It isn’t fancy
enough
for you. You should be getting married in the White House rose garden in this dress.” She takes a step back and looks at me. “Seriously, this dress is perfect on you. You look like a modest, virginal Marilyn Monroe. You know, if President Kennedy had married her instead of Jackie.”

“Modest and virginal wasn’t exactly the look I was going for,” I say, turning to look at myself in the mirror.

“Undercover bombshell,” Patty says, adjusting my veil, which is really a confection of net, flowers, and a couple of feathers sticking out of the loose bun my long hair has been pulled into. “Tea length is perfect on you. Now go out there and knock Cooper dead.”

“Please,” I say queasily. “Don’t use that phrase.”

“Ooo.” Patty winces. “Sorry. I forgot about his near brush with death last month.
Both
of your near brushes with death. Okay, let’s go out there and not cause Cooper any bodily harm with your beauty, but make him remember all over again why he fell in love with you . . . your wit, beauty, and charm.”

I take a deep breath and give myself one last glance in the mirror. I look nothing like my usual self. I’ve been up since dawn dealing with last-minute minicrises, such as Cooper’s lost cummerbund, and a bomb scare at the Plaza that threatened to shut down the entire wedding (until we learned it was a “prank” by Cooper’s younger brother, Jordan, who’d now been demoted from best man to the role of guest-book attendant. Frank, Patty’s husband, was now best man, with Sammy the Schnozz and Hal as ushers).

Then I’d had to rush off to have my hair professionally styled and makeup professionally applied, all the while fighting butterflies in my stomach. I’m secretly convinced that somehow, Cooper and I are never going to end up as husband and wife, even though we’ve got the license.

Patty’s right. I do look somewhat virginal in my white dress, cinched in tightly at the waist, then cascading outward to the knee like a bell of silk and tulle. But a virgin with a mischievous twinkle in her blue eyes and naughty twist to her red lips. How had the makeup artist done that? And why can’t I accomplish it on a daily basis?

“Heather?” My father is calling from the outer room. “Are you ready? Perry says the music is starting, and we need to get to our places.”

Perry. I so wish I could fire her for being so snooty. Well, I’ll never see her again after today. You only get married once!

Oh God, please let me only get married once.

I turn around and hurry toward my father.

“Oh my,” he says. “Don’t you look pretty.”

Dad’s never been that liberal with the compliments, or the emotions.

My bridesmaids are more gushy when they see me.

“Heather!” Magda cries. “You look like an angel. A real angel from the top of a Christmas tree.”

“That dress kicks ass,” Jessica says, appraising me. “Seriously. You could kick someone’s ass in that dress, and not rip it, that skirt is so full. I’m glad you didn’t go for a mermaid, mermaid skirts suck. You can’t kick ass in them at all.”

Only Nicole is pouting, as usual. “I still think you should have gone for a long dress,” she says. “When else are you going to get to wear a long dress but on your wedding day?”

“Don’t be stupid, Huey. How’s she going to run from a bad guy in a long dress?” Jessica asks. “She’d trip.”

“There won’t be any bad guys here today,” I say, trying to believe it. “Not with all the cops we’ve got out there.” And the fact that Ricardo is still sitting in Rikers, awaiting extradition back to Argentina, having turned out to have a few outstanding warrants there. “And you guys look
amazing
.”

They do. I let them select whatever they wanted to wear, so long as it was a dress matching the colors of the Gerber daisies in the floral arrangement I’d picked out.

Magda chose, as one would expect, a shimmering, Barbie-like one-shouldered evening gown in shocking pink. Patty is looking as cool and collected as a heavily pregnant woman can in rust. Jessica is seductive in a slinky lipstick-red number that clings to her slim body like a second skin, and Nicole—clearly with some guidance from her sister—looks sunny in a yellow Empire-waisted gown that is, as she so dearly wished for me, full length, but flattering on her.

“Ladies.” Perry, the scarily busy wedding planner who refused to return our calls for so much of the time we were actually planning our wedding, appears at the one moment we actually need her least. She taps her headset imperiously. “It’s time.”

She propels Nicole out the door. Jessica turns to me.

“Are you sure you don’t want an antianxiety med?” she asks, tapping her purse. “I have a ton. Half will take the edge right off, trust me.”

I smile at her. “I think I’m going to be okay.” I’m lying. I think I’m going to throw up, to be honest.

“Okay,” Jessica says dubiously. “Well, you know where they are if you change your mind.” She sets down her purse and starts toward the door. “If any are missing, I’ll know,” she adds darkly, giving Perry the stink eye. “I counted them earlier.”

Perry purses her lips disapprovingly and points at me and my dad. “You two,” she snaps. “You’re on.”

My dad looks down at me. “Ready?”

I don’t have butterflies. I have bulls, ramming their way through my small intestines. Why am I so nervous? I’m marrying the man I love.

In front of four hundred—no, more—people, in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel.

Why, oh, why, did we agree to do this? We were happy as we were. Marriage is going to ruin it. I’m going to trip. I’m going to mess up. I’m going to—

“Heather,” my father says to me sternly. “You used to do this before every single performance. But everyone always loved you. So wipe that terrified look off your face and smile. Everyone out there is pulling for you and Cooper. There’s nothing but love for you out there.”

I blink up at my dad. I’m not entirely sure what he’s talking about—he was barely even around when I was performing.

But he’s right. No one is here to see me fail. They’re here because they support the love Cooper and I have for each other.

And if I do trip, what’s the worst that can happen?

I’ll get back up again, like I always have.

“Okay, Dad,” I say, and slip my hand through the crook of his arm.

The Grand Ballroom is even grander—and larger—than I remember it from last night’s rehearsal, especially when it’s filled with hundreds of chairs, and those chairs are filled with hundreds of people, most of whom I don’t recognize. My heart begins beating so quickly when I see them, I’m certain it’s going to burst. The music is beautiful, but it can’t drown out the sound of my pulse.

Still, the girls look lovely as they move slowly down the aisle. Not slowly enough, however. Before I know it, the music changes, and it’s my turn. Everyone is standing.

No, no, don’t stand. Turn around. Sit down. Don’t look at me. Nothing to see here, folks. Go home.

But no one’s listening. Everyone’s looking at me, and smiling too, and whispering to one another. What are they whispering about? Me. They’re whispering about me? Shut up! Stop talking about me. I hope they’re saying nice things. They must be because they’re smiling. Where’s Cooper? Where’s Cooper? Where’s—

Oh, there he is. I see him. He’s only a tiny blob because the aisle is so long, but he has to be the tall man in the tuxedo standing so proudly at the end of the aisle, without crutches or even a cane because the doctor declared him such a speedy healer. To be honest, he’s still limping a little, but he’s sworn to take it easy for the—

What’s that flash? Oh, I see. Some of the people are taking photos with their phones. The flashes dazzle my eyes. My God, I can’t see. No, wait; I can. I can see. I’m starting to recognize people in the seats. There’s Detective Canavan. He looks incredibly uncomfortable in his tuxedo, but quite distinguished as well. The excited-looking woman beside him in the new dress, taking all the photos, must be his wife. I’m glad, actually, that Nicole invited them.

Okay, maybe not so glad that she invited Carl, who’s sitting in front of them and is toasting me with a cocktail he’s already secured from the bar, but whatever. Julio and his wife look so pleased to be here (without actually being drunk before the reception’s even started).

And there’s Sarah, from the office in Fischer Hall. What’s she doing here? Oh, right, I invited her. Who’s that next to her?

Oh, Dave Fernandez, that’s right, she asked if she could bring a plus one. Dave moved into Jasmine Albright’s room after we finished removing all her belongings, and is proving to be an amazing asset to the staff. The other day, while I was talking to him at the front desk while he was putting braille stickers on the mailboxes, a group of freshmen boys walked by wearing backpacks, and Dave called out to them, “Hey, are you going to share those with me?”

“Share what?” the boys asked.

“Those beers you have in your backpacks,” Dave said.

I made the boys unzip their backpacks. Somehow they’d gotten hold of three twelve-packs of bottled Budweiser. I confiscated the beer, then asked Dave how he’d known. He’d cocked his head at me as if I were crazy.

“I could hear them,” he said. “Couldn’t you?”

Sitting in front of Sarah and Dave are Muffy Fowler and her date—I have no idea who that guy is. He looks rich, though. Which would explain why Muffy looks so happy.

Beside them is Tom Snelling with his partner, Steven, the New York College basketball coach. Tom looks extremely handsome in his cream-colored tuxedo. He catches my eye and lays a hand upon his heart and mouths the famous line “You complete me.”

In front of Tom is Eva from the medical examiner’s office and . . . oh my God, Special Agent Lancaster. He looks incredibly hot—I can see that Tom thinks so too, since he’s taking a huge amount of photos of him, though he’s trying to be subtle about it. It’s all right, though. Special Agent Lancaster is doing us a solid, arranging for both Prince Rashid and his new bride to receive asylum in the United States.

The fallout from Qalif hasn’t been subtle, though it’s been kept very hushed up in the press. No more leaks to the
Express,
though Cameron Ripley’s been released from the hospital and has returned to his position as editor. He’s been occupying himself with stories on the no-confidence vote on President Allington (not that this will have any effect whatsoever on the way things are run around the school). He’s also apparently trained his baby rat to do tricks, including to come when called.

What Cameron—and the other members of the press—doesn’t know is that Rashid’s father pulled his $500 million donation to New York College in a rage as soon as he found out what Rashid had done—married a girl of his own choosing, and one of “common” blood, at that. The general sheikh cut off not only New York College, but Rashid, without a cent. The Escalade, the home theater, the lunches at Nobu—all gone, in the blink of an eye.

But Rashid, as far as I can tell, has never been happier. He’s gotten to keep his room and his bodyguard detail, of course—courtesy of the U.S. government—because his father also vowed to send armed assassins to America to kill Ameera, and make the prince a widower, and thus eliminate the problem.

Rashid’s mother, on the other hand—the first and oldest of the general sheikh’s nine wives—vowed to do the opposite: welcome her son and his new bride back to Qalif whenever they wish to come, and to support them in any way she can. She’s even opened a Twitter account—the first royal woman ever to do so in Qalif—in order to publicly vent her dissatisfaction with the way her husband is handling the situation. Rashid told me the other day, with a smile, “Spring is coming to Qalif. It may take a little while. But it’s coming.”

Ameera’s moved into the prince’s room, so Kaileigh got what her mother most wanted for her in the world:

A single.

Well, a single within a suite, since she still lives with Chantelle and Nishi.

The only person who hasn’t gotten what he wanted out of Rashid’s coming to New York College is President Allington. His half billion is gone, vanished somehow—
poof!
—because it turns out the sheikh’s donation was only ever
promised,
never actually sent.