by Meg Cabot
“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, nev
er actually sent.
The worst part is, the president already spent it on plans to build a new state-of-the-art fitness center for his beloved basketball team.
Sure, he would have had to tear down a few buildings to do it, but those buildings didn’t matter, as they served simply to house a few faculty members, boring old professors who’d done nothing with their lives but teach and win Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. So who cares?
Now all those professors are writing scathing op-ed pieces about the president in the papers every Sunday.
President Allington has decided to start spending weekends in the Hamptons, where no one he knows reads the New York papers.
I spy Lisa and Cory a few rows ahead of Eva and Special Agent Lancaster. Lisa is so excited to see me, she waves excitedly, and I can’t help waving back, some of the butterflies beginning to disappear.
Dad’s right. These people are my friends. They do want what’s best for me, just as I want what’s best for them. Now that the excitement over the RAs has died down—the rest of them moved out without incident once Howard was arrested, and new ones, handpicked by Lisa, were hired to replace them—things at the office have settled into a smooth routine, with one exception: Lisa’s been bringing birthing videos to work from the hospital where she’s chosen to give birth, for us to watch during downtime.
They truly are disgusting. No horror film can compare. Lisa says she can’t understand why any hospital would give videos like this to expectant mothers. My retinas are forever scarred. We passed the videos on to Gavin, who is determined to find a way to work the scenes into his zombie film.
Gavin is sitting behind Lisa, not far from Pete (who can’t take his eyes off Magda), and I can see that he’s appointed himself our wedding videographer, to the annoyance of Cooper’s father, who’s paid for an official videographer, something we tried to stop, since I don’t want a video of our wedding being shown on Cartwright Television (they televise a sort of lame Where Are They Now? rip-off). Tania—oh, there’s Tania, looking so pretty in pink beside Jordan, uck, that jerk—warned me that the last thing I’d want is my nice wedding ruined by having footage of it broadcast on TV for everyone to see.
Cooper says not to worry, that he’s got “someone on it,” whatever that means. I suppose it means there’s going to be an “accidental” fire in the videographer’s studio, knowing the kind of “someone” Cooper is likely referring to.
Jamie, Gavin’s girlfriend, looks almost as annoyed as Mr. Cartwright, but only because Gavin is blocking her view of the proceedings. Patricia, Cooper’s mom, looks drunk, but it’s two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, so that’s to be expected.
Only when Dad and I finally reach the end of the aisle, and I’m able to look into Cooper’s eyes, do the butterflies in my stomach vanish completely. His face is filled with pride, love, and admiration for me. He can barely contain his happy grin as he moves to offer his arm in place of my father’s.
“Take care of her,” Dad says to Cooper, patting my fingers.
“I’ll try,” Cooper says. “She’s pretty good at taking care of herself, though.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Dad says with a roll of his eyes, and shuffles off to his seat.
The officiant smiles kindly at us and tells our guests to sit down, and during all the shuffling, Cooper grins at me and says, “Nice dress.”
“I hope you like it.”
“It could be lower cut,” he says, looking down the demure lace front of the dress at my cleavage. “I can barely see anything.”
I roll my eyes, knowing he’s teasing. “You’ve seen it all a million times.”
“But I like seeing it all the time,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows lasciviously.
“This is the Plaza, show some class, you dirty dog.”
“Dearly beloved,” the officiant begins. “We are gathered here today . . .”
The ceremony passes in a blur. I stand in my unfamiliarly high heels, feeling like a jangly cluster of nerves and excitement, hardly knowing what I’m saying. I repeat the words the officiant tells me to repeat, unable to look away from Cooper’s face, the same way he’s unable to look from mine. We’re both smiling like idiots. It’s a very good thing we both vetoed the idea of exchanging our own vows. We’d never have remembered them. I can’t even remember what day it is.
As Patty comes up to take the bouquet from me when it’s time to exchange the rings, she whispers, “You’ve almost made it. Two more minutes. Hang in there.”
I can’t believe it. It seems like mere seconds later that I’ve slid a ring on Cooper’s finger and he’s sliding a ring on mine—only mine, unlike the simple white-gold bands we’d picked out for each other, is inlaid with diamonds.
“What . . . ?” I look up at him, stunned, but he’s repeating the words the officiant is feeding him. A sly smile has spread across his face, because he’s managed to outwit me. We’re supposed to be saving the money from the sale of my mom’s jewelry so that we can renovate the basement.
Although I suppose it’s all right that he’s spent a little of it on something frivolous that we don’t need. The diamond band certainly seems to go very nicely with my sapphire engagement ring.
“I, Cooper Arthur Cartwright,” Cooper is saying, in a voice that suddenly sounds a little choked with tears, “take you, Heather Marie Wells, to be to be my lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do us part.”
Is he crying? But Cooper never cries. Well, except during movies where animals die—
And then the officiant is pronouncing us husband and wife, and telling Cooper he can kiss me, and Cooper is dragging me somewhat urgently toward him and kissing me very emphatically on the lips.
My bright red lipstick is going to get all over him, I think, and as soon as he releases me, I see that it has.
But Cooper doesn’t care, he looks deliriously happy. Why does he look so happy?
And then it hits me. It’s over. Everyone is standing and clapping and cheering. Even Nicole is clapping, and crying, while laughing at the same time, and Nicole hates everything.
We’ve done it. Cooper and I have done it. And neither of us tripped, or was shot, or knocked unconscious, or choked, or cut with a knife.
It’s incredible. But it’s true.
I turn to Cooper, who’s slipped an arm around my waist.
“We did it,” I say breathlessly. “We actually did it.”
“Of course we did it,” he says, kissing me again, this time more tenderly. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t mean that,” I say, looking around at the faces of all our friends and family. “Or rather, I do, but I mean . . . I think we might actually have changed our luck.”
“Heather, don’t you know? We’ve always had good luck. We found each other, didn’t we?”
I smile at him, realizing he’s right. Once again, I’m the one who wasn’t seeing things clearly . . . they weren’t at all the way they seemed. I slip my hand into his and allow him to lead me down the aisle, while everyone continues to applaud and cheer.
“What do we do now?” I ask him, forgetting the details of Perry’s carefully mapped-out plan for the afternoon. Sign the wedding license? Give the officiant his fee? Sit for photos? Cocktail hour? Sit-down supper? Dancing? Cake?
“Now?” Cooper looks back at me with a joyous grin. “Now we live happily ever after.”
About the Author
MEG CABOT was born in Bloomington, Indiana. In addition to her adult contemporary fiction, she is the author of the bestselling young adult fiction series, The Princess Diaries. More than 25 million copies of her novels for children and adults have sold worldwide. Meg lives in Key West, Florida, with her husband.
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By Meg Cabot
Overbite
>
Insatiable
Ransom My Heart(with Mia Thermopolis)
Queen of Babble series
Heather Wells series
The Boy series
She Went All the Way
The Princess Diaries series
The Mediator series
The 1–800-WHERE-R-YOU series
All-American Girl series
Nicola and the Viscount
Victoria and the Rogue
Jinx
How to Be Popular
Pants on Fire
Avalon High series
The Airhead series
Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls series
The Abandon series
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE BRIDE WORE SIZE 12. Copyright © 2013 by Meg Cabot, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ISBN 978-0-06-173479-3
EPUB Edition © October 2013 ISBN 9780062134899
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