Not Quite a Bride
KIRSTEN SAWYER
KENSINGTON BOOKS.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1 - One Year Earlier
2 - Hangover Pains
3 - The World’s Worst Birthday
4 - The Meltdown
5 - When Molly Met Justin
6 - World’s Worst Sister
7 - The Whirlwind Romance Begins
8 - Introducing Justin
9 - Rescuing Brad, Part One
10 - Rescuing Brad, Part Two
11 - Dinner with Lauren and Rob
12 - Lunch Near Tiffany’s
13 - The Linchpin
14 - Dinner With Brad and Claire
15 - The End of Molly and Brad
16 - A Day With Jamie
17 - Molly Gets Organized
18 - Logan’s Surprise
19 - Telling Justin
20 - Justin Asks for Molly’s Hand
21 - Logan Comes Out
22 - Time to Get Engaged
23 - Molly Is Finally Engaged
24 - Shouting It from the Rooftops
25 - Brunch With the Girls
26 - The Instruction Manual
27 - Molly at The Plaza
28 - Molly Makes a List
29 - She Checks It Twice
30 - Wedding Central
31 - Molly’s Mom Goes Crazy
32 - A Crazy Thing Happens
33 - A White Dress, At Last
34 - Date Number Two
35 - The Much Anticipated Engagement Party
36 - The Real Cheater
37 - Wedding Planning, Shower Planning
38 - Cake Tasting
39 - In Need of a Long, Hot Baby Shower
40 - Tiptoeing Through the Tulips (and Calla Lilies and Hydrangeas)
41 - Christmas Shopping
42 - Too Many Distractions
43 - Registering
44 - Mailing the Invitations
45 - A “Date” With Justin
46 - The Much Anticipated Shower
47 - The Countdown Begins
48 - Two Weeks to Go
49 - One Week to Go
50 - Another Apology
51 - The Rehearsal
52 - The Rehearsal Dinner
53 - The Real Rehearsal
54 - The Very Much Anticipated Wedding Day
55 - The Big Moment
56 - Getting Things Straightened Out
Epilogue
Copyright Page
To David:
Without you, this book could
have been an autobiography.
And
To Jenny:
Without you, this book
couldn’t have been.
Acknowledgments
A big thank you to:
Hilary Rubin for taking a chance on me and working so hard to make this book happen ... I forgive you for abandoning me and am so grateful to Kimberly Whalen for taking me on.
Audrey LaFehr for being an amazing editor, and Amanda Rouse for patiently answering my countless questions.
And, of course, many thanks to my wonderfully supportive friends and family.
Prologue
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Not just cruel words that older relatives and married friends love to throw around at functions where you are in some pastel monster called a bridesmaid’s dress and a friend, sister, cousin, etc., is in something magnificent and white. These are painfully true words that I believe drove me over the edge.
Thirty is not that old ... it’s a perfectly acceptable age to still be single. It’s a good time for a woman to focus on finding herself and building her career. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I told myself that, I still didn’t buy it.
When I was in high school, I truly believed that by the time I was thirty I would be married, the owner of my own home, and the mother of a couple of children. Instead, after three decades of pursuing this life, I was still a single, childless renter, while everyone around me was living my dream. So I decided to take matters into my own hands, and that’s how I ended up where I am today.
Today is my wedding day ... it should be the happiest day of my life. It should be the day that at long last all my dreams are realized and I embark on the love boat to the island of happiness and bliss that everyone else has already been living on. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Instead, this day is worse than I ever imagined it could be. I’m standing in a suite at The Plaza hotel ... no expense has been spared in pursuit of matrimonial perfection. I am wearing my dream—a white (at last!)—Vera Wang strapless wedding gown. My fantasy wedding is minutes away and I’m finally realizing what I have done.
Okay, so I mentioned that I was driven over the edge ... let me take you back and explain the whole thing.
1
One Year Earlier
I’m sitting alone on the subway ... it’s Sunday, so there are hardly any other people. The few people in my car—a woman who looks like she may live there, an athletic couple in workout clothes, and a man with a cranky little girl—are staring at me. I close my eyes and lean my head back ... why wouldn’t they be staring at me? I must look like I came from The Night of the Living Dead prom.
I’m wearing one of the ugliest bridesmaid’s dresses I’ve ever worn ... and that’s saying a lot, because I’ve worn a lot. It’s lavender and chiffon and huge. I think my friend, Maggie, was going for some sort of Gone With the Wind theme ... for her bridesmaids; of course, her own gown was sleek and sophisticated and amazing.
I’ve been in the thing since 2:00 P.M. yesterday when we began the marathon three-hour photo session. My makeup is no longer where it started ... it’s all streaked down my cheeks. My fancy hairdo that I thought had enough spray to go through a wind tunnel looks like some squirrels took up residence and then had a domestic disturbance. And one of my adorable lavender Hype sandals, the only thing about my ensemble that didn’t nauseate me, is missing a heel. I can only imagine what a sight I am.
I’m sure you’re wondering why someone who looks as bad as I currently do would opt for the public humiliation of the subway and not take a private, less shameful taxicab? Well, I had some problems ... let me explain. I guess all the problems can be traced back to one big problem—namely, alcohol. I had too much of it. Then, at 11:00 P.M., the open bar ran out and switched to a no-host bar ... meaning: buy your own booze. At that point I’d already had too much alcohol to accurately judge that a) I didn’t need any more drinks, or b) spending my cab money on rum and Cokes was a really dumb idea. The second problem, and the reason I’m on the subway during daylight hours with other human beings and not in the dead of night, is Kevin (I think it’s Kevin), the extremely handsome (I think extremely handsome) groomsman.
Too much rum and not enough Coke allowed me to think for a brief, blurry moment that perhaps Kevin was “the one” (a common problem for single girls ... every human with a Y-chromosome could be “the one”), and so I joined him in his hotel room for a high-school-caliber make-out session that would have gone farther had another groomsman not been kind enough to pass out in the same room (I am a strong believer that after college it’s wrong to have sex when other people are asleep—or awake, for that matter—in the same room). I ended up passing out in the room as well and didn’t wake up until the pounding in my head got too loud at the crack of dawn this morning when I crept out (without disturbing Kevin, the other groomsman, or the third guy who I didn’t even know had come in) to do the walk of shame.
&
nbsp; Thankfully, we arrive at my stop just as I feel the chunks of last night’s “wedding chicken” start to rise in my throat. You know what I’m talking about, right? The standard hotel chicken, in sickening sauce with smaller-than-usual vegetables to make them fancy and creamier-than-usual potatoes to ensure stomach problems, particularly for anyone in a hoopskirt. I get out of the station as quickly as a girl with a missing heel can and take a deep breath of fresh air. Well, as fresh as Manhattan air gets in July.
As I arrive at my apartment—an apartment I’ve lived in since I graduated from college—I feel enormous relief. It’s only 8:45 A.M., but I think I’ve sweated one or two pints in the three-block walk. I climb up the three flights of stairs and I am living proof of Dorothy’s wise words, “There’s no place like home!”
I absolutely love my apartment, and although it might not be as fancy as some with elevators or doormen, it really is a Manhattan gem. It was my grandmother’s for as long as I can remember. She passed away shortly before I graduated from college and left the unit to my dad. He and my mom agreed that a two-bedroom in a great Upper East Side location was the perfect place for my sister, Jamie, and me to live upon graduation. The plan was that I would live alone until Jamie graduated three years later; then she would move in with me. Only Jamie graduated from college madly in love and got engaged and then married and never moved in. Thankfully, I was able to keep the place all for myself.
The apartment wasn’t the only thing left behind by my beloved grandmother when she died. She left me an extremely generous “wedding fund,” which has been cruelly burning a hole in my pocket. Nana and I had an extremely close relationship, and we both shared a passion for weddings. Nana really started it all. She was a hopeless romantic, married to her high-school sweetheart from the day after their graduation until the day he died. Up until the very end, she still put her wedding dress on every year on her anniversary. According to her, this was so she could relive the happiest day of her life. When questioned by my father why his birth wasn’t the happiest day of her life, all she could do was shrug. She loved weddings. Nana could describe all eight of Elizabeth Taylor’s weddings (and wedding dresses) in detail. She was up at the crack of dawn to watch every second of coverage of Princess Diana’s marriage to Charles, she kept me up late to watch Joanie Cunningham marry Chachi Arcola, and she talked my mother into letting me stay home from school when Luke and Laura were wed.
Ever since the day she presented me with my first Barbie bride doll clad in a miniature white lace gown, she and I had been planning my special day. With Nana, no wish was too indulgent. Together, we planned for five-foot trains and six-foot cakes. All through my adolescence, I believed that these plans could and would come true. I was certain that, like Nana, I would marry my high-school sweetheart. It didn’t turn out that way ... instead I found him having sex with my best friend in the girls’ bathroom at our prom. As I entered my twenties, still alone, I started to have my doubts, but Nana never did. He’s out there, Molly, so you’d better think about these plans now so that you’re ready when you find him, she’d say.
I believed her, and kept planning. As my friends started to marry off, at first it gave me hope. I saw how it was happening to people around me—dreams were coming true—so my day in the sun must be just around the corner. The block kept getting longer and longer, though, and the corner was still nowhere in sight. When my grandmother passed away, a significant portion of my devastation was that she would not be around to share the day that she and I had planned for so many years.
Then my father informed me that Nana had specifically left me an inheritance to be spent on my dream wedding. While I knew the day would never be the same without her physically there, her gift made me feel like whenever Mr. Right came along, my wonderful grandmother would still play an important part in what she promised would be the happiest day of my life. My father was kind enough to help me invest my wedding fund until the day came when I was ready to use it. Thanks to him, what was an extremely generous gift to begin with had grown into what I was quite sure would afford me my dream-fantasy wedding. The only thing missing, of course, was that dream-fantasy guy ...
2
Hangover Pains
I struggle through the door trying to juggle the mail, the hoopskirt and my cat, Tiffany, greeting me with the excitement that only a cat can have toward a massive amount of lavender chiffon. I drop the stuff onto the table and add some kibble to Tiffany’s dish before I drag myself to the bedroom and remove the pastel monster that has been strangling me for twenty-six hours (but who’s counting?). I kick it into the back of my closet where there is a pile of pastel puffiness in a variety of disgusting shades and materials. My cat loves this bridesmaid’s-dress graveyard, so I haven’t had the heart to heave them down the garbage chute or start a bonfire—yet. I’ve been fantasizing about doing it, though.
Other than the “graveyard,” my apartment is adorable. I really love it; it kind of looks like Monica’s apartment on Friends, but less funky and more feminine. I am so happy with it ... the only problem is that if I could ever get a man to want to come upstairs, he’d probably take one look at my pink-and-green Pierre Deux couch and run for his masculinity.
Okay, so now you know my secret ... I’m one of those women. I live alone in an overly feminine apartment with a cat.
I pull a tank top and boxer shorts on (so much better!) and collapse on my bed, not even bothering to pull my Ralph Lauren quilt back or remove the seventy-five bobby pins poking me in the skull.
I don’t stir again for many hours, and by the time I finally do manage to heave my body off the bed it’s starting to get dark. I head back out to the living room, where I am faced with an angry white cat (cats don’t like to be ignored for two days straight) and a stack of mail, which I flip through, only halfway paying attention.
“Wedding invitation, wedding gift thank-you, shower invitation, baby shower thank-you, engagement party ... what?!? When did she get engaged?!?” That gets my attention because it’s the story of my life.
Oh, I should tell you at this point ... I talk to myself, sometimes under the guise of talking to my cat, but sadly, she’s not always in the room. As I’m flipping through the mail, rubbing salt on my wounds, I notice the answering machine blinking and hit the button.
“Time of call: 6:57 A.M.,” the friendly, computerized voice tells me.
“Jeez, who called that early?!?”
Okay ... I also talk to the answering machine man ... and occasionally—all right, often—to TiVo.
“Good Golly Miss Molly ... it’s hard to believe ...”
My mother ...
“... that thirty years ago at this time my first baby was born. Daddy and I love you ... we will see you next weekend for your birthday dinner? I hope you had a lovely time at Maggie’s wedding. Did you meet a man?”
I can hear my father grumbling something in the background, and then my mother hissing something with her hand over the receiver.
“It doesn’t matter if you did or not, ’cause we love you very much, Molly.” CLICK.
Ugh ... I’d kind of forgotten ... and I was kind of trying to keep it from you. Today is my thirtieth birthday. So now you know the rest of the secret ... and I’m sure you have a clear picture of me in your head. Oh, wait ... and did I mention I’m a schoolteacher? There you have me: a single, thirty-year-old schoolteacher who lives with a cat. It’s not what you think, though. I’m not a spinster or old-maidish at all ... at least, I don’t think I am.
“Time of call: 12:04 P.M.”
“Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthda—” a voice sang. CLICK.
My sister, Jamie ... she sings every year. I don’t need to hear it and you definitely don’t need to hear it. Jamie is wonderful, but she’s always happy and upbeat and that can be exhausting. She’s also a schoolteacher (maybe that helps explain why she’s not opposed to leaving musical messages for people?) and so is our mom, just so you understand the genealogy. Jamie and I a
re exactly the same in some ways and couldn’t be more opposite in others. The similarities mean that we are really close but sometimes that can cause us to bicker like we are still little kids ... plus she has some middle-child issues. Jamie is three years younger than I am, she’s much trendier, and she’s way more “cutting edge.” I’m so uncool that I say things like “cutting edge.” People are always shocked when she tells them she teaches third grade, whereas they look at me and nod like it’s an obvious fact. The biggest difference, though, is that she’s married to her college sweetheart. They were together five and a half years before they tied the knot, and if I didn’t love Jamie and her husband, Bryan, so incredibly much, I’d hate them both to death.
“Time of call: 2:42 P.M.”
“Molls, it’s me ...”
“Me” is my best friend, Brad.
“I hope you don’t feel as bad today as you looked last night. Hahaha ... just kidding! Be ready at seven tonight ... I’m coming by to pick you up.” CLICK.
Brad Lawson has been my best friend since the first weekend of rush parties our freshman year of college. We both had bad first experiences with something called jungle juice—it’s a highly potent fraternity concoction that tastes suspiciously like Kool-Aid. Anyway, Brad and I ended up puking our guts out on the same bush outside the Phi Kappa Psi house. He ended up pledging there, and many of our happiest college nights finished up on that same poor hedge. When we met, we were both awkward freshmen, but by senior year my sorority sisters were both thrilled and confused by our strictly platonic relationship. I cannot count how many girls begged to be fixed up with him, thinking he was some kind of California surfer stud. He did grow up in Southern California and has blond hair and blue eyes ... but actually he’s from somewhere called Tarzana in the San Fernando Valley, and he’s never been on a surfboard. He made me swear to keep that a secret, though.
Not Quite A Bride Page 1
