“I think so,” Charlotte said, giving her cousin a nod.
“That’s too bad.” Lola waved a hand toward the bartender on the far end of the ballroom, then put two fingers up. After a pause, there was a pop of a champagne bottle and the sound of glasses being filled. “Well, while she stews over her decisions, I guess that leaves the rest of us time to drink up,” she said.
Charlotte laughed. “I wanted to be clear-headed for the ceremony and the party, but what the heck? Who knows what will happen next.”
When the bartender arrived with their drinks, almost everyone else—Claire, Amanda, Susan, Scott, Tommy, Zach, and Christine—demanded their own glasses. The bartender hustled back and returned with a number of champagne bottles.
When everyone had a drink in-hand, and Audrey had a little glass of bubbly water, Charlotte lifted her glass toward them.
“I want to thank all of you for your help over the past few weeks. I couldn’t have done it without you. I don’t know what will happen in the next few hours, but I guess, beyond anything, we can get drunk.”
Everyone laughed and cheered and drank down their first of probably many glasses. At that moment, the doors burst open, and the sound of clicking cameras out near the curb filled the air.
“They’ve arrived,” Christine said ominously.
And so they had.
Charlotte had never been particularly fascinated with the idea of being famous. In her mind, some of the best parts of being alive happened outside the allure of the camera. They were the in-betweens: Jason, delivering her a morning cup of coffee and a soft kiss on the forehead, for example, or Rachel, scratching her back when she couldn’t quite reach.
As the celebrities, the same from last night and several more who had only just arrived on the island that afternoon, poured into the ballroom, they feasted on the view of the immaculate ballroom with eyes that seemed to know, already, how many Instagram likes this kind of party would get them. They posed with one another near the Christmas trees, puffing out their lips for each photo and sucking in their tummies. Charlotte eyed Rachel for a second, praying that watching these girls perform like this wouldn’t change her own opinion about her body. She was beautiful, just the way she was, and always would be.
In the midst of the sea of celebrities, friends, and family of the bride and groom, Everett appeared. He wore this goofy grin that was no less attractive than his normal one, and he lifted his camera to snap several photos of the Sheridan and Montgomery clan as he approached.
“Look at you guys. You’re hardly working at all,” he teased.
“Not much to do,” Christine said. “Zach’s hard at work on the meal, but the rest of us are lying in wait to see if there’s going to be a wedding at all.”
Everett peered out at the crowd. “There’s going to be something. I don’t know if it’ll be a wedding. But it’ll be something.”
“How did it go with Orion?” Charlotte asked.
“He poured me a drink of whiskey,” Everett said with a laugh. “And me and the boys from the basketball team had a few really heartfelt conversations about life. To be honest with you, it was one of the stranger afternoons of my life.”
“I’m right there with you on that one,” Charlotte replied.
“Have you seen Ursula?” Everett asked.
The words basically summoned her.
Suddenly, Ursula herself, this gorgeous creature in a wedding gown with such fine beaded detail that it had taken the designer several months of his life to create, appeared in the doorway of the ballroom. Her hair was whipped around, a bit wild from her stint on the beach, but it looked as though someone—probably her mother—had touched up her hair and make-up as much as possible.
As Ursula was the most famous one of all of them, the people in the ballroom turned toward her and cheered. Ursula didn’t give them any kind of smile. She looked on the verge of collapsing.
Instead, she reached out to grab a completely full champagne bottle from a tray of a passing server. The server blinked at her, in shock, but stepped away quickly as Ursula lifted the champagne bottle in the air. She looked a lot like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, Charlotte thought. Ready to lead the charge.
“I have an announcement to make!” Ursula cried out to the crowd before her.
Nobody spoke. Charlotte’s stomach clenched.
“The wedding is off!” Ursula finished, before knocking her head back and drinking the champagne straight from the bottle. Again, silence filled the room until she finished and swallowed. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t party!” she continued.
At this, every single person—including the Sheridan and Montgomery clan—roared.
“Wooo!” Audrey cried, wrapping her hand around her mouth to make it louder.
Charlotte burst into laughter. Tears fell down her cheeks. What the heck? After all she had been through? It had come to this? Beside her, Everett continued to take as many photos as possible. When she turned toward him, she said, “What’s the use? It’s not like Wedding Today will feature the photos, right? I mean, the wedding is off.”
Everett shook his head, his smile widening. “Actually, Charlotte, I think Wedding Today will happily take these photos. This wedding? It’s going to go down in history. It’ll make the magazine sell millions of copies. And you? You’ll be known as the wedding planner behind it. I mean, look at what you did here. This ballroom, that dining hall over across the way? The décor is brilliant. The wedding would have been wonderful. And you did your job brilliantly!”
“But nobody will ever see it,” Charlotte said, feeling foolish about her own sadness.
Everett shrugged. “You know that nothing is quite as good as we build it up in our heads to be.”
Charlotte didn’t know whether to laugh or cry now. She shook with emotion, but still wore a huge smile. She thought back to her own wedding to Jason—how she had
