“Him and everyone else I know,” she teases. “It’s our way of life.”
The seamstress pops the final pin out of her mouth. “She’s got a point.”
It’s strange how easily people laugh off weddings and divorces around here. The closer to Malcolm MacLaine’s wedding we’ve come, the more jokes I’ve heard—from everyone. Cyrus. Adair. Even Poppy has made a crack or two, and she’s the optimistic one, usually.
“Of course, you don’t have to come,” Adair says.
“I’m coming, Lucky. Done deal. Unless you want to take someone else.”
She moves behind me, her delicate hands resting on my shoulders, and our eyes meet in the mirror. “Not with how you look in this. Damn, Ford.”
At least she’s pumping up my ego, since she’s going to insist on buying me the suit. She started hinting at it before we left New York. Then, she mentioned the plans for the wedding: a formal afternoon ceremony at a large cathedral in Nashville followed by a reception at the Valmont Country Club. I said yes before I found out that she was in the wedding. She softened the blow by telling me Cyrus and Poppy would be there. We were three weeks into the new semester when she mentioned actually buying a tuxedo.
“You could have told me you were dragging me for a fitting, you know?”
“Would you have come?” she asks.
“I’m just saying that when you get all dolled up and wag your little finger at me to follow you—it gets my hopes up.”
She showed up outside my Finance class wearing a denim skirt too short for January paired with thigh-high suede boots. I should have known she was up to something. That’s what I get for letting my dick do the thinking.
Adair leans forward, lowering her voice so the seamstress doesn’t hear her, “I’ll make it up to you.”
That’s more like it.
Her lips turn down, and it takes me a second to realize the frown glaring back at me in the mirror is due to the ringing of her phone.
“Who could that be?” I ask.
“You only get married for the first time once,” she says through gritted teeth. “I’ll be right back.”
It’s the third time her future sister-in-law has called since we arrived at the Italian suit shop. She darts out of the fitting room to take the call, leaving me to stand awkwardly while the seamstress continues to adjust the fit of my suit. Finally, she steps away, admiring her work.
“It will be ready next week. When do you need to pick it up?”
“The wedding is a week from Saturday,” I say.
“Not a problem.” She makes a note. “Will you be picking it up?”
“I guess.” I wish Adair hadn’t left me to answer these questions. It’s not as if I have much say in any of this. Suddenly, I understand how a trophy wife feels. My job is to put on the tux and look dashing at her side.
“And the bill?”
“Oh, um.” I don’t know what to say.
“You can pay when you pick it up,” she offers. She pulls a yellow sheet off her receipt book and places it on the chair holding my clothes. “Bring this with you when you come. We’ll call when it’s finished. Just take that off and hang it here.”
She leaves and I carefully remove the suit pieces and hang them like instructed. I don’t want to pick up the receipt, but I have to if I want to get to my jeans. I don’t know what a tuxedo costs, and Adair refuses to tell me. I move the yellow paper to the side, but a number catches my eye: a five followed by a few too many zeros. I grab it and look.
I’m still staring at it when Adair returns.
“She needed my opinion on what nail polish we should wear,” she announces. “Apparently, I don’t get to choose.” She waits for me to respond. When I don’t, she stops texting and looks over. The second she sees the receipt, she grabs it from me.
“Have you lost your mind?” I demand. “Five-thousand dollars? For a suit?”
“You’re going to need—”
“I’d have to wear it every second for the rest of my life and be buried in—and I’m still not sure that justifies it.”
She sighs, her shoulders slumping. “Don’t make this a big deal.”
“It is a big deal.” I can’t let her think this is normal. Not for me. “Francie makes that in a month in New York. It’s half the rent on our house. It’s…just…crazy.”
“I have spent the last month meeting with a walking coach so that I look graceful going down an aisle—as if I forgot how to walk. I have been forced to try fifty bites of cake and then spit them out, so I can ‘fit in my dress.’ I am booked for three hours of hair and make-up on the wedding day. And I have to spend this weekend in Ashville pretending that I don’t want to strangle Ginny,” she explodes. “So will you please just let me buy you a tuxedo, so I have something sexy to look at next week to distract me from this shit circus?”
Well, when she puts it like that. My eyebrow lifts. “You think I look sexy?”
Adair’s eyes narrow, her lips flatten into a line, but she can’t stop herself from laughing.
“Sorry, Lucky,” I say, pulling her to me. “I’m trying.”
“I know. Me, too. We’ll get better at this.”
“At what? Being from different sides of the track?”
“At just letting small stuff like this go,” she says.
I open my mouth, about to tell her that I can’t let five-thousand dollars go, but then I shut it. She’s right. Money matters a lot more when you don’t have it. Adair does. I can’t change that. But it doesn’t define who she is, and I know it.
“Now, I think you said something about making this up to me?” I remind her, my head dipping to her neck.
“What do you have in mind?” she murmurs.
“Let me show you.”
I haven’t been to a lot of weddings.
