I stare at him. “Why shouldn’t I be?” Then, when I see him rolling his eyes, I say, “Oh, come on, Chaz. Not your horse thing again. For your information, Luke is doing very well in his classes, and, furthermore, he seems ready to take our relationship to a new level.”
Chaz raises his eyebrows. “Threesome?”
I smack him in the center of his baseball cap. “He’s gotten me a Christmas present,” I say, “that he says is an investment toward my future.”
Chaz’s eyebrows furrow in a rush. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What else could it mean?” I ask. “It has to be an engagement ring.”
Chaz frowns. “He hasn’t told me about buying any ring.”
“Well, he’s hardly likely to,” I say, “considering what he knows you’ve recently been through. Do you really think he’s going to brag about getting engaged to me when he knows your girlfriend just left you for a woman?”
“Thanks,” Chaz says. “You really know how to make a guy feel great.”
“Well, you aren’t exactly Mr. Charm yourself,” I say, “with the whole Luke-not-being-a-horse-you-would- bet-on thing. But you’re probably feeling differently about all that now, aren’t you?”
“Truthfully?” Chaz shakes his head. “No. An investment toward your future could be anything. Not necessarily a ring. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, kid. I mean—no offense—the two of you aren’t even spending the holidays together. What does that say about your big happily ever after?”
“Chaz.” I regard him steadily from across the booth before I slide out and leave. “I know Shari hurt you. I frankly can’t believe she did that, although I know it really wasn’t easy for her and she does feel super badly about it. But seriously. Just because your romance didn’t work out doesn’t mean all romances are doomed. You just need to get back out there, find some pretty philosophy Ph.D. candidate you can talk to about Kant or whatever, and you’ll feel better about things. I promise.”
Chaz just stares at me. “Someday you’re really going to have to describe to me in more detail what life is like on the planet you live on. Because it sounds really great, and I’d like to visit there one day.”
I give him a sour smile, and leave the booth, just as the dwarf breaks into his signature piece, “Don’t Cry Out Loud.”
I hope Chaz takes a cue from him.
Makeup
Many brides opt to have their makeup professionally done on their wedding day. This is often a good idea— if there is a professional doing it, then that’s one less thing the bride has to worry about going wrong.
However, too many brides who opt for professional makeup on the big day end up looking as unlike their normal selves as relatives lying in a casket whose faces have been done over by a mortician. Make sure you and your cosmetic specialist are on the same page about color, amount, and shade… and make sure he or she uses a light hand. Yes, you want to look good for your photos—but you also want to look natural and pretty up close to your guests as well. A talented professional makeup artist can easily achieve both.
Some makeup tips to remember:
—Have your first meeting with your makeup professional four weeks before your event. That will give the two of you plenty of time to come up with a look with which you are both happy.
—Your makeup should not be so heavy that your neck and face are two visibly different shades. BLEND!
—You will be shiny on your wedding day from nerves and possibly the heat. Make sure you and your bridesmaids have plenty of blotting tissues on hand, as well as powder.
—Curling your eyelashes with a heated curler can create lasting oomph for the eyes.
—Be sure to use waterproof mascara—you will be crying. Or at least sweating.
—Under-eye concealer will hide any dark circles from a restless night’s sleep.
—And lastly, opt for lipstick that stays on permanently—you will be using your mouth to kiss, eat, and drink throughout the day/evening, and you don’t want to have to stop for constant reapplications of your favorite shade.
LIZZIENICHOLSDESIGNS™
Chapter 22
Foul whisp’rings are abroad.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English poet and playwright
It didn’t take long for the press to figure out where Jill Higgins was meeting her new mystery pal—though I managed to keep my own picture out of the tabloids by not walking her to her car anymore.
In no time word was out all over town that Jill Higgins, the bride of the wedding of the century, was using Monsieur Henri as her personal certified wedding-gown specialist. The next thing anybody knew, we were beating off the hordes of brides descending on the little shop demanding that we work on their gowns, as well. Jean-Paul and Jean-Pierre had to be employed as doormen/bouncers to keep the paparazzi out, and the brides coming in.
Any residual resentment the Henris might have felt toward me for not letting on that I knew French fell by the wayside when they realized they were booking so many appointments with desperate brides, they had to buy a two-year calendar.
Not that either Henri had laid so much as a finger on Jill’s dress since she’d brought it in. Monsieur Henri had tried after I told him my plan, telling me that it could never be done and that I was going to get sued by John MacDowell’s mother.
His wife, however, calmly lifted the gown from his fingers and handed it back to me, with a gentle, “Jean. Let her get to work.”
Which I appreciated. Especially considering the “stupid” remark. She had evidently changed her mind, and now the dress—Jill’s dress—hung on a special hook in the back of the workroom, where every day I flung back the sheet that covered it, took in what I’d done the day before, and what I needed to get done in the next few hours, freaked out, then got to work.
They say it’s always darkest until right before the dawn. I’ve worked on enough projects to know how true this saying really is. A week before Christmas—I’d promised to have Jill’s dress done by the day before Christmas Eve, so there’d be time for any last-minute alterations before the ceremony on New Year’s Eve—I was sure the dress would never get done on time… or worse, that it would get done but look awful. It’s no joke making a size twelve out of a size six. Monsieur Henri had been right to say such an undertaking was impossible.
Except it wasn’t. Impossible, I mean. It was just really, really hard. It required hours of backbreaking seam snipping, even more of sewing, and the consumption of many, many, many diet Cokes. I was in the shop from two-thirty in the afternoon—as soon as I could make it there after my shift at Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn, still my only paying gig—until midnight, sometimes even one in the morning, at which point I would stagger home, fall into bed, and wake at six-thirty the next day to shower and dress and go back to the law firm. I rarely if ever saw my boyfriend, let alone anyone else. But that was all right, because Luke was just as busy studying for his finals. If he hoped to finish his postbac program in a year, he had to cram as many classes as he could into each semester, which meant he had four finals to worry about—basically the academic equivalent of making a size-six dress into a size twelve.
But even though I haven’t seen much of my boyfriend in the past few weeks, I’ve seen plenty of the box he placed under the tiny Christmas tree he bought on the street—complete with a miniature stand—and put in front of the windows, so the twinkling lights he wrapped around it could shine down on Fifth Avenue. I saw it (the box, I mean) the minute I stepped through the door one night after a long, painful battle with the tartan on Jill’s dress. It was kind of hard to miss—again, I’m talking about the box.
