𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐈 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐒𝐨

"This veil is tryin' to kill me."

Emily yanks the comb out of my hair for the third time, takes a step back, and glares at the offending piece of tulle like it personally insulted her mama. "Who designed this thing? A sadist?"

"Probably," Abigail says from her corner of the room, not looking up from the emergency kit. She's arranging tiny packets of tissues by size now. She finished the bobby pins ten minutes ago. "Wedding industrial complex. They want you to suffer so you'll pay extra for the 'premium' veil."

"There's a premium veil?"

"There's always a premium veil."

Emily points the comb at me. "Stop moving your head."

"I'm not moving."

"You're breathing. Same thing."

I try not to laugh because laughing involves my head moving and Emily might actually stab me with a bobby pin. She's got six of them clamped between her teeth like some kind of hair-dressin' predator, and for someone who cried at a dog food commercial last week, she's terrifying when she's focused.

Abigail finally looks up. "You know, my cousin Tammy paid three hundred dollars for her veil and a bird flew into it during the outdoor ceremony."

"A bird," Emily repeats flatly.

"A whole bird. Just—dive-bombed her head. The photographer got it on film. Tammy's been divorced four years now and she still says the bird was an omen."

"Was it an omen?"

"No, her husband was just an asshole. But the bird didn't help."

I snort and my head moves and Emily makes a sound like a teakettle about to boil. "Lacey Harper, I swear to God—"

"Sorry, sorry." I force myself still, hands folded in my lap, staring at my own reflection in the vanity mirror. It's a nice vanity—old wood, probably been in this church since before any of us were born—and the lights around the mirror are the kind that make everyone look vaguely orange. But right now, with my hair half-done and my cheeks flushed from the heat and the nerves and the champagne Emily snuck in a water bottle an hour ago, I don't look orange. I look happy. Actually happy. The kind of happy that sneaks up on you and settles in before you have time to question it.

"We've known each other how long now?" I ask.

"Since kindergarten," Abigail says immediately. "Mrs. Patterson's class. You ate glue."

"I did not eat glue."

"You put it on a cracker and ate it. That's eating glue with extra steps."

Emily loses it, laughing so hard she nearly chokes on a bobby pin. "Oh my God, I forgot about that. The paste cracker incident."

I groan. "It smelled like mint. I was five. Can we move on?"

"We cannot move on," Abigail says, and now she's fully abandoned the emergency kit, leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed and that smug look she gets when she's about to tell a story at my expense. "You ate the paste cracker and then you threw up on the reading rug and Mrs. Patterson had to call your mama. And your mama showed up in her work uniform—"

"She worked at the diner," I say, and my voice comes out softer than I meant it to. "Waitress. She was always in that yellow uniform with the little apron."

"She walked in," Abigail continues, "looked at you covered in paste and crackers and throw-up, and just—sighed. That sigh. The one that said 'I love you but you are testin' every last nerve I got.' And then she picked you up, puke and all, and carried you out to the car like it was nothing."

The room goes quiet for a beat.

I remember that day. Not all of it—I was five—but pieces. The smell of paste. The reading rug was blue with yellow stars. Mom's hand on my forehead, checking for a fever even though she knew I wasn't sick, I was just stupid. The way she sang in the car on the way home. Some old country song. I can't remember the name of it anymore.

"She was a good mama," Emily says quietly.

"Yeah." I clear my throat. "Yeah, she was."

Abigail reaches over and hands me my lip gloss without me asking. Nude pink. She doesn't say anything about my mom. She just gives me the lip gloss, and that's how Abigail has always done comfort—quiet, practical, there before you even know you need it.

"Alright," I say, shaking off the heavy feeling. "If we're gonna drag up my childhood humiliations, we're draggin' up everybody's. Emily. Fourth grade talent show."

Emily's face goes pale. "No."

"You did a dance routine to 'Oops!... I Did It Again.' Full Britney costume. Red catsuit."

"I was nine!"

"You fell off the stage."

"I tripped on a cable! That cable was a safety hazard!"

"You landed in the principal's lap. Principal Henderson. He spilled his coffee."

Abigail is wheezing now, actual tears forming at the corners of her eyes. "I forgot about that. He had to go to the ER. Mild burns. It was in the school newsletter."

"It was not in the newsletter."

"It was absolutely in the newsletter. My mama saved a copy. I can produce it."

Emily buries her face in her hands but she's laughing too, shoulders shaking. "I hate you both. I have always hated you both. This friendship is a hostage situation."

"Twenty-three years," I say. "We've been doing this for twenty-three years and you haven't escaped yet."

"Stockholm syndrome."

"Probably."

Abigail gets up and comes over to the vanity, nudging Emily aside so she can look at my hair. She tilts my head one way, then the other, tucks a stray curl behind my ear. "This is good. Em, you actually did something right for once."

"Miracle," Emily mutters.

"Okay. Buttons." Abigail gestures at the garment bag hanging on the back of the door. "Let's get this dress on before you're late to your own wedding and your daddy hunts me down."

My stomach does a small, quick clench at the word daddy. I ignore it.

The three of us lift the garment bag down together—it's heavy, the dress is heavy, it's all heavy—and Emily unzips it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for holy relics. The lace catches the light and for a second the whole room looks like it's been dusted with snow.

"Oh," Emily breathes. "Oh, Lacey."

I know. I know.

It's not a princess dress. I didn't want a princess dress. I wanted something that felt like me—fitted through the bodice, lace sleeves that hit just below the elbow, a neckline that's sweet but not childish, a skirt that flows instead of poofs. No sequins. No glitter. Just clean lines and good fabric and the kind of timelessness that makes you feel like you're stepping into something that matters.

I step into it.

Emily handles the sleeves, guiding my arms through. Abigail works the buttons up my spine—forty-seven of them, I counted at the second fitting—and her hands are steady. She's always steady. Even at my mom's funeral, when I was falling apart and Emily was sobbing into my shoulder, Abigail stood there like a stone pillar, holding us both up without a word.

When they finish, they step back.

I turn to the mirror.

The woman looking back at me is beautiful. Green eyes. Freckles. Long wavy brown hair swept up with that crystal hairpin Emily found at the antique shop in the French Quarter. The dress fits like it was sewn onto my body. I look like—I don't know. I look like everything I ever wanted to be.

"Remember senior year?" Emily says, her voice gone thick. "That night we sat on my roof and talked about what our weddings would look like?"

"You said you wanted a beach wedding," I say. "Barefoot. Sunset."

"Abigail said she wanted a courthouse and no guests."

"I stand by that," Abigail says. "Weddings are expensive and people are exhausting."

"And I said I wanted to marry Noah Wilson in that little white church on Magnolia Avenue," I continue. "The same church where my parents got married."

Emily's chin wobbles. "You're marrying Noah Wilson in the little white church on Magnolia Avenue."

"I know."

"How'd we get here, Lacey? How'd we go from paste crackers and Britney Spears routines to this?"

I don't have an answer for that. Twenty-three years is a long time. Long enough to forget the bad parts and hold onto the good ones. Long enough for three little girls from Baton Rouge to grow up into women, to lose people and find people, to sit on roofs and talk about beach weddings and courthouse elopements and churches on Magnolia Avenue.

Long enough to know that Emily and Abigail are not my friends. They're my sisters. The sisters I chose. And no matter what happens today or tomorrow or ten years from now, they'll be the ones standing next to me.

"He's a good man, right?" I ask, and I hate that my voice wavers. "Noah. He's a good man."

"The best," Emily says immediately. "I've known him almost as long as I've known you and I have never once doubted him. He looks at you like you invented oxygen."

Abigail is quiet for a second. Then: "He's a good man. A little awkward, maybe. But good."

"He's not awkward."

"Lacey, freshman year he tried to ask you to homecoming and he handed you a note that just said 'dance?' with a question mark. No other words. Just the word dance and a question mark."

I laugh. "It was cute."

"It was barely literate."

"I still have that note somewhere."

Abigail rolls her eyes but she's smiling, the small smile she does when she's trying not to admit something. "Yeah. He's good. For a boy."

"He's not a boy anymore."

"No. He's not."

I touch the ring on my finger. The diamond catches the light.

"Tell me the proposal story again," Emily says. "I need to hear it. For my emotional state."

"You've heard it a hundred times."

"A hundred and one. Go."

I twist the ring, feeling the weight of it. "We were at the levee. July. Hot as hell, mosquitoes everywhere. He was mid-sentence about something—I don't even remember what, probably baseball stats because it was baseball season—and then he just stopped. Went quiet. Reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the box."

"His hands were shaking," Emily prompts.

"Shaking so hard he almost dropped it. This man played varsity baseball with a dislocated finger and never flinched, and he's shaking over a little velvet box. And he said—" I stop. Swallow. "He said, 'Lacey, I've loved you since I was fourteen years old and I'm gonna love you until I'm a hundred and fourteen and then I'm gonna love you after that too, so will you just—' and then he stopped again and I said yes before he could finish."

"You said yes before he finished asking."

"It's a pattern. I was fourteen behind the bleachers and I'm twenty-eight at the levee and apparently I never learn."

"He asked you to be his girlfriend behind the bleachers?"

"During lunch period. I was eating a peanut butter sandwich. He walked up, all sweaty from gym class, that terrible bowl cut—"

"The bowl cut!" Emily shrieks.

"—and he said 'Lacey, I like you more than baseball' and I think I choked on my sandwich, I don't remember, I just know I said yes so fast he thought I was making fun of him."

"Were you?"

"No. I knew. Even then, I knew."

A knock at the door makes all three of us jump.

The wedding coordinator—Meredith, finally got her name right—sticks her head in, clipboard pressed to her chest like a tiny shield. "Miss Harper? Your father's arrived. He's waiting in the hallway. Says he'd like to see you before the ceremony, if that's alright."

My stomach tightens. A real, physical clench.

"Give us a minute," Abigail says before I can answer. "She'll be right out."

Meredith nods and vanishes.

The room feels smaller now. Hotter. The vanilla candle Emily lit isn't helping.

"Lacey." Emily touches my arm. "You okay?"

I look at the door. My father is standing on the other side of it. Michael Harper. Fifty-eight years old. Salt-and-pepper hair, workman's hands. A man who loves me—I know he does—but who has spent eighteen years reaching for Ava first. Comforting Ava first. Asking me to be patient with Ava, always, every time, no matter what she did or broke or ruined.

Today is my wedding day. Today is supposed to be about me.

But I can feel it. The old pattern. The pull. The way this conversation is going to go—he'll tell me I'm beautiful, he'll tell me Mama would be proud, and then somewhere in there he'll mention Ava. And I'll smile and nod and swallow it down, like I always do.

"Hey." Abigail's voice cuts through. She's standing in front of me now, blocking my view of the door. "You don't have to see him yet. You can wait. You can see him when you walk down the aisle. That's tradition. He walks you down the aisle, not loiters in the hallway."

"I know."

"But?"

"But he's my daddy." I smooth my hands over the front of my dress. The lace is soft. Delicate. I don't want to wrinkle it. "And he's out there. And if I don't go out there now, I'm gonna spend the whole ceremony thinking about it."

Emily and Abigail exchange a look. The look they've been giving each other since kindergarten. The one that means they're deciding whether to let me make my own mistakes or stage an intervention.

"Fine," Abigail says. "But we'll be right here. And if he says one thing about Ava—"

"He's gonna say something about Ava. He always does."

"Then you walk away. You hear me? You don't have to be the strong one today. You're the bride. You get to be the selfish one."

The selfish one. I don't think I've ever been the selfish one. Not once in twenty-eight years.

I walk to the door. Put my hand on the knob. The metal is cool under my fingers. On the other side, I can hear him—his footsteps, heavy and pacing, the particular rhythm of a man who doesn't know what to do with his nervous energy.

My father. Waiting.

I don't turn the knob.

Not yet.

I just stand there, hand on the door, heart beating hard against my ribs, feeling the weight of everything that's about to happen and everything that's already happened and everything I can't take back.