determine if he was gay or straight, but I knew I liked him. Otherwise his hands with their black-polished fingernails wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near my hair.
“Are you thinking up or down?” he asked once he’d worked through all the knots of my just-woken bedhead.
“Kimberly wanted up.” I rolled my eyes and shrugged.
“Yeah, well, Kimberly also wants to be Donald Trump’s ninth wife and wants a pony dusted with platinum to bring her a Park Avenue white knight. I asked what you wanted.”
The three other stylists once again stopped dead, this time gawking at Carter instead of me.
Yeah, I really liked him.
“Can you make a ponytail look fancy?”
“Sweetie, I could make a rat tail look fancy. You leave this to me.”
We were almost finished with our hair when the makeup team arrived. By that point Eugenia had been coaxed into a chair and her long dark hair had been transformed into something youthful but elegant. Mercedes’s unruly curls had been softened and turned into sophisticated, old-Hollywood waves. Brigit’s mane had been left long and straight. Her stylist had just backcombed the crown and pinned it back with a sparkly, canary-yellow barrette.
Kellen was the only girl to opt for an updo. As she explained it, “Any opportunity for an updo is a good one.” Braids trailed back from her temples, and a woven gold headband had been pinned in, resulting in a messy Greek-inspired style that made her cheekbones more prominent and her neck appeared longer somehow.
Carter, true to his word, had made my standard ponytail pass as wedding appropriate. He’d tamed my curls and added some sort of pomade that made them look like they were edged with gold. Several small braids were hidden in the mix, each one threaded with gold wire to both strengthen it and make it more beautiful. He’d wrapped the base of the side ponytail with my own hair so there was no tacky elastic in sight.
When hair and makeup were done, Kimberly re-emerged carrying several garment bags.
She took one glance at me and frowned at Carter. “I thought we agreed on an updo?”
“I am at the mercy and whims of the bride,” he replied without skipping a beat.
“Secret?” she asked.
“I forced him.”
Kimberly sighed, clearly bested by our ponytail conspiracy. She hung up the two white garment bags and unzipped them to reveal two identical short yellow chiffon dresses. She pointed to Eugenia. “Let’s get you fitted, please.”
On cue, a frazzled-looking woman with a gray bun entered the room, followed by three hotel porters laden with more dress bags. The smaller ones each bore a label to indicate which of my girls was wearing which, and the porters hung them behind the appropriate women.
The really big one was mine, and the woman with the bun hung it from the closet door.
“Ladies, can we get you dressed, please? The photographer would like everyone dressed before we put Miss McQueen in her gown.” Kimberly was in full-on planner mode. Now was not the time for jokes.
The girls quickly vacated their chairs and took turns in the suite’s bathroom changing into their dresses. Eugenia fit the last-minute size six without any serious pinning or sewing from Nancy the seamstress. Sooner than I would have liked, four yellow-clad women were sitting side by side on the couch sorting out the sunflower and daisy bouquets and commending Kimberly for ordering a “just in case” spare.
It was when Kimberly unzipped the big Kleinfeld bag to reveal my dress that, for lack of a better term, shit got real.
The photographer snapped pictures of the dress hanging in the window, with the curtains parted so the New York skyline glittered in the background.
I swallowed hard. “I’m getting married.”
“Duh,” Brigit offered.
I stared down at the giant diamond on my ring finger and wiggled it off to put it on the opposite hand like I was supposed to, so Lucas would have no trouble slipping the wedding band on.
The wedding band.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “I’m getting married.”
The girls all looked at each other uneasily, not sure how to respond to this little aha moment I was having. I picked up my phone, checking to see if Lucas had sent me any texts to see how the prep was going.
Nothing.
He was pretty old-fashioned when it came to weddings though. Knowing him, he probably thought texting the bride right before the ceremony was as bad as seeing her. I put the phone back on the vanity then got out of my chair and approached my gown as