Royal Wedding - Meg Cabot Page 0,70
her equally artistic, flexibly-scheduled friends to do that).
“Um, we’re going to look at bridesmaid dresses to get inspiration for Sebastiano,” I said. “There’s a shop out there someone told us about. I hear they have amazing mother-of-the-bride dresses. Do you want to come?”
Fortunately the lighting in the limo is pretty dim, so Mom didn’t notice my nostrils or eyelid. Also I knew she’d be so turned off by the words “shop” and “mother-of-the-bride dresses” there was no way on God’s green earth she’d ever want to join us.
“Oh, no, sweetheart, but thank you so much for the invitation,” she said, smiling warmly. “I really can’t afford to take any more time away from the new painting I’m doing. I’m calling it Woman with a Weed Wacker. I’m hoping it will break new ground in the battle against the Men’s Rights Activists.”
“Oh, no problem, Mom,” I said. “The new painting sounds amazing. Good luck with it.”
“Thanks, Mia. But send me some photos! I’d love to see what kind of dresses you girls find.”
Great. So now when we get to New Jersey, we’re going to have to find some store that sells bridesmaid dresses and look at them, in order to take photos to send to my mom.
Although Lilly said there’s another way to accomplish this. She started looking up bridesmaid dresses online so we can send those to my mom instead.
“Oh, look, Mia. One shoulder empire waist in electric green. Mia, please can you get Sebastiano to go with one shoulder empire waist in electric green as our bridesmaid dresses? I’m begging you.”
Naturally, this got Tina upset. “Stop it, Lilly. Your best friend—who is marrying your brother—has made a life-altering discovery. She has a sister she never knew existed, a little girl who’s grown up without a father or a mother, and you’re sitting there joking about electric green bridesmaid dresses? Really?”
Lilly looked a little ashamed of herself . . . at least until Tina went on to add, “Besides, you know I look terrible in green. That cream color that Sebastiano picked out for us this morning is going to be really flattering on all of our skin tones, even if it’s derivative of what Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, chose for the bridesmaids in her wedding to Prince William, and I think we need to stick to it. Even Trisha liked it, and you know she hates everything that isn’t made out of black lace stretch lycra—”
I’m seriously going to check myself into a rehab center for stress and anxiety after this, I swear to God.
“Can we please stick to the subject?” I demanded. “Once we get to Cranbrook, here’s what I’d like to do: go to Olivia’s uncle’s business to talk to him—and the aunt—like normal, rational adults about my meeting my sister. Nothing accusatory, nothing confrontational. Just ‘Hi, hello, I’m Mia Thermopolis. Would it be okay with you if I meet your niece?’ Then we can go from there.”
“Oh,” Lilly said. “Okay. That seems like a great idea, especially without any sort of advanced planning or consulting your lawyers or your dad or anything first.”
“It will be fine,” I assured her. “It’s not like I haven’t been trained in the art of diplomacy.”
“Right!” Lilly laughed over her whiskey sour. “By your grandmother, the queen of tact!”
“We’re two separate generations,” I said. “We might do things differently, but we still get things done.”
“And the aunt might not even be aware her husband is using her niece’s money to buy bulldozers to send to Qalif,” Tina pointed out. “She could be perfectly innocent in the whole thing.”
“Exactly, Tina.”
Lilly laughed some more. “Oh, my God. You two are so naïve. It’s like watching Bambi and Thumper go after Tony Soprano.”
Lilly is such a pessimist.
Oh, great, the car is finally moving.
CHAPTER 48
12:37 p.m., Wednesday, May 6
Somewhere on Interstate 295
Rate the Royals Rating: 7
Tina is reading aloud from J.P.’s dystopian YA novel, Love in the Time of Shadows, which she downloaded to her phone.
Lilly is laughing so hard she says she’s going to wet her pants.
I’m not finding it very amusing, particularly as the heroine, “Amalia,” has light gray eyes and long sandy blond hair, which gets whipped around a lot in the unforgiving desert wind.
But I suppose hearing J.P.’s book read aloud is better than the alternative, which was listening to Tina play all of the voice mails Boris has left her recently, swearing that he was never unfaithful, and begging her to take him back. Some of them were accompanied by