“Yes. Abigail Kirsch,” Miss Davidson suddenly looked nervous.
“I’ll need to see some of her work, and not in a photo book or online. I want it delivered to me and Mr. Sterling sometime next week. I’ll give you the address.”
“Miss Ross,” Miss Davidson shifted her weight from foot to foot, “I can assure you that Miss Abigail Kirsch is the best caterer in all of New York City.”
“And I can assure you that I’ll be the judge of that. If she’s amazing we’ll keep her, but I have guests with all types of palettes so we may need to bring other chefs on board.”
“What do you mean, Miss Ross?”
“I mean that I’ve spoken to other chefs who would love to cater my wedding, and they’re willing to be here in person. From what I understand, Miss Kirsch may not be available the day of my wedding. I need someone who can give each meal personal attention, not a bunch of bumbling staff members and a junior chef.”
“Miss Ross, if you and Mr. Sterling choose this venue, and I hope you will,” Miss Davidson blinked rapidly, “I can assure you that Miss Kirsch will be here with her best team members and attend to every single detail.”
“She better be. Can I borrow your notebook for the address?”
“Certainly.”
The driver shut the door behind Selena and she leaned against the window. We’d tasted over thirty wedding cakes, walked through five other venues, and visited two floral houses—all in perfect view of the paparazzi.
“Matt?” Selena reached over and touched my arm. “Can you do one more craving run before you go? There’s a CVS three blocks up.”
“We did one this morning!”
“But we won’t see each other again until next week. Unless—”
“No. Once a week until the wedding, Selena. A couple of hours with you are already torture enough.”
She frowned, but I didn’t care. Until my lawyers found a loophole in that contract, I was limiting my time with her to once a week. Even that was beginning to feel like too much.
“Do you read The New York Appeal?” she sighed.
“Sometimes. Why?”
“There was this amazing piece about being left at the altar today,” she reached into her purse and pulled out the paper. “The woman who wrote it is a hell of a writer. I was thinking we could get her to write about our wedding!”
Melody?
“I don’t think that would be a good—”
“Of course it is!” she flipped the paper open. “My new publicist says Melody Carter has the most readers in the city.”
“You fired another publicist?”
“Yes! The last one was starting to think she and I were friends. Please.”
“It’s hard to believe you were once a likable person,” I snatched the paper from her and began reading: “Dear New York, “A little over a month ago, I was standing at the altar, ready to be married. I wholeheartedly believed that the man standing across from me was the love of my life, that I’d finally found my Prince Charming.
“I thought that all those years of believing in love, all those years of wishing I was a character in the romantic comedies—the good ones, not the instant fluff types that Hollywood serves up these days—had come to an end.
“However, I realized that not only was I finally emulating a woman from a romantic comedy, I was emulating the woman that no bride wanted to be: the woman who gets left behind at the altar, for another woman, in front of everyone.
“I realized that I had never thought about that woman when I watched the movies. I was too busy rooting for the one who stole the groom’s heart.
“In most of those movies, the jilted bride is just a minor character, an insignificant vehicle used to move the subplot forward. She’s even made out to be an awful person, someone who never deserved to be married to the nice and handsome male lead in the first place.
“While the man and the real love of his life embrace and begin their new life together, the jilted bride is barely given a half second of camera time before the credits roll.
“What happens to that woman who was left behind? What happens to the honeymoon, the well-wish gifts, and the wedding dress?
“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you exactly what I did with them.
“The day of the wedding, after I recovered from fainting, I cried. I told my family to leave me the hell alone and I checked into a Doubletree to cry some more.
“While my mom was arranging to have the gifts and decorations shipped to Memphis, I was sitting on the floor of a hotel room, bawling in a custom Vera Wang gown.
“I sat like that for four more days. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or think. All I could do was cry.