Once I had food in my belly, though, I felt guilty. Not about the food—it was worth every bite. But Caryn had told me her friends were awful, and instead of being the honest voice of reason, I had sided with them when they didn’t like a really spectacular and different dress. I wondered if Caryn actually hadn’t loved the simple one or if she was responding to the immediate rejection from the wicked bridesmaids of the west.
Did you find anything you liked? I texted her that night. The three dots appeared to tell me she was typing, then disappeared. They reappeared, then disappeared again. You okay? I asked after that happened the fourth time.
My phone rang, with her name and picture on the screen.
“What’s up?” The sound that greeted me was familiar—but not from Caryn. I had never seen her cry, not even when her last boyfriend broke up with her on the night she had thought he was going to propose. “Hey. What happened?”
It was another minute before she was composed enough to talk. “I hate wedding dresses,” she said finally.
“But you love wedding dresses. What happened after I left?”
“I’m fat. And I hate my friends. And Olivia told me my mom was really hurt that I didn’t bring her today, but I asked her if she wanted to come and she said she was busy.”
I wanted to slap all four of those girls, and I wanted to slap myself even harder for catering to their opinions. “Caryn, you are gorgeous. And if your friends are trying to make you feel bad about how you look, they’re not your friends, they’re jealous assholes.” She sniffled. “But seriously, though, why are they in the wedding if you don’t like them?”
“It’s complicated. If they aren’t, then they won’t speak to me anymore.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“If Greg wasn’t Caroline’s brother, maybe not. But—” She stopped talking.
“But?” I asked gently.
She didn’t respond for long enough that I checked to make sure I hadn’t dropped the call. Then she sighed. “I’ve never told anyone this.”
I waited.
“You know how my dad died when I was twelve.” I did. Her mom had remarried a man who had more money than he knew what to do with about six years ago, which Caryn had exceptionally mixed feelings about. “Well, he didn’t have life insurance. And he left us in a lot of debt. My mom—she—she still wanted us to fit in at school. And still go to the private school. So we faked it. A lot.”
I wasn’t sure where she was going with this. Who cared if she didn’t have as much money as people thought? I didn’t grow up rich and turned out fine. But she clearly expected a response, so I murmured, “Okay.”
“I know it’s not a good reason or anything, but I just—I’ve spent almost twenty years trying to fit in with these girls. I don’t know how to stop now.”
I started to tell her that you just stop. Life gets less complicated when you’re not worried what the mean girls think of you. But something else dawned on me before I could get the words out.
“Caryn—do you actually love Greg?”
She started crying again. “I do. That’s probably the worst part. It’d be so much easier if I were just marrying him because he has money and my kids would never have to go through what my sister and I did, but that’s not it. I actually do love him. Which means Caroline is in my life forever.”
I was quiet for a long time, trying to figure out the right thing to say. “What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t feel good in any of the dresses today and they all want me to wear a mermaid dress, but I don’t like how my butt looks in those and they don’t care. I think they want me to look fat.”
“Your butt is perfect,” I told her. She started to argue, but I cut her off. “What do you want your dress to look like?”
She hesitated. “I liked the cut of that simple one today, but I didn’t like how plain it was.”
“Okay. That’s a start.” I gave myself a mental high five for my insight. “What would dress it up better? Lace? Beading? Feathers?”
“That feathered thing was awful.”
“Thank God you said it.”
“I looked like a bird.”
“But a really hot bird.”
I could hear the smile in her voice when she replied. “Thank you.”
“You know, that could be an awesome way to put them in their place once you’ve picked your dress.”
“What could?”
“Feathered bridesmaid dresses.”
Caryn let out a choked chuckle. “Oh God. Can you imagine? But I’d be punishing you too.”
“Can I drop from the ceiling in a cage and sing a song in my feathered dress?”
“Uh, Lily, have you been to a wedding before?”
“Of course. But that would have livened any of them up!”
Caryn finally laughed for real. “This is why I need you as a bridesmaid.”
“I love you, you silly feathered goose,” I told her. “Now go do something that has absolutely nothing to do with wedding dresses tonight, okay? Maybe even eat some carbs!”
“That won’t solve the feeling fat in white dresses problem.”
“You’re right. Because that’s in your head and you need a shrink for that one. Which I’m not. But if you complain that you’re fat again, I’m shoving a cheeseburger in your mouth.”
When I got off the phone, I logged into my newly created Pinterest account and found Caryn. In addition to her wedding dress board, she had boards for juice cleanses, weight loss tricks, general wedding ideas, wedding colors, wedding favors, arm-toning exercises, and bridal showers. I glanced at my reflection in the mirror over my dresser. I held up an arm and shook it, watching for inordinate jiggle. Eh, I thought. No one was going to mistake my body for Jennifer Aniston’s, but my arms were okay. I clicked onto her wedding dresses board to see what I could find.
I scrolled for about twenty minutes trying to find something resembling what we had seen earlier, but fancier, without any luck. I did, however, notice one dress was repeated on the board. Three times, in fact. There were different pictures of the same dress, two on the same model, one on a different model. All pinned from different sources.
I wouldn’t have called it a simple dress—it was covered in lace and had a sash at the waist, with a corset top that drew attention to the upper back rather than the derriere. It looked nothing like the twenties-style dress that I had loved, but I could see the appeal for Caryn. It was a slim cut through the hips, then didn’t flare exactly, but wouldn’t accentuate her butt.
Clicking on the image of the dress itself took me to the designer’s page, and I eventually found a “where to buy” link. A salon in DC carried the designer, although it didn’t say if that exact dress would be there. It was Saturday night, so the shop would be closed. Their website said they were closed on Sundays, too, so I could call first thing Monday morning. An idea began to bloom.
Monday morning, I waited until the shop opened at ten, then peeked around my office door to make sure Caryn was nowhere nearby before shutting my door and calling. I asked about the specific dress she had pinned three times and was told that they had it. “Great! I’ll try to bring the bride by this week!”
“We offer time slots by appointment only.”
“Oh. Um. When’s your next available appointment?”
“We just had a cancellation for tomorrow. Otherwise the next available is a week from Thursday.” I snagged the eleven o’clock appointment for the next day, only then realizing that if the dress wasn’t good on her, my secret machinations would probably hurt more than they would help. But, I rationalized, if the dress was good, I had just freed up the next two weekends and made dress shopping less complicated.