Page 70 of Sister of the Bride

A pillow wings back through the dark and slaps me in the face. In the four months she’s been back in the attic, her aim has returned.

“I forgive you,” she says. “So we went to Paris for a weekend trip Mackenzie had planned. She’d been several times before, but it was my first time, so we did all the touristy things—cafés and pastries and champagne and the Eiffel Tower. It was perfect. And on the last day, we went to the Musée Rodin, and right there in front ofThe Kiss, she pulled out a diamond ring and asked me to marry her.”

“Wow,” I say. It’s a perfect proposal, especially for Polly, who’s always been a sculpture fan. I knowThe Kissis one of her favorites.

“And I said no.”

I gasp, sitting straight up in bed. “What? Why?”

“Because it seemed fast! And it didn’t seem like me or like part of the course I’d charted for myself.” I let my own words wash back over me as I imagine it—Mackenzie standing there with a ring inpublicwhile my sister said no. “It was awful. We went to dinner after, and the restaurant was expecting a newly engaged couple. There was a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in one of those silver ice buckets by the table.”

“Oh my god, you still went to dinner?”

“Yes! I didn’t want to break up, I just didn’t think I wanted to get married. So I was trying to keep the whole thing together,” Polly says, groaning. “We got back to London and were sort of walking on eggshells, trying to find a way back to normal, when Mackenzie came down with this awful cold. Just coughing and hacking and so much snot—it was disgusting. So of course I went over to take care of her. I brought the good drugs and plenty of Kleenex, and I even emailed Mom to get her chicken noodle soup recipe.”

“Excuse me, youmadesoup?”

“I know. I too was shocked.”

Yeah, both the cooking and the caretaking are wildly out of Polly’s wheelhouse. She has never liked being around illness, and that got worse after Dad died.

“Mackenzie was beside herself because god forbid there was a single task she couldn’t do for herself. The woman is as bad a patient as I am a nurse. But in that moment I knew. I needed to take care of her, and she needed to let me. Forever, if we could. So after she took a twelve-hour Nyquil nap, I askedherto marryme.”

“Holy shit, that’s so romantic!”

“I mean, not totally, because she was stillreallyfull of snot,” Polly says, laughing. “But those are the times when love matters most. When the plans have evaporated and everything is shit, if you can still look at the other person and say, ‘At least I’m going through this shit withyou,’ then you know it’s real.”

I lie in bed, staring at the two remaining glow-in-the-dark stars that are still stuck over my bed with ancient gobs of sticky tack. And even though I want to run through checklists and contingency plans and check the weather for the eleventy billionth time, all I can think about is Toby. Because hasn’t he always been that for me? The one I can go through shit with? The one whose hand I can hold when things go down? In twenty years, I haven’t managed to fuck that up, so why am I so sure that changing the nature of our relationship would automatically nuke things? He already knows my secrets, my fears. He knows how to cheer me up and how to calm me down. He’s always held a piece of my heart in his hands.

Why can’t I just let myself give the rest to him?

Chapter29

Toby

Why was the shoe late for class?

It was tied up!

Sorry, you’re probably asleep

The shoes.

I sit straight up in bed, my heart racing, because I forgot about the shoes.

Polly is due to walk down the aisle in—I fumble for my phone, which is shoved underneath my pillow—seventeen hours, and if I don’t get out of bed and deal with her shoes, it’ll be more like a hobble.

I climb out of bed, avoiding the squeaky floorboard so I don’t wake Polly. I reach into my closet and pull out the first thing I touch, which turns out to be a pink fuzzy knee-length robe with a unicorn hood. I start to search for something a little lessinsanewhen Polly groans and rolls over in bed. I can’t risk waking her up and ruining her pre-wedding sleep, so I shrug the robe on over my T-shirt, grab Polly’s shoes from the box, and fly down the stairs as quickly and quietly as I can.

As soon as I emerge onto the street, I register that it’s a little too cold to be wearing pajama shorts, but my adrenaline takes over, and I plant my butt on the stone stoop and begin to strap my feet into Polly’s heels. They’re navy silk, her something blue, with glass Art Deco brooches on the toes. Very twenties—very Gatsby, if Daisy Buchanan wore three-inch stilettos. They’re beautiful.

Then I stand.

They’re torture.

I start pacing. It’s midnight, but since it’s Friday, there are still a lot of people out on Charles Street, and they’re looking at me like I might be in need of an ambulance. I am, after all, marching up and down the cobblestone sidewalk in black silk sleep shorts of the teeny tiny variety, a hot pink robe with a silver unicorn horn on the hood, and a pair of navy bejeweled high heels.

It’s alotof look.

---