Page 80 of Sister of the Bride

Yes, from you, you adorable nerd!

Toby

See you at 6pm? At our spot?

Pippin

Wouldn’t miss it

Happy Anniversary from I-To-Do!

The email makes my inbox ding, interrupting my latest expense report. Without thinking, I click the little icon to open it.

Happy one-year anniversary of beginning your wedding planning journey with I-To-Do! We love that you trusted us with the happiest day of your life. We wanted to let you know that there are even more happy days ahead with I-To-Do; we can help you plan your baby shower, an anniversary party, or even a vow renewal (it’s never too early to think ahead!).

I groan and click unsubscribe before sending the email whooshing straight to the digital trash can. I amoutof the wedding planning business.

I navigate back to my expense report, the only part of working at Ladl, Nate Hawkins’s consulting group, that I don’t absolutely love. But it’s a necessary companion to all the travel I get to do. My suitcase lies open next to my desk, half unpacked from my last trip to Nashville and ready to be repacked for next week’s job in San Francisco.

Nate offered me the job the week after the wedding, and I was happy to start as soon as we passed the keys over to Kelleher. I shadowed another consultant for a month before I was given my first client, a small French bistro in Indianapolis that was bleeding money because of a bloated wine list and a menu that left little room for error. I worked with them to streamline and refine the menu and hired a kick-ass new chef from Montreal. The five-star review from theIndy Staris now framed and hanging over my desk.

My phone dings with a reminder to get ready, so I close out of my expense report and head to my closet, pulling out the dress I found in a vintage shop on a recent Chicago trip. It’s a pale robin’s-egg-blue minidress with an A-line skirt, a nipped-in waist, and peasant sleeves. Very mod Marianne Faithfull vibes, and slipping into it brings me so much joy. Toby and I have been to a few more hospital galas together, and it’s been fun expanding my closet beyond kitchen clothes. Sure, it’s not a fire-engine-red sex dress, but I don’t find myself needing a vacation from being Pippin very often these days.

I fluff my curls and push them back with a black satin headband, then slip into a pair of black flip-flops for the walk to meet Toby, my shoes dangling from my fingers.

The walk from our new apartment in Back Bay is short. Toby and I lucked out with finding the rental—one of the attendings at the hospital was vacating it for a house with a yard in Belmont. It’s part of a chopped-up brownstone, and our living room and kitchen were once the ballroom of the old Brahmin mansion. It’s grand and kooky, with windows looking out over the Charles River and the Esplanade, and the only thing that’s better than the apartment is that I get to live in it with Toby.

It’s almost six p.m. on a gorgeous June evening; the sun is still high in the sky, but the heat of the day has long burned off, the breeze from the river gentle and cooling. The Public Garden is crowded with tourists, commuters leaving work, people enjoying picnic dinners in the grass, and couples on dates. But I glide through the crowd effortlessly until I find him.

He’s leaning his elbows on the railing of the bridge, gazing down at the still water below. He’s wearing that dangerously tailored black suit that turns me into a puddle of want.

As if he can sense me, he rises and turns, beaming at me with a wide grin that sends joy bursting out of his very being.

“You ready?” I ask him.

“Oh, I’vebeenready,” he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a kid on Christmas.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Polly says, squeezing around a family taking a photo on the bridge. “I’m falling down on the job, but this freshman showed up to office hours in tears begging for an extension, and— Oh, hell, it doesn’t matter. Here you go!” She passes me a small bouquet of white peonies and pale pink roses. She canceled her evening class at Tufts, where she’s an associate professor of art history, just to be here. “You know, when I promised to return the favor, I didn’t think it would be this easy. I feel like I still owe you.”

“Don’t worry, we’re square,” I tell her, pulling her in for a hug. “This is exactly what I wanted.”

“Should we get this show on the road?” Nonna asks.

“I think time is of the essence since this isn’t exactly, you know, legal,” Mom adds.

“Can we at least ask those tourists to move?” Toby’s mother asks, eyeing a middle-aged couple in fanny packs, brand-new Red Sox caps, and Wicked Pissah T-shirts.

“Mom, relax, just let them do this their way,” Toby’s oldest sister, Siobhan, says.

There’s some more chatter as everyone moves into place. Mom and Nonna pull Polly and Mackenzie toward them to my right, while Toby’s parents, sisters, and their families form a very well-dressed mob to his left. And between us stands Fernando, now head chef of the all-new Marino’s, who got ordained online just for us. I decide to stay in my flip-flops and drop my heels onto the ground. Might as well be comfortable.

“Yeah, let’s start, because I love you guys, but I’m not getting arrested for you,” Fernando says, pulling up the script on his phone. “Dearly beloved—”

“Skip to the good part,” Toby says, cutting him off, never taking his eyes off me.

Everyone laughs, and the crowd around us begins to catch wind of what we’re doing.

“Do you, Toby, take Pippin to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have—”

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