Page 1 of Little Gray Dress

Chapter One

Present Day

Dallas, Texas.

A Bad Dress

“It won’t zip.” I look over my shoulder trying to see just how much of a gap there is in the zipper.

The seamstress pulls open the curtain and peeks in. “Ohh…” She taps her lips with her forefinger. “Maybe a corset will help?”

“A corset? Like, what they used to wear in the 1800s?” I ask, worried that instead of just looking fat I’ll end up with crushed ribs as well.

“They aren’t quite as excruciating as they were back then. I’ll just go grab one.”

“A corset, Lily!” I yell through the curtain at my best friend. “Did you hear that? I’m so fat that I need to cinch it all in with a corset.” I stick my face out of the edge of the curtain, only to see Lily’s nod.

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Ems. I wear Spanx every day of my life.” She rolls her eyes at me. Spanx isn’t an option for me; I need the big guns of underwear to make this dress even a tiny bit presentable.

I peel the dress off and drape it over the small chair in the fitting room. The dress could be described as ‘daring’, but a more fitting word would be ‘repulsive’. It could cause the ugly swan dress Bjork wore to the Academy Awards to bow its head in shame. Which I think is what it was doing that night, anyway. Hannah must have lost her mind to create this disaster as a bridesmaid’s gown. Maybe the dress itself isn’t that terrible, but on me… it’s appalling.

“Here we go!” The seamstress holds up a white corset. “We’ll just get you tied into this and we should be good to go.”

If only it was that easy. It takes ten minutes of pulling, pushing, and adjusting. I wish I could say that the super-strength, agonizingly uncomfortable corset does the trick. It nearly does, but to really drive home the fact that I still look terrible, we also opt for high-waisted Spanx-like underwear that hits me just below the breast. Then the corset itself, and I swear at one point it felt as if the seamstress has a foot on my back as she pulled the strings as tight as they could go to get it on. Then, as if two pairs of smoothing and self-shrinking underwear aren’t enough, we add some kind of full-length slip to smooth out the uh… lumpy areas. Which give me a bit more flare at the bottom of the skirt, in an attempt to achieve that hourglass shape that this dress so desperately needs, as opposed to the pear shape I seem to have taken on recently.

Sadly, the biggest problem I’m going to have at this wedding isn’t even the fact that I’ll be wearing a lot of body-cinching underwear underneath an ugly, far-too-snug dress created by my almost sister-in-law, Hannah.

My biggest concern is Hannah’s brother: Jack Cabot. My ex-fiancé.

Jack and I dated for five years, and for the last one of those years we were engaged. In all honesty, it was the best five years of my life, right up until that last day. That day is forever burned into my brain and has ruined so many parts of me. That was the day he shattered my heart, and I still haven’t found all the pieces.

I probably shouldn’t have put off the first fitting. Maybe my reflection in the dress wouldn’t be so shocking if I’d started the alteration process a month ago. Or maybe not. I’m sure the whole experience, no matter when I started it, would be just as traumatizing as it feels right now.

I wonder what her other bridesmaids look like body-wise. I’m thinking they don’t sport my size 12 muffin top, C bra cups and thunder thighs. Probably they don’t require a hundred dollars in special underwear to look presentable in this dress.

“Are you sure it’s the right size, Emi?” Lily asks, as I walk out of the dressing room, her face in an awkward gritted smile. She walks over to me and holds out her hand to help me inch my way to the center of the room.

“It is now, after crushing my internal organs into everything I’m wearing underneath it.” It takes me three tries myself, and Lily assisting with a nudge from behind, to successfully position myself up on to the pedestal I’ve been directed to, for further alterations.

“Hannah said it should fit to my measurements.” Measurements that should have equalled a size 12, ish. When I first tried it on this morning I didn’t think it would pull up over my hips without tearing. Somehow, after a lot of chanting to the miracle gods, I got it up. That’s when I started to panic and gave up, deciding that I would cross my fingers and hope the alterations shop could help fix things.

“I mean, it’s gorgeous but it’s just so—”

“Tight?” I finish the sentence for her.

Lily nods her head, her face scrunched into a confused look. “That’s one word.” She sits on the pink velvet couch facing the pedestal I’m standing on, her arms crossed across her chest. “Can you even sit? Or walk without looking knock-kneed?”

The dress is pretty, and on anyone a size 2 and under it’d probably be va-va-voom gorgeous without any extra unseen help. But the medieval underwear does appear to be helping fake that look. My boobs look fantastic. I’m not sure they’ve sat this high on my chest since I was in my early twenties. The rest of it, well… It pretty much fits like a glove. The latex kind. At the knee it flares out to the floor; that section is covered in a mix of gray and black feathers seemingly dipped in glitter. I’d have preferred it to be strapless, but instead it has off-the-shoulder straps that make it impossible to lift my arms more than six inches from my body. But this doesn’t matter anyway, since I can barely move at all.

Then there are the shoes: strappy, sparkly, platform, and at least ten inches high. Well, maybe not ten inches, but it feels that way. The fact that I can only take small steps may make things more difficult. I’ve fallen in the middle of sidewalks wearing no heels at all, so these ones aren’t giving me much hope for grace and poise when walking down an aisle in front of everyone I know.

“I’m not sure I can walk at all with the combo of layers; cinched-up underwear, a skin-tight dress and stripper shoes…” I chew on my lip as I stare into the tri-fold full-length mirrors in front of me, and wonder if this is one of those deceptively flattering mirrors Elaine is always going on about in Seinfeld. Probably instead of looking lovely, I look more like an overstuffed sausage.

“It doesn’t look completely terrible now,” Lily reassures me with a small grin. She was lucky enough to be with me at my apartment this morning when she witnessed my panic of the dress not fitting. “The underwear helps. You do look a little stiff though.”

“That’s one word for it, I suppose. If I take a full breath I’m a little worried I’ll have some kind of underwear malfunction.” The last thing I need is an internet-worthy video surfacing when this wedding is over.

I force myself to look away from the mirror and watch the seamstress, who is kneeling at my feet and already working on the necessary alterations. Swiftly pinning the hem, just above the feathers, so I don’t drag it across the floor. I’m not exactly tall, standing at only 5’3”, and since Hannah didn’t think of how a dress like this hits a short girl, this poor woman has a long night of hemming ahead of her. Her gray hair is piled high on her head and her dress is a plain black version of Mrs Doubtfire’s dresses, including the drabby cardigans. She’s really a little depressing-looking, especially considering the alteration shop we’re in doubles as a bridal store that looks like you’ve just stepped into a giant, sparkly, tulle cloud.

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