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So, it's the day of Nick's wedding, he's locked himself in the bathroom and won't come out, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is my fault.
"Come on, Nick!" Howie is trying to reason with him through the locked door. "Just open the door and we can talk about this. It's normal to have cold feet on your wedding day."
Howie would know all about cold feet. He's been dating Leigh for nine years now with no proposal in sight. Ironic, considering they run a bridal gown boutique.
"Yeah, Nick." AJ adds. "It'll be okay. I'm sure your fiancee won't be a total bitch once you're married."
Howie's mouth drops open in indignation, and I reach over quick and smack AJ on the arm as hard as I can. AJ rubs his arm and glares at me. "Jesus, Brian! I just said what we were all thinking."
-----
This might be my fault because I used to sit on the reception desk at Something New and play with Nick's hair. In my defense, he let me do it, unlike a certain other co-worker of mine.
Seriously, I licked AJ's ear in a staff meeting one time and now he tries to keep me at arm's length. Someone's a little too uptight, if you ask me.
Nick was the best receptionist we'd ever had. Not only was he smart enough to know how to access the voicemail account on the phone, he was like having a big, slightly nerdy teddy bear sitting at the front of the store. How was I suppose to resist playing with that?
"Stop doing that." Howie would scold me. "Don't you dare sleep with him. I'm not running some kind of tacky affair like Timberlake."
Justin Timberlake was Howie's nemesis. Justin and his mother owned Champagne & Lace, our prime competition in the local bridal gown boutique market. It wasn't really a competition. Their store had a better selection, more clients, and had just inked a reality show contract with a cable network.
Pure, unadulterated hatred of Justin was what got Howie out of bed in the morning.
Luckily for Howie, I have a strict flirt-with-but-don't-take-home policy when it comes to men with fiancees and wives. And Nick was engaged.
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Another reason this might be my fault? When everyone at the store found out Nick was engaged, I wasn't very happy about it, and I think he knew. That whole cute blond thing? That's just an act.
I was in the stock room pulling mermaid dresses for another bride to be who would really look better with a princess cut when Nick poked his head in and asked if I could take a walk-in today, and because I was annoyed with Nick for dating women and with brides who had their heart set on a wedding dress style without thinking about what would actually work best for them, and I said something kind of bitchy, like, "Do I look like I have time for a walk-in?"
This was exactly the scenario Howie was hoping to avoid by telling me not to sleep with Nick. So much for that. If I didn't get what I wanted, it was only fair Howie didn't get what he wanted either.
"Okay." Nick said. "It's just that the fiance said he knows you."
I couldn't just leave that information hanging out there, so I went out to the show floor, and it turned out the fiance was my cousin, Kevin. He was one of what I called the huntin'-and-fishin' cousins, who grew up on acreage out in the sticks and spent a lot of time riding horses and wrestling pigs or something. Very butch.
I hadn't really spent a lot of time hanging out with him growing up. Obviously.
I passed my other client off to Leigh and pulled some dresses for Kristin. She was pretty. And she could pull off a mermaid dress if she wanted to. In spite of that, five dresses in, we weren't any closer to finding something she liked. Every time, she would find one tiny thing about the dress she didn't like and we would start all over again.
After an hour of this, I couldn't take anymore. I told her I'd go find another couple options, tracked AJ down and asked him to take over. He was either in a generous mood that day, or I actually looked like I was going crazy, because he agreed and didn't even ask for anything in return.
I escaped downstairs to the alterations room to calm down. It's like a giant cocoon with dresses and pieces of fabric covering everything. A cocoon made entirely from high end silk and tulle. I sat down in the chair in the corner and pulled my knees up to my chin. There was a rack of dresses hanging in front of me, half-obscuring the rest of the room.
"Hello to you too." JC said without looking up from his sewing machine. JC was our head of alterations. He had come over to Something New last year from Justin's store. It had been the proudest day of Howie's life. JC was a level of fierce that I aspired to and knew I could never reach.
"Is that a women's sweater?" I asked, looking at the little black boatneck top he had on.
He raised one eyebrow at me. "Men's fashion can be very limiting." I guess that was a yes.
I explained the entire situation to him, exactly how particular and terrifying Kevin could be and how picky his fiancee was being and how AJ had just agreed to step in, no questions asked or snarky comments made.
"Brian?" JC said when I was finished. "You need to get it together. Who among us hasn't fallen for a married man? Or an almost married man? You'll find someone else."
"That's not what this is about." I said defensively. Of course that's what this was about.
"Oh." JC said. "Okay."
-----
Since we're running down the list of reasons it might be my fault Nick is locked in a bathroom, it might be because I danced with him at Kevin and Kristin's wedding reception.
We were all invited, of course. I was family, after all, and after two consultations and three fitting appointments, Kevin had grown close to everyone else in the store. To his credit, AJ had outdone himself with dress selection for Kristin. It was classic strapless white silk with a princess cut and just a little bit of beading and detail. Very classy and elegant.
Kevin cried through the entire second half of the ceremony. I had forgotten that Kevin was the emotional cousin.
At the reception, after another tearful speech from Kevin and after they had cut the cake, and I had just enough to drink that it no longer seemed like a terrible idea, I asked Nick to dance. It was a faster song, and Nick wasn't exactly the world's best dancer, but he was enthusiastic enough about it, but then the DJ switched to a slow song and Nick didn't leave.
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Another reason this might be my fault: after the reception, in the hallway outside the hotel ballroom, I kissed Nick.
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The one reason this might not be my fault? AJ's assessment of Nick's fiancee was spot on. She was a total bitch. I think AJ still felt sorry for me, because he agreed to handle all her appointments and still didn't ask for a favor in return. Maybe he was banking them up and was going to ask me to do something awful in the future. Maybe he had a heart underneath all the black clothing and tattoos after all.
The appointments didn't go well. She didn't like anything AJ brought out and kept telling him she wanted something sexier. When they finally found a dress that worked, after the first fitting, JC came back into the alterations room and threw his measuring tape across the room as hard as he could. "She wants the dress to show more boob," he told me, and we both wrinkled our noses at the idea. "She doesn't have boob to show more of in the first place. I'm not a magician. I can't just make breasts appear."
After the second fitting, she told us that she had just decided to go to Champagne & Lace instead. Even Howie didn't even seem that angry about losing her.
-----
Nick finally opens the bathroom door two inches and says JC can come in, but that's it. So we spend ten minutes trying to find JC. Howie finally tracks him down outside the church, playing Duck, Duck, Goose with the ringbearer and flower girls.
"You know what?" I say when JC goes into the bathroom and the door clicks shut again. "I really shouldn't be here. I'm just going to leave."
-----
"He totally bailed." AJ tells me at work the next day. He doesn't elaborate any more than that, and I don't really want to know. There's a tiny part of me that's happy about this news. Howie tells Nick that some time off might be a good idea, and Nick takes him up on it.
When he comes back, he's tan and his hair is shorter. "I bought a boat," He says when Leigh asks him how his vacation went.
"That's a stupid thing to do." AJ tells him. "You know what they say, the happiest day of a boat owner's life is the day they buy it. Second happiest is the day they sell it."
"I like boats." Nick says, and leaves it at that. We're in the conference room next to Howie's office for the monthly staff meeting. We're waiting on Howie, who's usually punctual to the point of being ten minutes early, but not this time.
Howie proposes in the middle of the staff meeting. It's about time.
-----
"I'm the one who said ballgown." AJ says during Howie and Leigh's first dance. "Was I right? I was right."
JC rolls his eyes. "Leigh had her dress picked for years. You didn't have anything to do with it."
Nick sits next to me, not really paying attention to the dress discussion. He has a game on his phone under the table. Nick and I have been slowly getting back to normal over the last few months. I'm spending less time hiding in the alterations room and more time making out in the stock room. Knowing Howie might find out and give us a lecture somehow makes it hotter.
Howie's family knows how to party. Five hours in, the reception still wasn't showing any signs of slowing down. AJ and JC abandoned us to jitterbug in the middle of the dance floor. Weird. Weird, and yet not surprising.
"Do you suppose they're sleeping with each other?" I ask Nick.
"I know they are." Nick says. "I went down to the alterations room a couple weeks ago and AJ wasn't wearing pants. He said JC was just altering his pockets, but I call bullshit."
"Howie's not going to be happy about that." I say.
"Whatever." Nick says. "It's a stupid rule."