Page 7 of Best Woman

Born to Bride is nearly empty.

I spent the entire train ride praying it would be full of brides and the staff would be so busy that my transaction would be handled with brutal efficiency.

More than anything, I prayed Lorraine would not be working today.

I wanted to be in and out of there as quickly as possible.

If I wasn’t saving literally every penny for this damn wedding, I would have paid the exorbitant delivery fee, but I’d checked my bank account balance, winced, and started applying winged eyeliner, which heavily flags girl on the days I can’t be bothered to wear something feminine.

There’s no one behind the register, and the only sales associate I can spot is helping a middle-aged woman choose between garters.

I wait for her at the register, texting Kyle about our movie plans for this evening and replying to the selfie my mom just sent me, identical to every single selfie she’s ever taken.

Beautiful! Did you do something with your hair?

“Picking up?”

Shit motherfucker fuck shit. Lorraine is behind the register, her smirking lips painted a shocking pink. “Hi, yes, I got a notification that my dress was ready.”

She nods and starts clanking away at the ancient computer terminal. “Ah yes, the Rosenberg wedding.”

“You must get a lot of those.”

She glances up at me, unmoved. “Weddings?”

“Rosenbergs.”

Her mouth purses. “That sounds a little anti-Semitic.”

“Rosenberg is my last name . The groom is my brother .”

She makes a hmph noise and clacks away at the screen.

“Here we are. Julia Rosenberg, ” she draws out the name, the allegedly all but audible under the words.

“I see you’ve already paid the base price, but there was an additional tailoring fee.

We had to let it out in a few places to suit your…

unique proportions.” She makes unique sound like a slur, and I’m sure the word she’d rather use is one.

“Why wasn’t I informed about these fees at my fitting?” Perhaps she can be reasoned with. Or bullied. I channel my mother and slip into my best I’d like to speak to the manager voice. “Since I’m just finding out about this now, I’m sure you can do something about waiving them.”

“I wish I could.” There’s not a single ounce of sincerity in her voice.

Her pink lipstick has cracked into the lines of her mouth, and in one place it’s smudged over her teeth.

She’s narrow and hawklike, spends her days bullying brides for minimum wage plus commission, and probably goes home at night with aching feet.

She’s enjoying this little bit of power she has over me, probably hoping I’ll cause a scene so she can have mall security escort me out.

“Fine,” I say through a smile as nasty as I can make it.

“Excuse me, I think I need the next size up.”

The voice has come from the door to the dressing room, and as annoyed as I am to be interrupted when all I want is to get the hell out of this store, this mall, the entire situation…something in it makes me turn.

It’s Kim Cameron. Shit motherfucker fuck shit.

Kim Cameron is standing at the entrance to the dressing rooms, wearing a burnt sienna version of the dress I’m picking up.

I can see why she’s asking for a different size: she is spillingout of it, clasping the back closed behind her.

It’s not necessarily a bad look. The color offsets her dark skin remarkably, the slit shows off a shapely leg, and her long braids are loose over bare shoulders.

She is even more beautiful than I remember.

In high school, Kim Cameron was that girl .

Everyone knew who she was but no one was really friends with her.

She was simply too cool to be something as banal as an active participant in the high school social structure.

She skipped class to smoke cigarettes in the abandoned Chase Bank down the road but was always near the top of her class.

She starred in the school play but never came to Denny’s with the rest of the cast on opening night.

She came out halfway through freshman year, dated a sophomore at the local community college, and hooked up with the homecoming queen.

Until I moved to New York City, Kim Cameron was the coolest person I’d ever met.

She was also, of course, the biggest crush of my adolescence.

Then I remember Aiden’s call. Kim Cameron is my future sister-in-law’s maid of honor. We’re walking down the aisle together at their wedding.

Rachel is a year older than me, making her three years older than Aiden.

She met Kim in college, where they roomed together freshman year.

Aiden was friends with Rachel’s brother and the two hit it off at a party.

The only memorable conversation Rachel and I ever had was at my twin brothers’ b’nai mitzvah, when we got drunk and gushed for an hour about how cool Kim Cameron was.

It was the first time I saw what Aiden saw in her—she had good taste.

And now Kim Cameron and I are standing in a shitty bridal store in a shitty mall as I have one of the shittiest interactions I’ve had in months.

Recognition is blossoming in her eyes, with the customary momentary adjustment I’m used to from everyone who knew me before . “Julia? Julia Rosenberg?”

“Hey, Kim. It’s been a while. You look…I guess that’s for the wedding.”

“Yeah, I really shouldn’t have left it until the last minute. Can we…I’m about to burst out of this dress. Give me a minute.” To Lorraine: “I need the next size up.”

Lorraine checks her computer for a moment as Kim and I wait in that awkward silence that you want to fill but have no idea how. “Unfortunately I don’t have the next size up. I can order it for you, but it’ll take three weeks.”

The wedding is in three weeks.

“And I don’t have a sample for you to try. We only carry up to a ten in store.”

Was this woman grown in a lab for the specific purpose of mortifying future bridesmaids?

“That’s pretty fucking stupid considering the national average dress size in the U.S. is a sixteen,” Kim says. It’s the same tone she used to take with football players in high school who called her “Black Ellen,” a cruel but deeply unimaginative insult.

Despite having spent the last few minutes trying to disappear, I unfold myself into the conversation, which is now bordering on confrontation.

“Kim, my dress is the same style, just in a different color, and it’s a fourteen. Maybe you could try it on and make sure the size is right and they can rush order you something?”

Lorraine scoffs. “We can only make orders based on one of our sample dresses, this has already been altered.”

Kim turns to her.

“Ma’am”—which is just about the cruelest thing you can call a middle-aged bridal sales associate and not be thrown out of the store—“perhaps you can make an exception just this once so that I can try the dress on. I’m the maid of honor and I wouldn’t want to have to call another store, or corporate customer service, and let them know how… challenging it was to order my dress.”

Kim glances down at the woman’s ugly pink name tag, clearly taking note. “Lorraine.”

Oh wow, I did not expect Kim to channel her own inner Karen, but needs must.

Lorraine huffs, shoots me a look dripping with acidic disdain, and heads to the back, ostensibly to grab my dress.

“Julia, if you don’t mind sticking around for a minute, maybe we can find somewhere to grab a drink?” Kim’s smiling. I’m trying hard not to look at the places where her dress is straining to cover her skin.

“Well, I did see a Cheesecake Factory on my way in…”

“Perfect.”