Page 32 of I’m Not Yours

“But you said the word ‘witchly.’ ”

“Witchly,” Leoni said. “But not witchy.”

“Did you tell her about the anti-Bridezilla contract?”

“I did. She signed it and will email it back.”

I have each bride sign a contract before we start to reduce the chances of my having to deal with shrieking, hysterical women. It reads, in part:

I will not be a Bridezilla.

I will remember that this is one day of my life, one day.

It should be a joyous and happy day about my husband/wife and me and when I am tempted to throw a big hissy fit, I will remember that there are people starving in the world and scrambling for water or for protection from war and wrath and hideous extremists, and I will keep myself and my highly exaggerated importance of this one day in line.

If I am obnoxious, June has the right to ban me from her studio forever. I understand there will be no refunds under any circumstances.

I also do not start drawing a design, or sewing one single stitch, until I have all the money, up front and paid for.

I do not mess with brides. I insist they not mess with me. Frankly, they’re so happy with the dresses, and most of our clients are so edgy and free-spirited to begin with, that most of the time they’re a pretty friendly bunch of women.

“The order is for eight bridesmaids’ dresses,” Leoni said.

“The bride said she saw the dresses you made for her friend, Dahlia. She didn’t even want to talk to you first, said her mind is made up.

You’re the wedding dress designer for her, her words.

Her credit card has been charged and it went through. ” Ah, Dahlia.

“Who can forget the bride Dahlia Parker and the dahlia bridesmaids’ dresses?

” Estelle said. “The walking, talking flowers.” She fluffed out a gold skirt she was sewing.

“Looking at Dahlia’s dresses was akin to looking at Alice in Wonderland versus the War of the Flowers. An epic battle for the meadow.”

“They adored them,” Leoni said. “Dahlia cried. Remember how she said to the other girls, ‘Now we’re all dahlias’ and how they cheered and danced around our studio in their Dahlia dresses?”

I put aside the mermaid wedding dress and flipped a page in a scrapbook on my desk.

I have all my clients send me photos of themselves and their bridesmaids on their wedding days.

Each bridesmaid in the Dahlia wedding had a different vibrantly colored dress in fuchsia, lavender, burgundy, lime, you get the point.

There were eight of them. The dresses were form-fitting to the waist, then flared out under netting, the hem cut into the shapes of delicate, multicolored dahlia petals.

We spent hours cutting out and sewing on delicate dahlias over one shoulder strap and down past the waistline.

Dahlia herself wore a white dahlia dress. I went to that wedding and I actually heard the guests gasp when they saw her walking down the aisle.

“They were gorgeous, earthly, garden-y,” Leoni said, her eyes soft, lost in flower land. “Blooming flowers of eternal love. Admit it, Estelle. We outdid ourselves.”

“I dreamed of dahlias chasing me and smothering me with their petals,” Estelle humphed. “It went on all night. They were evil dahlias, cursed and cursing.”

I chuckled, then drew a finger down the dresses in the photo. As strange as the design sounds, the dahlia flower dresses were a hit. In fact, the state newspaper featured them on the front page of their Style and Fashion section.

“What does this bride want?” I asked Leoni.

Leoni pushed a stray lock back into her bun. “She wants her bridesmaids to be dressed in her favorite color.”

“What is her favorite color?”

“Bright orange, like an orange.”

I almost choked on a pin. “Orange?”

“That’s right. She wants a smidgeon of black squiggling through the dress, too.”

“I feel a headache coming on in my cranium,” Estelle droned. “We have a boopsy bride. A pumpkin bride. A melon.”

“Orange and black? Is it a Halloween wedding?” I asked.

“No. It’s in July.”

“And cramps. I think I have cramps,” Estelle droned again. “Me. Way past menopause. But cramps.”

“Is she an Oregon State Beaver football fan?”

“I asked that, too,” Leoni said. “No, she’s not. She has an affinity to orange because it reminds her of Popsicles and she embraces black because she has an aunt who’s a witch.”

“A witch?”

“Strike me down dead with a spell,” Estelle groaned. “Down dead. Why do we get all the bridal wackos?”

Estelle knew why. We specialized in nontraditional bridal wear.

“Yes. A witch,” Leoni said. “She wants to honor the witch aunt. I don’t know if she calls her Aunt Witch. I didn’t inquire further.”

“Orange and black,” I said. At first I balked, then I stood and opened the French doors and admired the ocean, the breeze cool, the sun golden candy in the sky. It would be a spectacular summer sunset.

The sunset would have orange in it. Flowing, bright, soft, creamy, dramatic, and romantic .

. . orange. My imagination took off. I thought of sherbet, roses, and Costa Rica.

I grabbed a pad of paper and five different shades of orange-colored pencils.

I worked for fifteen minutes, not realizing that Estelle and Leoni were peering over my shoulder.

“Every single time,” Leoni sighed. “Every time, my imagination bows to yours when I watch you work, June. Your mind is a mass of color. I could tell you we had an order for bridesmaids’ dresses in dark brown and blah green, and those girls would wear dresses you’d see in Vogue magazine.”

“You’ve got a hole in your brain where talent was poured in,” Estelle said. “We get a witchly order from a half-cocked, ditzy bride, and you turn it into elegance. No sign of a witch or a spell or a black cat anywhere.”

Estelle and Leoni worked for me, had for twenty-two months, but they were friends, too, and I became a bit snuffly with their sweet compliments.

Leoni patted my back. “Be gentle on yourself. Kind to your soul.”

Estelle said, “Buck up, June,” but not in a mean way. “Shoulders back, chin high, quit sniveling.”

“She received another phone call today from Cherie,” Leoni pseudo-whispered, as if I couldn’t hear it, though her mouth was six inches from my ear.

Estelle said, no volume control at all, from my other side, “That’ll upset her hormones. She gets in an emotional tornado and baby bawls each time.”

“And she got a call from you-know-who about the you-know-what,” Leoni said, then hissed. “Grayson!”

“Not good. He gets her panties in a twist, too. Two twists of the panties today.”

“And, you know we have that writer coming from the magazine who’s going to feature all our wedding dresses,” Leoni said. “She’s all jacked up about that, too.”

“She should be,” Estelle said loudly. “We can’t screw that one up. That’d burn our butts.”

“And she’s stressed about her sister’s wedding dress. She wants it to be perfect, more than perfect. She wants it to be a wearable dream.”

“She still hasn’t finished the bridesmaids’ dresses, either, she’s got to get it right for the clan. Go, Scotland.”

“I’m right here, ladies,” I said, still drawing, the oranges blurring and smearing, until I grabbed a black pencil and added a streak of black to the orange Popsicle/sunset/Costa Rica colors. I wouldn’t think about the scary reporter, I already had enough to worry about.

“She has a lot going on.” Leoni’s breath ruffled my hair.

“Too much,” Estelle agreed. “But she’ll manage. She’s a woman with iron panties.”

“Iron panties? Gee, thank you,” I said. I held up the drawing of the non-Halloween orange-and-black bridesmaids dresses. Not bad.

“Gorgeous,” Estelle said. “If women must get themselves swindled into marriage, if they lose their minds to lust and society’s rules of what a woman should do, they must come to you, June. Panty power, that’s what it is.”

“Panty power,” Leoni breathed. “That is stunning.”

That night I circled the work tables in my studio, again and again, while Reece jetted in and out of my head.

I have part of a blue rowboat in the corner where I’ve stacked all my favorite books. I have a blue cheetah lamp stand and art supplies stacked on open shelves painted yellow. I have two six-foot tall white dressers filled with wedding dress paraphernalia.

I need all of it to keep me creative and focused.

But it sure wasn’t helping me keep my mind off Reece.

Reece, Reece, Reece. June and Reece. Reece and June.

Oh, for heaven’s and Pete’s sakes, June!

When I was done I crawled into bed and wrote in my Worry Journal.

Seven Things I’m Worried About

Another sneaker wave.

Sharks in a tidal wave that might land on my deck. What would I do?

Business failing because no one wants to get married anymore because they realize it is a silly thing to do, akin only to prison.

Not being able to resist the Greek god.

Never being able to divorce Grayson, the process dragging on and on until I give up because I am too broke and too much of an emotional wreck to deal with it anymore.

Then Grayson gets what he wants, and I will be tied to him for life until I am an old and feeble woman collecting plastic bags and chatting with spiders.

The article. What if the reporter thought I had a sponge for a brain and said so?

Estelle. Is she lonely living alone? I think I’ll make her a lace shirt.

I played online Scrabble. I play online Scrabble with anonymous other people across the world. I did not win a single game that night, though I did spell these words: “nymph,” “lust,” and “green.” I could not get the gentle eyes of a man on a chariot out of my head to save my life.

I ate a Pop Tart and a teeny, tiny handful of buttered popcorn.

Okay, two Pop Tarts.