Frisk Me(25)

“Really getting somewhere,” Ava said with a smile. “Nearly there, I think.”

“If by nearly there you mean I’m going to look like a sea creature!” Beth called over the door.

Ava caught the salesperson’s eye and held up her empty champagne class, and the woman nodded in understanding.

Sitting on one of the aqua-cushioned benches meant for enthusiastic mothers and exhausted bridesmaids, Ava waited for her friend to emerge with her umpteenth dress of the day.

Ava didn’t need any reason to doubt the appeal of marriage, but if she did, the proof was right here. Beth Salvers’s impending wedding had turned Ava’s best friend into a temperamental stress ball.

Granted Beth had always been a little high strung, but since being engaged, she was about one bad cake tasting away from an aneurysm. Lucky for Beth, her fiancé Christian found her short-lived tantrums adorable.

So did Ava…with the help of a glass of champagne. Or three.

Still, Beth could turn into the worst sort of Bridezilla imaginable, and Ava would give up all her Saturdays to help her find the perfect dress. It was what best friends did. Especially when it was the gold standard of best friends, which Beth Salvers definitely was.

The salesgirl returned with the champagne bottle, topping off Ava’s glass before offering to leave the bottle for Beth, should she also need a refill.

Judging from the prolonged silence inside the dressing room, Beth was definitely going to need it.

“Hon, you okay?” Ava asked, standing and going to the door.

There was a beat of silence, before her friend opened the door a tiny crack. “If I come out, you can’t say one word.”

“Oh, come on, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come out.” She handed her friend’s sundress back. “Here, I won’t even hold your clothes hostage.”

And then the door opened and Ava understood exactly what words she wasn’t supposed to say.

I told you so.

Beth held up a finger. “Remember. Not one word.”

Ava pressed her lips together. But oh, she had been so right it was almost painful not to point it out.

The dress was perfect.

It was the dress.

Rare was the woman who could pull off a mermaid dress, but Beth’s tiny curves absolutely could.

But it was more than the exact right fit and the perfect shade of ecru to complement Beth’s coloring that made the gown perfect.

It was all about the enraptured look on Beth’s face when she saw herself in the mirror. All of the other dresses hadn’t worked, because they hadn’t been Beth. But this dress—the right dress—made Beth look like the best version of herself.

Ava was a little surprised to feel wetness gathering in the corner of her eyes. Ava wasn’t much of a crier, and she certainly wasn’t prone to happy tears, but there was no other way to explain how she felt, sharing this moment with her best friend.

Happy.

But there was something else warring with the happiness, just below the surface. Something that felt like the tiniest seed of doubt.

That morning at the diner, Ava had meant it when she’d told Luc Moretti that she didn’t want to get married.

But every now and then, a moment slipped past her defenses. Moments like this one.

And sometimes, only sometimes, she thought maybe.





CHAPTER TEN



No. No damn makeup,” Luc said, wrenching his head away from the black-haired woman who kept trying to come at him with a variety of weird brushes.

The makeup artist, Carly something or other, merely chomped her pink bubble gum and shot a look over her shoulder in a way that signaled she’d dealt with this kind of resistance before, and it wasn’t her problem to solve.

Ava was talking with the photographer, but she held up a finger to halt the conversation when she saw Carly’s look.

“Hey, Luc!” she said, coming closer to where he sat perched awkwardly on a stool.

He rolled his eyes at her tone.

He knew that tone.

When Luc had been a kid, before Anthony was old enough to babysit the rest of them, a high school girl who’d lived next door to the Morettis had sometimes come over to babysit.

His parents had thought it was hilarious to tell poor Kimmy that the kids had to eat their vegetables.

The poor girl had spent hours trying everything from choo-choo train with broccoli to trying to sneak a green bean in with a Cheetos.

Ava’s voice right now had the exact same tone as Kimmy when she thought she could get him to eat a steamed Brussels sprout just by using her “nice voice.”

“Don’t even, Sims,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

“Try to sweet-talk me into wearing makeup.”

“Now, I know it’s not manly,” she said, quietly taking a bottle of some beige-covered fluid and one of the brushes from Carly. “But look, all the guys that come in here wear it. And nobody who looks at the picture will ever know.”

“Let me get this straight. You want me to wear makeup, even though nobody will know I’m wearing makeup?”

“Look, Moretti,” she said, her voice turning bossy. “You’re gorgeous as you are, you really, really are, but when it comes to headshots you’ll notice every shadow, every dark spot, and—”