Free The Wedding Wager (McMaster the Disaster) by Rachel Astor

giggle at the thought of the thick, brown liquid oozing down the back of her pristine, off-white coat.
    “What is wrong with you?” she asked, finally turning to look at me.
    But I was too busy noticing how very familiar the street looked. I felt like I’d been in a place just like this…
    …oh my God. Just yesterday.
    We were standing in front of the very same giant dress store where Mattie had first taken me yesterday.
    And I so did not have it in me to try on any more dresses.
    Not to mention what the hell the people working there were going to think. They’d be so ticked at me for wasting their time.
    I started pacing across the sidewalk.
    “Josie? Josie, what is going on with you? We have to get inside. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get an appointment with these people? The only way I could do it in the first place was to drop Jake’s name. You would not believe how helpful people become when a movie star is involved in a wedding.” She clucked her tongue. “You’d think he was the queen or something.”
    I laughed nervously.
    “You know, I don’t really have the right shoes for trying dresses on,” I said, scrambling for excuses, Mattie’s words echoing through my head.
    My mother looked to the heavens. “Of course I thought of that Josie. Do you really think this is my first time shopping for a dress? I’ve got four different pairs right here.” She patted what I now saw was a gigantic bag slung over her shoulder.
    I don’t know how, but she’d managed to make even a huge sack look elegant and inconspicuous.
    I hung back even longer, sipping my coffee as slowly as possible while my brain wheeled at warp speed through non-believable excuse after non-believable excuse. Eventually, my mother tugged on my arm hard enough, forcing me into the building. I dawdled as much as I could, but her impatience was growing by the second. We reached the sparkling door and I cringed as it opened.
    “Welcome,” the same lady from yesterday said.
    If she was surprised to see me she didn’t let on, her face as calm and serene as ever. Maybe she didn’t really get a good look at me or didn’t remember me. I mean, it would be strange not to notice two appointments under the same name so close together… perhaps they really were femme-bots and had no powers of recollection.
    This might not be so bad. Yesterday was pretty fun, after all.
    And I could guarantee my mother would not pick out the same dresses as Mattie. I’d definitely break the bad news today, but… what would it hurt just to try a couple more on?
    We were led to the staging area just like yesterday, my mother gawking at her surroundings, much like I’m sure I did my first time through.
    The first dressing room housed the largest wedding dress I had ever seen. Its jeweled bodice led down to a large skirt with huge folds of fabric layered in the back, draping out for what seemed like miles behind it. I couldn’t figure out how on Earth a person could move around in something like that, let alone dance or you know, God forbid, go to the bathroom.
    But it was nothing if not spectacular and my insides practically quivered to try it on, at least as an experiment… if only to test the maneuverability.
    And once I got it on and the millions of crystals down the front caught the light, I suddenly understood how Cinderella must have felt. In the dress, I stood up straighter than usual, pulled my shoulders back more, and I swear, may have grown an inch or two. Something about it just made you want to carry yourself a little better, just to live up to the extravagance of it.
    I felt like I’d traveled back in time, born into royalty as I walked the hall back to my mother.
    I expected a positive reaction, but I certainly hadn’t expected tears. Sure, mothers often cried when they first saw their daughters in wedding gowns, but my mother was not like other mothers. She didn’t cry at weddings. Cripes, she didn’t cry at funerals. In fact, now