Free The Wedding Sisters by Jamie Brenner

shot her a look: Not now. Yes, Amy always seemed to be chasing after Meg, playing catch-up if not one-up. But this was different.
    Hugh appeared with the champagne, quickly pouring six glasses. He and Meg both gulped it down before Meryl could make her toast. She glared at the both of them.
    â€œTo my two beautiful daughters, their wonderful husbands-to-be … and to a year of weddings.”
    â€œTo a year of weddings!” everyone cheered.
    Everyone but Hugh.

 
    six
    Amy gazed adoringly at the ring on her finger.
    Three hours into her engagement, and she felt married already. They’d lived together for two years in a dream apartment in TriBeCa, they worked together, and now with Jeffrey and Eileen telling her, “Call us Mom and Dad!” the wedding seemed like just a formality. But what a great formality it would be! Her cheeks hurt from grinning so much.
    It all felt exactly right, exactly as it should be. The duration of her relationship with Andy was unheard of among their friends.
    They’d had only one “break”—junior year, when Amy went abroad to Spain and Andy went to Italy. It had been painful—the break had been Andy’s idea. But it was probably the thing that helped them go the distance. They both realized they weren’t missing out on anything, except time together.
    â€œAme, come look at these mock-ups for the new ads,” Andy called from the bedroom.
    She moved reluctantly from the couch, not wanting to think about work just then. It was the night of their engagement. She wanted to revel in that.
    Sometimes it was hard to find time for romance. It was so easy to fall into being best friends, and coworkers, and family, in a way. It was important to take time away from all that to be a couple.
    *   *   *
    Amy padded into the bedroom, closing the curtains on the oversized windows overlooking Greenwich Street.
    â€œWhat do you think?” he asked.
    She climbed onto the king-sized bed and glanced at the images on his laptop screen. “It’s very … rustic.”
    â€œYeah. I know. Dad loves it. You’re going to the shoot, right?”
    â€œStella said she didn’t need me.”
    â€œIt’s not about whether or not Stella needs you. If you want to go, go. You’re into the shoots, right?”
    â€œYes, but—”
    â€œSo it’s a done deal. Dad will tell her.”
    â€œI don’t think we should, you know, go over her head on this one.”
    Andy squinted at his MacBook, scrolling through images of catalog models wearing various combinations of the latest higher end of Jeffrey Bruce menswear—the top-of-the-line pieces that sold only in places like Barneys and the Jeffrey Bruce flagship stores. The looks would be finalized before the print shoot next week, when the “real” models—agency models who costs thousands of dollars an hour—would wear the clothes for ads that would run in GQ, Vogue, Esquire. Everywhere, basically.
    â€œDo you think your dad was upset I didn’t ask him before proposing to you?”
    Amy shook her head. “My dad isn’t like that—that whole ‘standing on ceremony’ thing.”
    â€œSo can we go ahead and tell my parents we’ll have the wedding at Stonehill?”
    Stonehill was the Bruces’ hundred-acre East Hampton estate, which rivaled something out of one of her father’s beloved novels set among the British aristocracy.
    â€œYeah. Sure.”
    â€œAnd, Ame, I didn’t talk about this with my dad or anything. And I don’t want to tell you what to do, but—”
    â€œOf course I want to wear a Jeffrey Bruce dress,” she reassured him; she had decided that long ago. Andy was visibly relieved. “Did you doubt that?”
    â€œWell, I know you love Monique Lhuillier.”
    Actually, it was Meg who was obsessed with Monique Lhuillier. It had been her sister’s first and