Unexpected Gift by R.S. Lively
Chapter One
Molly
Five years ago…
You love your brother. You love your brother. You love your brother. Because that is the only way I would ever agree to wear this dress. The mirror mocks me. I love my brother, Brandon, and his fiancée, Amelia. They are the couple everyone envies. From middle school all the way through college, they stayed together. The love they share is the stuff people hope for their entire lives. It is beautiful.
This dress though? This dress is not.
“Oh my god, you look so beautiful!” Amelia squeals, throwing her hands over her mouth. Her face starts to wrinkle and a loud whine rips through the air. “So beautiful,” She sobs. Her shoulders shake, causing the hair rollers to bounce on her head.
Crap.
“Don’t cry, Amelia. This is a happy day!” I plaster on a smile, trying to accept the fact that I’ll be in a baby pink dress that shows way too much boob for my liking. Not only that, but I'll have to be in it for more than eight hours, too.
Good thing she doesn’t have any makeup on or else we would have to redo it. She waves a hand at me, dismissing her tears. “I’m fine. You just look so pretty,” she says, and in comes the high-pitched emotional voice.
Doubtful.
“I’ve waited for this day for so long. I love your brother so much, and I’ve always imagined you in baby pink at our wedding. You wear every other color except that one.” She dabs her tears with a tissue.
Because I hate the color pink…in every shade.
I pull up the strapless part of the dress as it starts to slide down. I don’t know how this is going to work. Considering how it falls, I could be walking down the aisle, and bam! My boobs are on display for the entire world to see.
But I’ll put up with it because I love my brother and Amelia. I spin on my heels, careful to grab the sides so I don’t step on the delicate fabric. We have a few hours until the wedding and everyone is starting to lose their minds with all sorts of last minute details. And it wouldn’t be a wedding without at least one catastrophe. The cake has been delayed and Amelia starts entering the ‘what if the wedding isn’t perfect?’ phase.
This is why she has a maid of honor. “Hey,” I calmly say as I grab her hand in mine and smile, pushing past the stupid baby pink dress and my visible cleavage. “The wedding is going to be perfect. You’re going to look so beautiful. Brandon won’t even know what hit him when he sees you walking down that aisle. He is lucky. We are lucky to finally have you as an official part of our family.”
“That isn’t helping.” She cries harder and uglier. Her bottom lip trembles, and her face turns red.
No one said I’d be a good bridesmaid. Maybe a tougher approach?
I spot a bottle of champagne that the maid of honor brought for us to celebrate before Amelia takes her first step out of the dressing room doors and into the church to marry the love of her life.
“I know just what you need," I say. She needs to relax. “I’ll be right back.”
The bottle is leaning against the side of the metal bucket and chilling in ice. A few plastic flutes sit next to it, begging me to use them. Grabbing the neck of the bottle with my hand, I pour two flutes of the bubbly. It pops and fizzes as the bubbles rise to the surface.
By the time I make it back to Amelia, the top of my dress has already slid down to my nipples. I wish I had more boobs so this wouldn’t be a problem in my everyday life, but implants are too expensive. A few weeks ago, the dress fit, but I lost some weight running around like a chicken with her head cut off, and I lost the weight in my boobs. Of course, I did. The weight can’t come from my butt or my stomach. Nope, it just had to leave from the body parts that barely exist in the first place.
“Here you go.” I hand her a flute of the delicious champagne.
She takes it from me hurriedly, and the expensive liquid spills over the rim, trickling onto her hand. But that still doesn’t stop her from chugging the bubbly.
“Okay, woah. Take it easy. You have to walk down the aisle, remember?” I grab the flute from her and set it on the desk where all of our makeup is. From the looks of the clock on the wall, all five bridesmaids and the bride-to-be need to get going, or else Amelia will be late.
And my brother will kill me.
Amelia wipes her mouth on her arm and takes a deep breath.
I have never seen her this frazzled before. I yank the top of my dress up again and sit down in the chair beside her. “Talk to me. Why are you so nervous, Amelia?”
Her big, brown, doe-like eyes stare at me with fear as they start filling with water. “I’m scared.”
I pinch my brows together and take her hand in mine. “Why? You and Brandon have been together forever.”
“That’s the problem. What if he realizes he needs more? What if I’m not enough? We were each other’s first. What if only being with one woman forever isn’t what he wants?”
Oh. I see. Yeah, that would make me nervous, too. But it's Brandon so I’m not worried at all. “You know, never once has Brandon ever told me he has second thoughts. In middle school, high school, and college, you were all there ever was. He never brought up another girl, and every time he said your name, his eyes lit up. You’re his favorite person in the entire world. Now, I’m not saying there won’t be hard times?there will be?but he has loved you since the moment he saw you in the seventh grade with your piggy tales. Ever since the day you wore those red overalls with little sunflowers all over, he was hooked.”