chapter 30

The next daywas a blur. The only thing Izzy wanted was to get the bridal brief, plan whatever they were going to do with the challenge, race through practice, and fall into Lillian’s bed. But everything took forever. Bryant needed Izzy to film a conflict scene with the leader of Effectz while Arabella, Tock, Sarah, and Axel filmed a happily-hanging-out scene with the Spice Angels. The rep from the bridal company didn’t like the way the costumers had fitted their outfits and wanted them retailored. It was eight o’clock before all five members of Velveteen Crush were in the same room together. Then they were all off their game. Arabella looked as angry as a wet cat in her white dress. Axel didn’t know how to be onstage in men’s clothing. A competing politician had accused the senator Tock worked for of financial malfeasance, and Tock was beside himself without his phone and a chance to do damage control. Only Sarah liked her flirty white outfit, but she agreed that the troupe’s energy was frazzled. During a break, Izzy followed Tock out of the building so they could check their phones. She wrote a text to Lillian.

Izzy: I’m going to be here all night. I wish I was with you.

That sounded too intimate.

Izzy: I’m going to be here all night, wish we could hit it

Ugh. No.

A text came in from Lillian while Izzy pondered.

Lillian: I’m so sorry. I’m going to be tied up all night.

Izzy: Not an unattractive picture

Lillian: With rehearsal!

The next day, with their act generally in order, Izzy and the troupe sat on the sofas in their greenroom watching Dance Magic on the large TV screen.

“It’s all a heteronormative, capitalist conspiracy,” Arabella said.

“Love spends,” Axel said.

Arabella leaned her shoulder against his.

“Truth.”

Arabella was right, but weddings were magical too. What would it be like to have one person commit themselves to you, mind, body, and soul? Yes, there was the whole patriarchal, ownership-of-the-woman thing, but if you could rewrite that…

For a moment, in the cottage, it had felt like Izzy and Lillian were the only people in the world. It was a taste of the forever a wedding promised. For a moment, Izzy wasn’t her past or her future. And at the same time, it felt like Lillian saw and accepted all of her. Velveteen Crush’s performance was going to capture that kind of magic with a big dose of LGBTQ+ pride. She performed opposite Sarah. Axel paired with Tock. Really, it should have been Axel and Arabella. They were a queerer couple than wholesome Axel and suit-wearing, tap-dancing Tock, but everyone had agreed this was time for the gay marriage angle.

Izzy’s heart raced as though she were standing in front of an audience for the first time. They had to make it. Lillian had to make it. Tonight she’d see Lillian. She remembered Lillian sitting half naked in the cottage, so elegant and strong. Izzy had to feel that strength again. This couldn’t be their farewell. It just couldn’t.

Bryant interrupted her thoughts, opening the greenroom door without knocking.

“Blue,” he said matter-of-factly, “your mother’s here.”

Izzy stood up, peering around Bryant.

“Not here,” Bryant amended. “In the audience. We’re going to have a special moment with you two after you perform. Got it? Joy. Love. Mom. Daughter. Wedding magic. Okay?”

“She really came?”

Izzy could feel Sarah’s empathetic eye contact through the back of her skull.

“Yeah. She’s excited, pumped,” Bryant said. “She’s playing really good on camera. You ready to give me some joy?”

She really came.

“Yes. Yes. Yes!” This was the perfect performance for Megan to see, all about love and trust and the future. Izzy cleared her throat. “I mean, yeah. I didn’t know she was coming, but that’s cool.”

“She told you she was coming,” Sarah said when Bryant closed the door behind him.

Izzy sat down quickly.

“I didn’t…” All those times Megan had promised to be there. I’d never miss your starring role. Opening night. Closing night. Your last show in high school. “I didn’t know… think… she’d actually come. To see me.” Just this once she met Sarah’s deep eye contact with her honest feelings. “With everything going on with Bella’s wedding, she still made time to see me. Like I… matter.”

Sarah drew her into a hug. “Of course you matter.”

If all the world was a stage, Izzy had walked into a magical play. Megan had come all the way to Portland to put her first, even though Bella was getting married and Megan surely had Harmonious Terra-cotta napkin holders to hand monogram. And Lillian had listened to her sad-child story and seen her hideous orgasm face and accepted her. Despite a rough rehearsal, Velveteen Crush’s performance was going to slap. Maybe love was real, and Lillian would stay, and the Prime Minister would declare them both the final winners, and she’d save the theater, and everything would be okay.

Izzy closed her eyes. Was she imagining everything? Was this feeling just the high of performing? The moment when she transformed into the untouchable Blue Lenox? No. This was real.

“How do you feel?” Sarah asked.

“I’m happy.” Totally and completely happy.

Their performance was flawless. The judges loved them. Izzy blinked into the lights. She felt her friends beside her, all of them glowing, even Arabella (although her glow was more an ominous, red glow).

The Prime Minister declared their performance the only one that didn’t make him feel like he’d been trapped in a copy of Modern Bride magazine, to which Bryant yelled, “Redo!” On second take, the Prime Minister said their performance was beautifully unified around the themes of love, marriage, and movement.

Bryant called cut again, but before Velveteen Crush could exit the stage, he called out, “Blue Lenox, stand there.” He hurried onto the stage. “Be sure you’re looking at Camera A when Hallie announces your mother’s here.”

Izzy scanned the audience, but the lights were too bright to make out faces. Bryant silenced the set and called action.

“We have a special surprise for Blue Lenox,” Hallie declared with enthusiasm that suggested she was about to offer them a combination of Megabucks jackpot and the Second Coming.

“Blue told us she’s so excited to be on the show, but she’s missing her sister’s bridal shower and dress fitting,” Harrison said.

“Her sister’s getting married!” Hallie effused.

The studio audience let out a collective “awwww” that was too simultaneous to be spontaneous.

“We brought your family all the way up from California so you can do the dress fitting!” Harrison said.

Wait. Not the whole family, just Megan.

“And the Allure Bridal Collection is going to provide the custom-made dress and bridesmaids’ dresses. And today, we’re sending you to the River Vista Resort and Lodge to pick the perfect Allure Bridal Collection dress for the big day.”

This wasn’t supposed to be about Bella.

Someone was running down the aisle, cameras following them: Megan, rushing toward her, arms flung wide.

“Izzy, Isadora, Izabelly, peaches.”

Megan flung her arms around Izzy, bathing her in Megan’s familiar drugstore perfume. And over Megan’s shoulder, Izzy saw a mirage of women wearing the same white T-shirt printed with pink sparkly letters, the same pink jeans, the same small puff of lace above their heads. In the middle of them stood Bella in a white dress with a sash across her chest reading brIDE.

Megan pulled back holding Izzy by her bare shoulders. Megan wore the same shirt, printed with pink sparkly letters reading MOTHER OF THE brIDE.

“You look amazing,” Megan said. “That was the best performance I’ve ever seen.”

A few paces behind her stood Rick, in pink jeans, looking embarrassed. His T-shirt read FATHER OF THE brIDE. Beside Bella, a small person with short hair was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt reading SPOUSE OF THE brIDE. And behind that, an army of pretty white girls, their T-shirts declaring brIDESMAID in pink script.

“What? No,” Izzy said.

Bella looked exactly like a grown-up version of the kid Izzy had known. Big blue eyes. Open smile. A little shy. Her hair looked windblown, as though she’d been too busy chasing butterflies to comb it. Like someone who had spent most of their life happy. That kind of happiness left a glow on people, like a light tan. Like the sun-kissed streaks in Bella’s hair. A cold lump formed in Izzy’s throat. Megan hadn’t come for her. Megan had come to get free dresses for beautiful, happy, sun-kissed Bella or maybe just to get the bridal party on TV.

Bryant called cut. A runner appeared at Izzy’s side, shoved a change of clothes at her, pushed her into an empty bathroom to change, and then guided her to the exit. Before she knew it, someone was bundling her onto a tour bus.

“Where are we going?”

Megan was right behind her, talking without taking a breath. “The Allure Bridal Collection is taking us on a girls’ getaway bridal dress fitting. I can’t wait to see you in a bridesmaid’s dress. Can you believe the show’s going to pay for everything? Bella is so excited. Her partner is nonbinary. Did you know that? So it’s not really a girls’ trip. Ace is part of the LGBTQ-plus community, just like you. You’ll love them. Rick’s coming too. Poor guy. He can’t tell a tulle from a rayon, but he wants to be part of everything. You and Bella! My darling girls. My kiddos. My littles.”

You left me with a shit trailer in the middle of nowhere and a wad of cash.

Izzy didn’t have a bag she could put on the seat beside her to say, Don’t sit here. Megan plopped down and kept talking.

“Bella and Ace’s colors are just lovely. Did you get the bridal planning packet I sent you? I went to your cousin Marley’s wedding, and she picked taupe and mint green…”

Two camera operators positioned themselves in the bus. The sweat from Izzy’s performance was cooling. The bus’s air-conditioning chilled her. The rest of Bella’s party piled in.

“I have cousins?”

Why did she ask? She could just get Ancestry.com.

Megan started counting. “Marley. Tiffany. Alex. Jenny.” She listed more names. “That’s on my side. Then on Rick’s…” She went on, oblivious to the fact that Rick was not Izzy’s father. Rick was the man Megan married who’d always seemed embarrassed by having a teenage girl in the house and solved that problem by treating her like an Airbnb guest, putting out clean towels for her but never talking to her.

It was too much: The high of the performance fading. Her clit aching for Lillian’s lips. Everything Sarah had said about her inner child coming true. Reed-Whitmer hadn’t performed; what if they lost? And here was Megan crooning about Bella’s partner. And Izzy was going to burst into tears. She dug deep inside to pull Blue up like a shield, but she couldn’t muster her. She needed Sarah to tell her to breathe. She needed Arabella to tell her this was all capitalist bullshit and Tock to say they could file an injunction. She needed Axel to misquote an inspirational saying. And she needed Lillian to hold her. And she was stuck on a party bus with her mother, stepfather, half sister, Ace, and a dozen girls with clouds of white netting attached to their tiaras.