Nixon

••• Twenty-Nine •••

"Is there something I missed here, Lily, or does it really just not suit you?" Nixon asks, placing his coffee down on the counter as I stand before the massive mirror, a woman pinning the fabric around my torso. "I mean, we've had custom makers drop by frequently for the past week and nothing makes you smile yet."

He's right, none of these wedding dresses that I am dolled-up in have left me with a smile radiating across my face. Maybe he should rethink the idea that a dress would cause me to smile. Maybe he should rethink and understand that a perfect dress will not put a smile upon my face, but perhaps a change of life. As I look at the woman before me, I cannot recognize her as she seems like a total strange when compared to my dreams. In my dreams she wears a gown fit for British royalty, a traditional and simple dress cloaking her fair skin, lace along the sleeves, an elegant look, and her brunette locks pinned back in a beautiful updo. No, the woman before me looks nothing like that perfected image. No, for this woman has platinum blond hair pinned out of her face as bags settle under her eyes and a strange with some French last name stands beside her, holding up fabrics.

"What are we doing wrong?" Nixon asks, walking over to me as I stand tall in one of the mansion's extra rooms, this one transformed into a wedding preparation room. With mirrors surrounding me and the King-sized bed once merely for guests now polluted with different types of flowers and cards, Nixon has gone full out. Many thing it is the bride who makes sure to overlook every detail of her dream day, but this time, it is the groom to do so.

"It's just not what I had in mind," I respond, knowing Nixon will take it as a response to the dress and not to the whole idea of getting married. No. What I have in mind even a year ago was a simple wedding, Spring preferably, outside as my bridesmaids would wear blush pink and the doves would fly free as my lover and I kissed to seal the end of the ceremony. I dreamt of a wedding with mainly family and close friends, not a pack that I hardly know and my family kept off of the guest list. Nixon was not behind keeping them off the list, but I told him flat out just yesterday morning that they were not to be invited. "I just don't know what I would like," I add, hoping to add a little more life to the room that stands quiet for the most part as the French dress maker beside me places a pink pencil behind her pale ear. Scratching her black hair that falls over her shoulders in retro curls, her baby blue eyes scan me over for a fifth time in twenty seconds.

"I think I have an idea," she informs, French accent think as I remember her name to be Cher, having arrived in from Paris last night. Nixon really wanted the best in the business. Hell, the wedding planner...hell hath no fury like Alecia Huffington, a graduate of Oxford and someone sought out by celebrators. If anything, my dream wedding consisted of my mother and Taylor helping me plan color schemes and thinking of what the invites would look like, not some strange whose name I had to google. "We could try this." Cher holds out to me a sketch pad, a page tabbed with a blue marker, the sketch of a dress upon the page as I raise my eyebrows.

"Let's try it," I declare, looking over to Nixon to see his lips tug into a smile as he knows I finally show interest in something other than the guest list and my demand for no family of mine. If there's one thing I want with this dress, it's for that it to be done in time for the wedding...for I have no idea when I will start to show. Twelve to sixteen weeks will I begin to show, meaning that it would be good to know how far along I am exactly.

The fabric upon my body switches and soon enough I find myself in a white dress used as a baseline for the dress I could possibly be wearing. "Do you like it? The final dress will have more dimension and the trail for this one will be two yards or we can shorten it." Looking to Nixon through the mirror, I see his eyes locked upon my frame, upon how I look in the dress I may just be marrying him in. Marrying a male I've known for almost a year now. "What do you think?"