Page 22 of A Wedding in the Bay

Josie heard her apartment buzzer go off, and she hopped off the armchair where she had been sitting. She scurried over to the intercom and pressed the button.

“Hey!”

“Hey, it’s Alissa! I’m here with Caitlin and Olivia.”

“Amazing!” A grin spread across Josie’s face as relief and happiness spread through her body. She felt a rush of gratitude that she had such good friends who wanted to help her out with her predicament. “Come on in.”

She pressed another button to open the downstairs door, and then she hurried to unlock her apartment door so that her friends could walk right in when they arrived. Then she busied herself in the kitchen, setting out mugs for tea and a pack of raspberry-flavored seltzer waters.

A knock soon sounded on her door.

“Come in!” she called as she placed a box of chocolate cookies down on the countertop. For a moment, she wished Paige was there to help them—if she’d been there, she would have baked something for the group, there was no doubt about that. Josie felt a pang as she missed her sister, but in the next moment, her friends stepped through the doorway and she was grinning again.

“Hello, hello!” Olivia called, shutting the door behind the group. “We’re here! We brought all kinds of junk food.”

Josie laughed and hurried over to hug her friends.

“The kind of junk food that won’t get any residue on your invitations,” Caitlin promised, holding up a finger. “Olivia wanted to buy Cheetos, but I forbade it.”

Olivia grinned. “This is true. We should commend Caitlin’s foresight.”

“You’re all amazing,” Josie said warmly. “Thank you so much for agreeing to help me with this.”

“Of course! We’ve got you.” Alissa nudged her affectionately, and Josie grinned back.

After standing by the door and chatting for a few more minutes, the friends got to work. They set up a work station on the table, with a pile of snacks in the center—along with plenty of napkins to wipe their fingers with, on Caitlin’s insistence—and stacks of invitations at each place.

“Caitlin’s got a plan organized down to a science,” Alissa said, gesturing to her twin.

“Well, I just separated the address list you sent Alissa into four equal parts,” Caitlin said modestly. “That way we’re all working with the same number of invitations.”

“Thank you,” Josie said, “but what about the mistake on the invitations? What do you guys think we can do about that?” She felt her stomach twist in nervousness. She wasn’t sure how they might be able to fix a printed error.

“We’re going to figure something out!” Alissa assured her. “We’ve come armed with pens, correction tape, and even some extra envelopes in case anybody writes down an address wrong. We’ll figure out a way to make these invitations look great again.”

“I hope so.” Josie bit her lip.

“Where are they?” Olivia asked. “Maybe we should all take a look at them together.”

“Sure, sounds like a great idea!” Caitlin said eagerly. “Four heads are better than one.”

Josie hurried to get the box where the offending invitations were. She placed it on the kitchen table and lifted out one of the invitations, sighing a little as she placed it down.

“Oh, those look wonderful!” Olivia cried, leaning forward to look at the invitation. “I absolutely love them.”

“I agree,” Alissa said as she looked at the beautiful graphic design. “These flowers and leaves bordering the words look lovely. Elegant, but with a kind of free spirit look to them.”

“Thanks.” Josie smiled at her friends, and then groaned as she looked back down at the invitation. “But my last name isn’t Garter!”

“This is true.” Caitlin tapped her fingers against her chin as she gazed down at the invitation. “We can just cover it with correction tape, and write your name in by hand?”

Josie nodded, feeling disappointed. It would be very clear that there had been a mistake on the invitations if that was the solution they adopted. Still, she told herself firmly, it was better than nothing—and in the end, an invitation wasn’t that big of a deal.

“I have an idea,” Olivia said slowly, peering down at the misprint. “There’s a decent gap between the ‘t’ in ‘Garter’ and that next ‘e.’ What if we all took pens and carefully changed the ‘t’ into an ‘n’?”

“Oh, that’s a brilliant idea!” Alissa crowed triumphantly. “And this font makes that easy to do—there’s no curl on the bottom of the ‘t,’ it’s just a straight line.”

Josie’s heart leapt up. She looked down at her invitation and smiled. “Yes! That should work out really well.” She hugged Olivia. “Thank you!”

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