Page 84 of How to Say I Do
She and I had been playing global hopscotch and kept missing each other. While I was in New York, she was in Paris and Dubai, and when I was in Texas, she and Tyler were in Manhattan. The day I flew back to New York, they jetted off to Tokyo.
Finally, we were on the same continent and in the same time zone again, and I took my top-secret box to Tyler’s apartment in Brooklyn.
It was always an adventure to visit a celebrity in their own environment. I’d walked into homes with monkeys in bird cages, tigers tethered by gold-plated chains, naked models holding out trays of blunts and shots of Johnny Walker Blue, and open spaces strewn with meditation cushions and burning sage. I’d seen the edges of Tyler’s apartment beyond Tessa on our video calls, but anything could look normal when it was only five hundred pixels wide.
I was charmed, though. Tyler’s place was bright and modern, and surprisingly spacious. It was a classic six, full of light and accented with matte black finishings, minimalist art, and leafy potted plants. I spotted an elephant ear fern spilling out of a brilliant Talavera pot almost as tall as I was, and I remembered Wyatt gently pulling the same frond away from my ankles what felt like a world and a lifetime away.
Tessa was propped up on the couch, in socks and sweats with her hair piled on her head in a messy knot, and Tyler was in jeans and a t-shirt with a hole at the neckline. They looked like they were spending the day doing not a single thing and were delighted about it. The place felt built to press Pause on life. The apartment was their oasis, and they reveled in it, letting in the sounds of the quiet neighborhood through an open window while tangerine tea warmed on the stove.
Tessa waved when Tyler brought me to the living room. I set the box I carried down on the table in front of her with a flourish. “I have a surprise for you.”
“The dresses?” She shot up like a little girl, a six year old being given permission to play fairy tale princess.
I nodded. “From Texas. These are the local designers we thought would work best for you.”
“We? Wyatt helped?” She shot me theawwface before she reached for the box. Then she froze and glared at Tyler until he rose from the couch, laughing softly and dropping a kiss to the top of her head.
Once Tyler was out of the room, Tessa ripped off the box lid and plunged her hands inside. Tulle rose like a cloud. Tissue paper and lace tumbled to the floor. She pulled out the dresses Wyatt and I had chosen one by one.
The first was a sleek trumpet gown, rose-champagne silk with an illusion neckline dotted with tiny Swarovski crystals. The second was a satin sheath with a bustle that opened into a chapel train, beautifully hand-appliquéd with Texas wildflowers and glass beads that caught the light. Both were stunning works of art, handmade with love and elegance.
But the third—
Wyatt and I agreed it was the winner. It was a classic ballgown, with a sleeveless satin bodice and an elevated neckline. The skirt was full and bustling, with cascading layers of tulle covered in a silk overlay of the palest, gentlest, sunniest shade of Texas yellow. Delicate Chantilly lace fell from waist to floor over the silk, letting the yellow peekaboo through like the first blush of a sunrise.
Tessa held each dress up and swished left and right in the selfie mode on Tyler’s flatscreen TV. Her fingers got lost in the satin and silk, and she sighed over the fine appliqué and the perfect crystal bead work, but she absolutely melted when she held up the third, almost going to her knees as soon as she held it to her chest.
She twirled in front of the television camera. “Was this one of the ones Wyatt picked out?”
“It was. It was our favorite.”
“This is the one,” she breathed. “Noël, this is the one. This is the dress!”
She barked out a laugh and doubled over, and, for a moment, I really thought she was going to do it, that she was going to bawl on a one-of-a-kind handmade dress, one month before her wedding when there was no way to repair the impeccable and irreplaceable craftsmanship. Should I go to her and offer my shoulder, or should I peel the dress away before she really started sobbing?
Those weren’t tears, though. She was smiling—no, she was laughing—and she twirled again, smoothing her hand over the lace as she gazed at her reflection. “I’m getting married, Noël. I’mmarryingTyler. It’s really happening.”
Six months ago, I would have thought,And I’m going to sell that happy ever after, darling, and make us both happilywealthyever after.Just likeElite, and just like the designers who wanted to touch a piece of that fairy-tale money and hitch a ride on her shooting-influence-star. A part of me still thought it. I wasn’t proud.
But I also thought,Congratulations, and,You deserve it, and,Tyler is one in a billion, just like Wyatt. And if Wyatt was that magical and wonderful and astounding, then I supposed Tyler might not be a puppy mill operator or a secret serial killer, either.
Everyone deserved to be loved like this. Everyone deserved to swing their wedding dress—or their cowboy hat—in the mirror and imagine their future because they found The One, their One, and that meant everything. Every Hollywood ending, every happy ever after, every sweet first kiss. A love like that deserved to be special, and sacred.
And private.
I had the opportunity to bring upElite’s contract and their requirements at least eight different times while I was helping her box up the “no” dresses to send back to Texas, or while we called her tailor to get her measurements for The Dress to be custom fitted, or after she dragged Tyler out of the bedroom where he’d been watching a baseball game on the backs of his eyelids. I could have brought it up later, too, when I blew off three meetings—two with designers and one with Saks—to hang out with the two of them. The three of us were caught in the snow-globe quality of Tyler’s apartment, wrapped up in that world-away-from-the world feel.
I had so many chances to talk to her, and I didn’t. I didn’t tell her thatElitewas getting ready to riot over being shut out of the wedding planning, and that Oscar de la Renta and Valentino and Prada were frothing on my voicemail. I didn’t tell her that I was fending off a hundred emails a day from everyone under the sun, all wanting to know who and what she would be wearing, from her panties to her pearls, and that I was drowning in questions about floral arrangements, color schemes, jewelry, menus, makeup, and guests.
There were eighteen A-list celebs who believed, to the bottom of their hearts, that they were engraved on Tessa’s guest list, and they were badgering me for all the details of the wedding. How could they plan their trips to Paris around the wedding if they didn’t have their invite?God, didn’t I know they were fabulously busy people that needed to know things?
I, of course, knew that each of those eighteen had been cut from Tessa’s guest list personally, by her, with a big red marker swiped from Tyler while he was correcting homework and she and I were on a video call. “No, no, I don’t want any of these people. Can we—”
“It’s your wedding, Tessa. You can do what you want,” I’d told her.
That wasn’t the line I was supposed to deliver.
According to everyone else, thiswasn’tTessa’s wedding. This wasElite’s wedding, and they were going to sell a billion copies of their magazine and generate at least ten times that in revenue, thanks to all those juicy Tessa Yarborough clicks. The public had paid to pry into Tessa’s life for two decades, and there was no stopping that insatiable hunger now. She wasn’t just a star because she sang, and, shock of shocks, was good at it. No, she was a star because everyone wanted to stare at her life when she wasn’t singing.
