Downgrade My Ride? I'll Upgrade My Groom! novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Rehearsal

Sydney baked through the night and all of Friday, and she wouldn't let me see the cake.

"It's a surprise," she said, with a smear of buttercream on her nose. "For everybody."

At seven o'clock on Friday night, Clay and I walked into the Kenward Grand as family.

The rehearsal was in the ballroom.

The round tables were gone.

Rows of gold chairs faced a white arch at the far end, the same spot where Niles had raised his glass to the wrong bride three Saturdays ago.

Bailey's pink roses were everywhere.

The planner stood at the front with her headset and a clipboard.

"Family on the left!" she called. "Bride's family on the left, please!"

Clay looked at me.

"Which side are we?"

"I honestly don't know," I said.

We sat on the left, in the second row.

My father sat in the first, alone, in a gray suit.

He didn't turn around.

Niles came down the aisle with two of his college friends, laughing.

He saw me and changed course.

"Liv." He bent and kissed my cheek before I could move. "You came. Bailey said you would. I said, no chance, she's too proud."

"Bailey was right."

"Bailey usually is, about you." He straightened and let his eyes go down my black dress and back up. "You look like Paris."

Clay set his program down on the chair beside him.

"She looks like Chicago," he said. "Paris was four years ago."

Niles laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

Then he went to the arch and turned around and kept looking at me.

The planner walked Bailey through it twice.

Down the aisle on my father's arm, slow, pause at the second row, then the arch.

Both times my father kept his eyes on the carpet.

Both times, when Bailey reached the arch, Niles was looking past her at me.

On the second run he winked.

Bailey saw it.

She smiled at the planner.

"And Percy," the planner said, "right before the vows, you've got the microphone for two minutes for your announcement. Two minutes, not three. We have a string quartet on the clock."

"I'll be brief," my father said.

He looked over his shoulder at me for the first time all night.

Then he looked away.

Dinner was upstairs, in the private dining room with the long table and the view of the river.

Niles had done the seating himself.

I was on his left.

Bailey was on his right.

Clay was four chairs down, beside an aunt of Niles's who wanted to know if Eastman Capital had ever considered cryptocurrency.

"Rearranging chairs at your own rehearsal," I said, not sitting. "That's new."

"I wanted to see you." Niles pulled the chair out for me. "Sit, Liv. It's dinner. Nobody's getting hit by anything."

Bailey laughed too loudly.

I sat because three people were watching me decide.

All through the soup, Niles talked to me.

He reminded me about the wine we'd had in Lyon. He asked about my mother's portrait. He told the table I'd designed the ballroom downstairs.

"Every inch," he said. "She has the best eye in this city. Kenward was never the same without her."

Bailey cut her fish into very small pieces.

The planner leaned in between Niles and Bailey with her clipboard.

"Tomorrow's cars," she said. "Mr. Kenward, the Rolls will pick you up here at one fifteen. Bailey, your SUV comes to the Atwood house at one."

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