My Fiancé Chose His Ex, So I Chose Myself novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Hostage

Shayla storms the shop for her wedding gown and Edie won't give it up until she gets her mother's things back; then Hugh's grandmother tells her Shayla has moved into Edie's house.

By nine o'clock two brides had cancelled.

The first one sent a text with a prayer-hands emoji. "So sorry, just not comfortable right now!!"

The second one didn't bother with emojis. She just wanted her deposit back.

"Don't give it to her," Bonnie said.

"It's three hundred dollars, Bon."

"It's the principle."

"The principle doesn't pay rent." I sent the refund.

I unlocked the front door at ten like any other Friday.

I put on my glasses on their chain and my pincushion band on my left wrist.

Three brides were already waiting on the bench by the window, all booked weeks ago. They watched me unlock the door.

One of them had her phone face up on her knee with the Tacoma Brides post open on it.

I pretended not to see.

"Good morning," I said. "Who's first?"

I had the first bride up on the platform in front of the three-way mirror, pinning the side seams of a mermaid gown, when the bell over the door jangled hard.

Shayla walked in.

She wore a camel coat and big sunglasses, though it was still raining.

Two women came in behind her, both with their phones up, both filming.

"Don't mind us," one of them said to the brides on the bench. "We're bridesmaids."

Shayla took her sunglasses off and looked around my shop.

"I'm here for my gown," she said. "Today."

I put one more pin in the mermaid's seam.

"Your final fitting is December second."

"I'm not doing a fitting with you. I'm taking my dress somewhere safe." She raised her voice for the bench. "I don't feel safe leaving fourteen thousand dollars of silk with a woman who comes to my door at midnight."

The mermaid bride in front of me stopped breathing.

I helped her down off the platform.

"Give me two minutes," I told her.

I walked to the back rack.

Shayla's gown hung at the very end, in a long white bag with her name on the tag in my mother's old label maker font.

Ivory silk. A cathedral train. Hand-beaded lace over the bodice, eight hundred tiny glass beads I had reset by hand.

I stood in front of it.

"You'll get your gown," I said, "when I get my mother's sewing machine, her wedding dress and her earrings out of Clint's house."

Shayla's mouth fell open.

"Are you holding my wedding dress hostage?"

"I'm holding it for the same amount of time you're holding my mother's things. Seems fair."

"Those aren't your things. That's my house."

"Then it should be easy for you to carry a sewing machine out of it."

One of the bridesmaids gasped into her phone.

Bonnie came out of the workroom with a tape measure around her neck and her own phone up, filming right back.

"Hi," she said to the bridesmaids. "Smile. You're on my channel too."

Shayla marched straight at the rack.

She grabbed the garment bag by its shoulders and yanked.

The hanger hook caught on the bar. The bag swung.

I didn't grab her.

I just stepped in front of the gown, close enough that she'd have to go through me.

I still had my big shears in my right hand from the cutting table.

I didn't lift them. I didn't point them. I just held them, the way I'd held them every working day since I was fourteen.

Shayla looked at the shears.

Then at me.

Then she screamed.

It wasn't a word. It was just noise, high and long, right in my face.

The brides on the bench flinched back against the window.

"You see this?" she shrieked at them. "You see what she is? She's threatening me with scissors! Film her! Film her face!"

"I'm standing still," I said.

"She's psychotic! She's going to cut up my dress!"

"I'm the only person in this room who's ever touched your dress without wrecking it."

The bell over the door jangled again.

A small old woman came in, shaking rain off a plaid umbrella.

She had a silver bob, real pearls, and a navy raincoat with the belt tied tight.

I knew her. She'd sat on my bench in August with a checkbook and written me a deposit for this very gown.

Hugh Meade's grandmother.

She folded the umbrella and looked at Shayla, mid-scream, with both hands on the garment bag.

"Shayla, dear," she said. "Let go of that."

Shayla let go so fast the hanger rang.

"Mrs. Meade! Thank God. She's keeping my gown from me. She threatened me."

"I can see that she's standing in front of it." Mrs. Meade came across the shop at her own pace, which was slow and absolutely in charge. "I wrote the check for that gown. I recall the check very clearly, because it was a large one."

"It's my dress."

"It's my money. And I left the gown with Miss Lansing because she's the best in Tacoma." She looked at the bridesmaids, still filming. "Put those down, girls. You look like pigeons."

They put them down.

Mrs. Meade turned to me.

"What's the balance on the alterations, dear?"

"Eleven hundred."

She opened her handbag, counted out eleven hundred-dollar bills onto my cutting table and squared the edges.

"Paid in full," she said. "The gown stays exactly where I left it until I say otherwise."

Shayla's face went blotchy red under her makeup.

"Hugh will hear about this."

"Hugh heard about a great deal last night," Mrs. Meade said. "He came to my house at one in the morning and ate a whole sleeve of my crackers in silence. He hasn't done that since he was twelve."

Shayla turned on her heel.

At the door she looked back at me.

"Enjoy your scissors, honey."

The bell jangled. The bridesmaids followed her out into the rain.

The mermaid bride dropped her shoulders and said, "Okay, that was insane. Can you still take in my seams?"

"Yes," I said. "I can still take in your seams."

The other two brides stayed too.

Mrs. Meade sat down on the bench by the window like it was hers.

"You don't remember me," she said.

"You came in August."

"I came in May first. I watched you fix a bride's bodice in twenty minutes the morning of her wedding, while her mother cried and her maid of honor threw up in your trash can. You never stopped smiling." She looked at me over the top of her glasses. "That's when I decided you'd do Shayla's dress. I wanted somebody near her who couldn't be rattled."

"I'm rattled," I said.

"You're standing up straight. That's the same thing in public."

She got up and tightened her raincoat belt.

"Saturday is Meade Marine's hundredth birthday," she said. "A party at the boathouse on Ruston Way. Two hundred people. My grandson hasn't cancelled anything yet, and Shayla expects to be toasted."

"Why are you telling me?"

"Because I'd like you there. Come in something red." She opened her plaid umbrella in my doorway. "Oh. And you should know where she slept last night, dear."

"Where?"

"Not in her condo. Hugh had the doorman change her code at two." Mrs. Meade smiled thinly. "She's moved into your house this morning. She posted the kitchen."

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