XI
Zoey stepped into the room, took one look around, and gasped in horror. "Oh my God, I'm a horrible, horrible person. What have I done? How can you ever forgive me?"
Her bridesmaids looked at each other.
"It's not that bad..." Deanna ventured after a few moments.
Zoey sat down, head in hands. "Oh my God, I'm like, the evil bridesmaid dresser. How could I do this to you? How could you let me do this to you?"
"I think they're really..." Annie sought for a complimentary comment, and settled for "...not that evil." She looked down at her dress. "I mean, the look is... it's kind of..."
"Soufflé," Donna supplied.
"Yeah," she admitted. "Oh, but, soufflés are good!"
"Full of sugar," Deanna agreed.
Annie nodded quickly. "Yeah. Sugar's always good."
Zoey slowly shook her head, and looked up. "Okay, why didn't anybody in this room you know, pull me aside and... hit me over the head with something heavy? Did I get bypass surgery on my fashion centres or something? They're hideous."
CJ took charge, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Then they're doing their job. Rule one in the bridesmaids handbook; make the bride look good." She gave the First Daughter, made-up but not yet squeezed into her wedding dress, a quick once-over. "Not that you're gonna need help. Your hair looks great."
"This is all going wrong," Zoey said despairingly. "The, the bridesmaids' dresses are hideous, Ellie's brought a completely jerky boyfriend just to get at dad and now they're not talking to each other, the flowers are all wrong-"
"Whoa whoa whoa! Time out!" CJ counselled. "One thing at a time; breathe, Zoey, you're going purple. The dresses are fine. Don't worry about Ellie, this is your day, not hers. What's wrong with the flowers?"
Zoey looked up at her, looking very young in her misery. "They won't do them like I want," she said in a small voice. "I keep talking to people, but nobody's listening to me, this is my wedding but they all want to do it how they want, and-"
"Okay," CJ interrupted decisively. "Come on, ladies. Zoey, let's go kick some florist ass. Then when we've done that, we'll find somebody else's ass to kick."
"I vote Josh," Donna volunteered.
"Good plan," CJ agreed. Zoey cautiously began to smile, and CJ took her by the arm. "Lead the way, sister, we've got your back. We're your posse - point us at an ass, and we'll kick it. Okay?"
"O-kay!" Zoey said, with considerably more enthusiasm. "Let's get those florists!"
As they trailed behind the newly confident bride-to-be, Deanna looked across at Annie. "Did I mention want to be CJ when I grow up?"
"Me too," agreed the First Granddaughter emphatically.
"Hey, you guys can get in line behind the rest of us." Donna grinned at the two girls.
The sisterhood marched off to do battle.
"Millie." Abbey's tone was perhaps a little more polite than it would normally been, a warning sign that her husband would have recognised but the Surgeon General didn't seem to notice.
"Abbey." She smiled, looking over her shoulder. "Was that little Annie I just saw menacing the hotel staff?"
"Not so little anymore," Abbey acknowledged. "The girls are out in force - apparently some people here had their own ideas about how Zoey's wedding was supposed to go. I left them to it; they looked like they were enjoying themselves."
"All of them?" asked Millie, ever-so-slightly pointedly.
"If you're referring to my middle daughter, I assure you she's keeping to herself by choice, not by design." Abbey smiled sweetly. By this point in the conversation, Jed would have been looking for an escape hatch.
But the Surgeon General pressed on. "Sometimes people 'choose' to stay out because they're not that comfortable in."
"And sometimes it takes two people to build a wall." Abbey tilted her head to regard her daughter's godmother. "Millie... I love you dearly, but exactly where do you get off telling my husband he has favourites among his own daughters?"
"I didn't say that, I said Ellie thought that."
"That's not what my husband got out of the conversation." It had broken her heart to hear her husband softly confess that he thought his daughter was afraid of him. Millie was only sticking up for Ellie, God bless her, but she was making waves in places she had no idea of the undercurrents.
The Surgeon General rolled her eyes. "Abbey, I know your husband loves Ellie, but he needs a good sharp wake-up call! She's slipping away from him, and if he doesn't do something about it he's going to lose her completely."
Abbey sighed and massaged her forehead. She was silent for a few moments. "I know you're looking out for Ellie in this Millie, and I respect that - and believe me, that's why we chose you to be her godmother in the first place - but... it's complicated."
"She's scared, Abbey," Millie said softly. "You're a family of confident people - you don't know what it's like to always be the insecure one."
Abbey smiled wryly at that. "Oh, Millie," she sighed, shaking her head. "You really think Ellie's the only insecure one in this equation?"
She barked a disbelieving laugh. "Jed, insecure?"
"About this, he's insecure," she repeated.
"That's crazy," the Surgeon General said, frowning. "He's a wonderful father, and you know all the girls adore him. Even Ellie - especially Ellie, that's why she's always so distressed by all of this."
"He worries, Millie," Abbey said softly. "And I know you didn't mean to, but you hurt him very deeply, and he hasn't forgotten it. You're looking out for my daughter, and I love you for that, but this isn't as simple as you'd like to make it, okay? These things never are." She straightened up. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check on my youngest daughter before she and her pack of bridesmaids decide they're not content with taking over the wedding and move on to world domination."
She left the Surgeon General watching after her with a thoughtful look on her face.
"This is a really nice hotel," Sam observed as they walked.
"Yeah." Josh looked around. "You know what's missing, though?"
"What?"
"I haven't been bugged about my speech for nearly ten minutes. Where's Donna?"
"Well, she was terrorising the staff with the other bridesmaids for a while, and then I think she went outside..."
"Yeah, thanks." Josh started to peel off and then paused. "Where're you going?"
"I'm just gonna go get breakfast with Steve." Sam pointed vaguely over his shoulder. "Long wait until we get to eat after the wedding."
"Yeah. I'm gonna go find Donna."
"Okay."
He found her sitting on a bench outside, in a dress that was probably best described as... 'frothy'. "You look nice," he said, perhaps too tentatively.
She shot him a venomous look. "Liar."
He shrugged, and made to sit down next to her. She snatched the fabric of her dress out of his way. "Careful, you'll ruin it."
"Yeah - I think the guy who designed it already took care of that," he noted dryly.
Donna sighed. "I hate weddings."
"Me too."
"Everybody always seems so... happy."
"Ingrates."
"And there they are, getting all their lives and their futures sorted out, and... here am I."
He smiled at her affectionately. "Where are you?"
"Nowhere fast, most of the time." She frowned down at her outfit.
"You want to be somewhere else?"
"No, I just... sometimes I just feel like there's something... missing, you know?"
Josh smirked. "There's nothing missing from you. You're... complete. The complete Donnatella."
Almost against her will, she began to smile back. "You make me sound like an encyclopaedia."
"Full of pointless information and difficult to read?"
The smile blossomed into a full-blown grin and then a giggle. And then she sighed. "The wedding's not so bad, but then there's gonna be the reception, and everybody's gonna have somebody to dance with..."
He gestured to himself. "Would the best man be an appropriate dance partner?"
Donna smiled. "That's sweet."
"I am that way."
"Willing to publicly humiliate yourself to make me feel better."
"I often do."
"And, strangely, it always makes me feel better."
He grinned, and squeezed her shoulder. "Hey, it's only for today."
"I know," she shrugged. "It's just... I mean Zoey's twenty-three. Doesn't it make you feel... inadequate?"
His smile shrank in on itself and disappeared, and he fiddled with his fingers. "I know," he sighed. "I just... I'm not good at that stuff. I think I- I don't know, I think I have something, and then I just manage to screw it up."
"Me too," she agreed sadly.
"Hey, no you don't," Josh refuted. "You just have a remarkable talent for picking up gomers."
She looked at him. "And you have a remarkable talent for saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time."
Now seemed like a good time for a self-depreciating smile. "Ah, but now you want to kick my ass you're not depressed anymore, right?"
She tilted her head to one side and contemplated that for a moment. "You know what? That's true."
"Well, there you go then." He offered her a hand up. "Let's get back inside."
They headed back in.