One
MRS. RICHMOND’S WEDDING gown was itchy, for one thing.
The kind of itchy that eclipses everything else.
And there was no way to get out of it.
And that was nobody’s fault but my own.
The problem was: I was marrying her son, Pearce—my college boyfriend and fellow math major—at long last. Pearce Richmond: a certified Perfect Man. He was ungettable, and I got him. He was unstoppable, and I stopped him. He was untamable, and I rode him into the sunset.
So to speak.
And then, in a burst of postengagement irrational exuberance, I’d agreed to wear his mother’s wedding dress at the ceremony. I’m sure the lace that was now strangling my neck had been the forefront of polyester technology when it was formulated thirty years ago … but now, after sitting so long in storage, it had disintegrated into a prickly-pear-cactus texture that would be giving me a full-body rash, guaranteed.
A rash. On my wedding day.
I could feel the microfibers boring into my skin.
And, yes—I did just say “neck.” This atrocity of a wedding gown had a dog-collar-like choker of lace, which attached to a bib of more lace, which attached to a sweetheart neckline that held the whole thing up. And by “whole thing,” I mean the loosest, puffiest, most sad-prom, princess-fantasy, pumpkin-skirted getup in history.
It was like a parody of a wedding gown.
A parody that Pearce’s mom refused to have altered. Even with a whole handful of safety pins hidden in the pleats, it was still so loose that without the collar it might’ve slid right off. And the poofy skirt was so very poofy it was like I was wearing one of Maria von Trapp’s curtains—as a curtain.
Light a fire under me, and I could’ve floated off like a hot-air balloon. For real.
But there was no getting out of it.
Literally.
Because the zipper had caught in my hair right at the neckpiece when I zipped it up, and now it was stuck. I had cut away my hair with scissors, but now the slider was cemented in place like we’d glued it. Right at the top.
I’d be noosed in this thing until Pearce—or, really, not picky at this point: anyone at all—ripped it off me.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
In theory, this was the biggest day of my life. In theory, I should be savoring every second. In theory, I was smack in the bull’s-eye of the pinnacle of human happiness.
In reality?
I was itching.
Not to mention stinging—from matching blisters on the backs of my heels from my new shoes.
That was the situation: A supremely bossy mother-in-law-to-be. A growing rash. Twin blisters. And a dress that made me question my human dignity.
Yeah. I was already ready for this day to be over.
Not to mention the venue: a church built in the sixties that they’d forgotten to add windows to, with a building-wide commitment to fluorescent bulbs instead of warm white and an odd décor obsession with beige.
Tonally off for a wedding, right? Beige?
I don’t know what color joy is, but it sure as hell isn’t beige.
But here we were.
Even my bouquet of “champagne”-colored roses could qualify as beige.
The wedding coordinator, Mrs. Allen, was seven hundred years old. As a somber volunteer for the church—where the elder Richmonds had also gotten married—and a fellow member of their country club, Mrs. Allen had barely tolerated me all day.
Now, as she steered me into the vestibule, her fingers pinching my elbow flesh right above the funny bone, I suddenly realized I needed to pee.
I glanced at the beige doorway leading into the beige sanctuary.
Couldn’t I just hold it? Because it was sixty seconds to go-time. We had momentum here.
But even just noticing the bladder situation made it worse.
Out of nowhere, it wasn’t just full—it was positively taut, like an overfilled water balloon.
How had I not noticed this earlier? Why did I have to wait until we were seconds out from the starting gun? I was wearing an Italian lace garter belt, for Pete’s sake!
I never could make things easy for myself, could I?
Mrs. Allen was poised to shove me through the doorway when I stopped short and turned to her with a wince of apology.
“I’m sorry. I need to use the ladies’ room real quick.”
Mrs. Allen shook her head in horror, like this was the worst thing she’d ever heard in all her seven centuries of life. “But the organist is about to start the processional,” she protested.
“Can you stall him?” I asked.
She didn’t like that idea. She pinched her face up like I was really being a bridezilla.
But then she pressed on her little earpiece and said, “Tony, I’m going to need you to hold off on the processional. We’ve got a nervous bladder back here.”
As I hobbled off toward the ladies’ room, I wasn’t sure I loved being called “a nervous bladder,” like that was my whole identity. But there was no time to argue. It was going to take all the minutes I had just to contend with that lace garter.
The organ music somehow sounded louder in the bathroom, echoing around the hard surfaces.
In the stall, as I managed my undergarments and then hoisted that enormous crinoline-inflated skirt up around my waist, I decided that I really didn’t love organ music. The way it was so brain-meltingly loud. The way it smeared all the notes together. Plus, it always just sounded a little sinister, didn’t it?
Like someone was about to pop out of a coffin?
No offense to the organists of the world. But that was the truth of it. An organ was the last instrument I’d ever have chosen for my wedding.
Would a nice little grand piano have killed anybody?
The more I thought about it, the madder I got.
Nothing about this wedding was what I wanted. Every last detail had been determined by Mrs. Richmond. She’d picked the venue, and the color palette, and the florist, and the caterer.
Anytime I suggested anything, she shot it down with this overacted “Really?” that made me immediately follow up with, “Unless you have another idea.”
Quick spoiler: She always had another idea.
What can I say?
I wanted her to like me.
Also, it was a busy time for weddings in my family. My sister, Ashley, was also getting married this year—six weeks after me, on a cruise ship, of all things—and so my mom had more than enough to worry about. She was delighted that Mrs. Richmond wanted to do it all. And whenever Mrs. Richmond chose the most expensive possible option, she’d say to my mom, “Don’t worry. We’ll make up the difference.”
“You’re getting a much fancier wedding out of the deal,” my mother kept telling me. “We never would have sprung for that margarita drink wall.”
True enough.
But now, on my long-awaited Big Day, I was kind of choking on all the terrible choices I’d agreed to.
Not that it mattered.
This was happening, like it or not.
Washing my hands at the sink, I took in the sight of myself in the mirror. The hair artist Mrs. Richmond paid for had shellacked my hair into an updo—spraying the hair equivalent of glitter into it to “brighten” my dirty-blond coloring. And don’t get me started on the makeup artist, who had airbrushed my skin with foundation to cover up my freckles, used a shade of eye shadow that she guaranteed would make my eyes look “less hazel,” and then spent a good five minutes enlarging and darkening my eyebrows. When she spun the chair toward the mirror, I gasped. And not in a good way.
“Can we just—fix the eyebrows?” I asked.
The makeup artist and Mrs. Richmond frowned.
“They’re a little … Fozzie Bear?” I tried to explain.
“This is the trend,” the makeup artist explained. “It makes you look younger.”
Mrs. Richmond, who had recently told me I was too old to have long hair, nodded in agreement.
Was I old at twenty-six?
No matter. I wouldn’t dare fight with Mrs. Richmond on her wedding day.
Sorry—my wedding day.
And now here I was, in a beige church bathroom with a bouffant hairdo, pausing to take in the sight of myself as a bride. And all I could see was … eyebrows.
Was the organ music getting louder?
Time to go. Everyone was waiting for me.
The bridesmaids were all lined up near the altar by now. My mom—who had stayed up until two in the morning assembling gift bags—was already seated in the front row with her wrist corsage on. My Grandma Dodie was wearing pearls and kitten heels. And my dad—my former-marine, workaholic dad (always an elusive get for any family event) was about to walk me down the aisle.
This was happening. Time to take my eyebrows to the sanctuary.
It’s just normal, ordinary, everyday cold feet, I told myself as I hustled back along the hallway. That slight feeling of nausea? That was a good sign. It meant I knew what I was doing, and I was taking it seriously, and I was stepping boldly into my future.
Who doesn’t feel nauseous in big life moments?
It wasn’t a red flag. It was an homage to my upcoming best life.
And so was this itchy-ass frigging dress.
That’s exactly what I was thinking as I reached the vestibule: This was a life-changing moment in every way. In twenty minutes, the whole thing would be over, and I’d be transformed—and I don’t just mean covered head to toe in contact dermatitis. This single event was going to change me from JoJo Burton, serial commitmentphobe and legendary boyfriend dumper, into Josephine Richmond: happily, legally, and incontrovertibly committed.
Twenty minutes total to change my whole personality. Easy.
We’d timed it beforehand with the reverend.
Or, actually—maybe a few minutes more than twenty.
Because just as I was about to give the giddyup signal to Mrs. Allen to fire up the processional at last … the vestibule double doors burst open at the same time with a swoosh, blasting out the beige room with golden-hued sunlight.
And into that sunlight walked a guy.
A guy who was not in a suit, like all the others.
A guy with a rucksack on his shoulders like he was just arriving from the French Alps.
A guy with an overgrown beard and shaggy hair … who looked a lot, I decided, as my eyes adjusted—an uncanny amount, even—like my childhood friend Cooper Watts. Who he most certainly could not be. Because my old friend Cooper had already, most definitely, most defiantly, RSVPed no to the wedding—circling Regrets ten times on the return card and adding a handwritten addendum that read, and I quote:
“Don’t marry that douchebag. This is a boycott.”
Copyright © 2026 by Katherine Center