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lie left a bad taste in her
mouth, it had rolled off her tongue so easily. This was who she
was: a person who’d lie to her best friends to keep them from
catching a glimpse of the mountain of secrets she was sitting
on.
    “Poor you,” Alicia said. “And poor
Grey. You know he had no idea – guys never think of stuff like
that.”
    Kerry shifted in her seat, no longer
hungry even though she adored Sasha’s soy-wasabi cucumber salad. As
she took a sip of her water, it cooled her burning insides and the
truth struck her: no one truly knew her. Not even her best
friends.
    The other women looked at her with
sympathy, oblivious to her deceit. Diamonds glittered on their
hands, reminding everyone that they were loved. Kerry’s heart
cracked as she marveled at their openness, their inexhaustible
capacity to care – what honest and truly likeable human beings they
were.
    Yesterday she’d granted herself a few
hours’ pass, had pretended to be someone she wasn’t. Those hours
had shown her herself in a way she hadn’t anticipated, had opened
her eyes to who she’d really become.
    She felt strangely broken, and more
than a little hollow. Part of her was more glad than ever that the
people she cared about didn’t share her secrets.
    “So Alicia,” she said after forcing
down a bite of her cucumber salad, “your wedding is this weekend. I
can’t believe we hardly talked about it yesterday.”
    Alicia grinned and dabbed the corner
of her mouth with a napkin. “I figured you two were tired of
hearing about it by now.”
    “Not at all.” The crack in Kerry’s
heart deepened. “I tried my bridesmaid dress on again last night.
It matches perfectly with the shoes you had dyed. Anyway, you must
be excited.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    “The sleeves are too short!” Grey
turned away from the mirror, rounding on Liam. “What the hell am I
supposed to do now?”
    Liam didn’t say a damn
thing.
    Grey tugged on the tuxedo sleeves,
gave himself another look in the mirror. He looked like a ten year
old who’d just hit a growth spurt.
    Henry snorted.
    “Hey!” Grey pulled off the jacket and
put it back on the hanger. “Don’t laugh. Not everyone can have your
short little T-Rex arms.”
    “Nobody’s arms are short,” Liam said,
holding up his own tuxedo jacket against Grey’s. “And you’re not a
circus freak – the jacket’s just too small. I’m pretty sure this
isn’t the size Alicia ordered.”
    “Can I help with anything?”
A woman in high heels and glasses popped out from behind a wedding
dress-wearing mannequin. She stared at Liam, Henry and Grey like
they were circus
freaks, no matter what Liam said.
    It was hard to blame her. What kind of
guys went to a bridal boutique without a woman to make them do
it?
    Maybe they were the first. The wedding
was less than a week away and there’d been some sort of order delay
with the tuxes. Liam had promised Alicia that he, Grey and Henry
would all go and get it sorted out today, on their day
off.
    Alicia, Kerry and Sasha were all at
work during the boutique’s business hours, so there was no female
to translate for them.
    “My jacket’s too small,” Grey said.
“Sleeves are too short.”
    The woman pushed her glasses up onto
the bridge of her nose. “Let me take a look – go ahead and put it
on.”
    He shrugged back into the jacket and
immediately got sweaty. Trying not to think about how hot he’d be
wearing a tux outside that weekend, he turned to the shop
lady.
    “Wow.” Her eyes got big behind her
glasses lenses. “You weren’t kidding.”
    “I’m pretty sure it must be a
mistake,” Liam said. “We all got measured here, and my fiancée
placed the final order.”
    “Well, that’ll be easy to
verify.”
    Grey took the jacket off and
surrendered it to her.
    She looked at it, went to the computer
at the register and quickly returned. “This isn’t what you ordered
– the sleeve size is off. I’m sorry about that.”
    Grey was stricken with a