Back inside the reception, Edward picked up the trousers and started folding them neatly back into the box.
“What are you going to do with those?” I asked.
“Take them to the donation center. Like I said.”
I looked at them one last time.
“Good.”
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“I’m still mad at you,” I reminded him.
“Fair.”
“You owe me.”
“Also fair.”
“You can start by getting those pants out of my ex-husband’s wedding.”
Edward lifted the box onto his hip and gave me a crooked smile. “Best fake date you’ve ever had.”
“Only fake date I’ve ever had.”
“So I’m still undefeated.”
I laughed in spite of myself. A real laugh. It surprised both of us.
We didn’t stay much longer. I gathered the girls after the cake was cut. June had somehow managed to double the amount of frosting on her dress, and Lily was yawning and holding her shoes in one hand.
As we reached the exit, Max called my name.
“Ronnie.”
I turned around.
He stood under one of the chandeliers with his hands in his pockets. “So what’s actually going on with you and Edward?”
And there it was. Even now, on his wedding day, with his new bride in the next room, he needed an answer.
If Edward wanted me, Max could measure that.
If Edward didn’t, he could measure that too.
Either way, he’d have something to hold up against me.
“You really need to know, don’t you?” I said.
Max opened his mouth.
I turned and kept walking.
Outside, the evening air was cool. The parking lot lights flickered on one by one. Edward carried a sleepy June toward the car while Lily walked beside me, holding my hand.
When we reached the car, Lily stopped and smoothed both hands down the front of her dress.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Does this make me look weird?”
She asked it casually. Lightly. Like it was nothing.
That was what made it so much worse.
Because I knew exactly where that question came from. I knew the voice that had planted it, maybe without either of us noticing. And I knew that if I wasn’t careful, it would grow in her the same way it had grown in me.
I could have told her she looked beautiful. She did. But that would only have taught her to keep asking someone else.
So instead, I asked, “Do you like your dress?”
Lily looked down at herself. She thought about it seriously. Then she turned in a slow circle, letting the skirt swing out around her knees.
“Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
“Then I like that answer.”
She smiled and climbed into the back seat.
June followed, leaving a perfect frosting handprint on the car door. She looked at her sticky palms and announced, “I look sticky.”
I laughed. “You definitely do.”
Edward finished buckling June in and quietly put the cardboard box in the trunk. He didn’t say anything. He seemed to understand that this moment wasn’t his.
I walked around to the driver’s side.
My reflection was waiting for me in the dark car window.
For one second, Max’s voice came back, as clear as if he were standing beside me.
When was the last time you even looked at yourself in the mirror?
So I looked.
I didn’t inspect my waist. I didn’t turn sideways. I didn’t suck in my stomach or tug at my sleeves. I didn’t wonder what Max would see, or whether Edward would approve, or whether anyone in that ballroom thought I’d let myself go.
I just looked at myself. A woman in an emerald dress she loved, with tired eyes and smudged mascara and two daughters in the back seat who had wanted her there all along.
And for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t need anyone to tell me what I saw.
“Mom!” June yelled from inside the car. “Go!“
I laughed, opened the door, and got in.
What This Story Taught Me
The people who try to shrink you usually aren’t describing you. They’re describing what they need you to be so they can feel bigger.
I spent a year trying to prove to my ex-husband that I was still worth wanting. The real answer was sitting in the back seat the whole time: two little girls who never once needed me to look different to love me.
And the most important thing I can teach my daughters isn’t how to look in the mirror. It’s how to stop asking someone else what they see.
