Page 17 of Wish For Me

Our relationship has been strained since my mom asked him to leave—for longer than that, really. But he hasn’t been exactly easy to handle while we’ve been planning. First he had a lot of opinions about the choices we made to include my family’s culture. Everly and I spent a lot of time debating whether to have two ceremonies, both American and Indian. In the end we decided to just incorporate the aspects of Hindu weddings that actually meant something to me.

My dad does not approve. He’s always held the opinion that the only way to be successful is to completely integrate ourselves into Western culture. The snide little remarks about our choices, particularly about the primarily Indian menu and some of the rituals we’ll do at the ceremony, have been wearing thin for a long time.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, he found out my mom is bringing a “special friend” to the wedding. She isn’t calling him her boyfriend yet—though my sister Nisha insists she’s seen the guy leaving Mom’s house in the morning,shudder—but I’ve still been fielding pretty much constant texts from Dad freaking out.

I haven’t told Everly how much it’s bothering me because there’s not a lot she can do about it, and I know it will only piss her off. The dress though…that she might be able to solve.

I try to imagine Everly—the girl who worships high fashion so much she started her own line—buying her wedding dress off the rack two weeks before the wedding, and groan out loud. Yeah, that’s not happening.

“Baby?” I call when I walk into the house. She’s not in the living room or kitchen so I start up the stairs. There’s a familiar noise coming from her office—the soft buzz of her sewing machine. I can’t count the number of times I’ve fallen asleep to that noise when Everly was caught up in working on a design or trying to make a deadline.

I stop in the doorway and smile at the sight of her, thick dark hair piled into a messy bun on top of her head, glasses perched on her nose. Glasses means she’s been at this for a while and her contacts have started to irritate her. She’s wearing leggings and one of my old hoodies and has ear buds in her ears. Whatever is playing must be fast paced because she’s dancing a little in her chair.

So freaking adorable.

She doesn’t hear me over the music and sewing machine as I walk over, so I take the opportunity to look at what she’s working on. She usually won’t show me new designs until they’re closer to being finished.

But it only takes a quick look at the fabric for me to know this isn’t for her fashion line. It’s not even clothing—it looks like a blanket of some kind. I catch sight of varied colors of cotton fabric, most with some kind of printing on them. I frown—I’m pretty sure that’s one of my shirts.

“Lele?”

“Oh my god,” she squeals, slapping her hands over her heart as she spins to face me. “You scared me!”

“I called out when I came in the door.” I nod at the machine. “Whatcha working on?”

Her eyes widen. “Shit!” She hurriedly reaches for the fabric, trying to cover it. “You aren’t supposed to see this!”

I cross my arms. “Baby. Are you making me a Christmas present?”

Her cheeks go the shade of pink that makes it hard not to kiss her. “Um, no. Definitely not.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Because we said we weren’t doing presents this year, remember? We said the wedding and honeymoon was going to be our present.”

Her cheeks get darker. “Actually, we said we weren’t going to spend money on presents.”

“Right.” Even though Everly’s dad has more money than god and insists on paying for his oldest daughter’s wedding, we still want to contribute as much as we can. We’re paying for the supplies for Everly’s dress, gifts for our wedding party and parents, my tux, our rings, and the honeymoon.

None of this would be a problem for Everly—my girl is making bank on the FEA Threads line, and her three boutiques. But my job as a middle school teacher doesn’t bring in nearly as much money as her and she knows I want to contribute equally to our wedding.

Thus the plan to not buy each other presents for Christmas. We both have a tendency to go all out when it comes to gifts and we didn’t want to have to worry about spending the money.

But apparently someone decided to go behind my back and do it anyhow.

“I didn’t spend any money,” she says defensively. “I’m only using stuff I already have. Actually, I stole a bunch of this from your closet, so you really can’t even be mad at me.”

I smirk at that. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever actually been mad at her.

“What did you steal from me? What is this, anyhow?”

She sighs. “You’re not going to wait for Christmas morning and let it be a surprise, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

“Fine.” She lifts her needle and pulls the fabric from the machine, fluffing it out over her lap. “It’s almost done, anyhow. I was just putting on the binding.”

“What is—”

“It’s a quilt,” she says. “A memory quilt.” She points at one of the brightly colored squares of cotton. “You know how you’re always buying t-shirts everywhere we go?”