I glanced at Sunny. She was turning a scorching shade of hot pink, and I immediately felt sorry for her. Why were some women so nasty to other women? Was there some constant competition to be the prettiest of which I was unaware? Give me a group of overweight, unfashionable, bighearted, funny girls any day over these half-starved, haute couture–wearing, mean, miserable women.

“Only one of the two dresses fits Sunny, so the other one has to be worn by Trisha.”

Sunny held up the dress that Trisha had flung at her. The cut was very formfitting, which Trisha, who was skeletally thin, could carry off, but the color did resemble that of a shroud. There was no way to make it pretty.

“I would rather die!” Trisha announced in the most dramatic tone I’d ever heard.

“Show me your other clothes,” Viv said.

It was not a tone you argued with. Trisha opened her mouth and then closed it. She led Viv to a standing rack of clothes at the far end of the room. She held her arms out, gesturing to the section that was hers. Viv started sliding the clothes across the rack.

“No, no, no, no.” She huffed in frustration.

Then she moved onto the other items, the ones that didn’t belong to Trisha. No one said a word but I saw the other bridesmaids shifting on their feet as if they wanted to protest but they didn’t dare.

I moved to stand beside Sunny, who was looking particularly miserable, as if this was all her fault.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She glanced at me with large, sad eyes. It reminded me of Bella when she was being supercute, and I felt my heart go smoosh.

“Yeah sure,” she said. “Totally fine.” She seemed to shrink into herself a bit as if she didn’t want to be noticed.

“Good,” I whispered in a low voice only she could hear. “You look terrific in that dress and it never would have suited that one.” I gestured at Trisha. “She’s too scrawny.”

A small smile curved Sunny’s lips and she looked pleased. “Thank you.”

I nodded and turned back, noticing that Piper was watching me with a curious expression. I pretended not to be aware and focused on Viv. The room was quiet, the tension palpable. The only sound was Viv sliding hangers across the rod, sifting through clothes until she said, “Aha!”

She spun around with a long crocheted vest in her hands in a shade of charcoal gray with crystals worked into the threads making it sparkle in the light. She draped it over Trisha’s shoulder with a firm pat.

“Wear that over the dress with some black ballet flats,” she said. “You’ll look amazing.”