Before I Do - Softcover

Cousens, Sophie

 
9780593539873: Before I Do
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593539877 ISBN 13: 9780593539873
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A heartwarming and playful novel about the ones we love and the ones we lose by the New York Times bestselling author of This Time Next Year
 
What would you do if 'the one that got away' turned up the night before your wedding?



    Head-in-the-stars Audrey is about to marry down-to-earth Josh. Though they are polar opposites, they have a healthy, stable relationship; Josh is just what Audrey needs. But romance should be unpredictable and full of fireworks, and as the big day approaches, Audrey’s found herself wondering if Josh really is "The One."
 
    So, when Josh’s sister shows up to the rehearsal dinner with Fred, Audrey’s "What If? guy"—the man she met six years ago and had one amazing day with—Audrey finds herself torn. Surely Fred’s appearance the night before she is due to get married can’t be a coincidence. And when everything that could go wrong with the wedding starts to go wrong, Audrey has to ask herself: Is fate trying to stop her from making a huge mistake? Or does destiny just have a really twisty sense of humor?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sophie Cousens worked as a TV producer in London for more than twelve years and now lives with her family on the island of Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, located off the north coast of France. She balances her writing career with taking care of her two small children, and longs for the day when she might have a dachshund and a writing shed of her own. She is the author of This Time Next Year and Just Haven’t Met You Yet.

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1
 
One Day Before I Do

"Who will be walking the bride down the aisle?" Reverend Daniels asked, looking between Audrey at the altar and her mother, Vivien, on the front pew. He seemed unsure whom he should be deferring to on the matter.

Josh reached out for Audrey's hand and gently squeezed it, a silent show of support.

"She will have two people walking her down the aisle, Reverend," Vivien announced, taking this as her cue to stand up and stage-manage the proceedings. "Her two stepfathers, Brian and Lawrence."

Brian and Lawrence were sitting at opposite ends of the front pew. They simultaneously raised a hand and then cautiously side-eyed each other. Vivien would have preferred her current husband, Lawrence, to be the one to escort the bride down the aisle, but Audrey had expressed a preference for Brian, who had played a prominent role in her life growing up. Audrey also wanted Vivien to know that the men she had dismissed from her life would not be so easily lost from her own.

"They'll take one arm each," Vivien told the reverend, glancing back to Audrey.

"Well, that is a lovely idea," said Reverend Daniels, tapping his fingertips together nervously. "But as you can see, the aisle at St. Nicholas's is rather on the narrow side. We've had problems in the past with, er... slightly larger family members being able to walk two abreast. I'm not sure we'd manage a three-way."

Josh let out a strangled-sounding cough, and Audrey pursed her lips to keep from laughing.

Vivien paced the width of the aisle, wringing her hands as she realized that the reverend was right. Though Vivien was petite, she walked with the confidence of someone used to commanding a stage and an audience. Her brown and caramel highlighted hair was pinned back into a bun and shone like a golden flame above her simple long-sleeved black dress. Her professionally plumped lips sported their trademark slash of red.

"Maybe a relay? Audrey could walk twice," Josh suggested. The note of sarcasm made her suspect he'd had a few pints at the ushers' lunch earlier.

"Then she'd end up at the wrong end," Lawrence pointed out, his white wispy eyebrows dancing in confusion.

"Josh." Audrey shot him a playful frown and shook her head. Luckily, Vivien hadn't heard him. Her focus was on the offending aisle, which was just sitting there, failing to be wide enough.

"I think the whole idea of being 'given away' is preposterous," said Hillary, who sat with his feet up on the pew in front of him, reading a copy of Playbill magazine. "Can't you just walk yourself down the aisle, Auds?"

"No, she can't. That would look negligent, as though we have failed to come up with a respectable escort," Vivien shot back, her eyes darting disapprovingly to Hillary's shoes on the pew.

"I fear we'll have to move on from the entrance," Reverend Daniels suggested with a nervous laugh. "I have another family coming in at seven thirty to discuss a christening."
 
"Reverend, we can't move on until we get this right. I do wish I had been forewarned about the inadequacy of the aisle," asserted Vivien.

Audrey rubbed a fist against her chest, which had been feeling tight all day. This wedding was making her feel like a plate spinner, watching to see which plate was going to fall, then running to keep it turning. She wished her best friend, Clara, were here. Clara was good at keeping all the plates in the air.

"Maybe Brian could walk me the first half and Lawrence the second," Audrey suggested diplomatically.

Vivien nodded, satisfied with this solution, and Hillary muttered in a singsong voice, "Crisis averted."

"Excellent plan. So we'll position Dad Two on this pew here," said the reverend, scurrying down the aisle to mark the row with a red hassock, "and Dad One by the door." Audrey winced at his choice of language. She had always called her stepfathers by their first names, as she called her mother by hers. Vivien objected to the labels of "Mum" or "Mummy" on the grounds that they were ordinary and reductive.

"It's Brian and Lawrence," Brian said, gently correcting the reverend, and Audrey gave him a grateful nod. Not for the first time today, she felt wistful about her father's absence. What would he make of all this-the church, the wedding, the man she was about to marry?

"Most brides don't like to rush the entrance. The cadence of your step should be: step, feet together, step, feet together," Reverend Daniels said while illustrating the rhythm of the walk to Audrey. "That way, your guests will have enough time to admire you from every angle."

Vivien started to imitate the desired step cadence.

"It reminds me of doing the cha-cha on Strictly," she said, and then started shimmying her hips and cha-cha-ing up the aisle. Vivien was always performing. She was the sort of person who narrated the stage directions of her life and would end arguments by saying, "And scene," before taking a small bow and leaving the room.

"Would you like to practice?" the reverend asked.

"I'm good," Audrey said briskly. "Step, feet together, step, feet together. Got it."

Josh reached out and started massaging her shoulders. She dipped her head to one side, leaning into his touch, his firm hands warm against her bare neck.

"Audrey can hardly walk in a straight line at the best of times. I'd make her practice if I were you," piped up Hillary, giving her a sly wink.

"Hillary has a point," said Vivien with a flourish of her hand. "What's the point in having a rehearsal if you don't rehearse? Come, come, it's your starring moment." She waved to Audrey and then snapped her fingers for Lawrence to sit in the marked pew, before beckoning Brian to take his position at the church doors.

"Life is not a dress rehearsal, until it is!" called Josh's mother, Debbie, from the back of the church. Debbie had been given the task of checking for drafts, moving herself around the pews, working out which seats would be most appropriate for elderly relatives to occupy. She was using an intricate color-coded system of stickers that the ushers would be briefed on later. A blue sticker meant "drafty, no one over seventy to sit here," white meant "adequate," and neon yellow meant "prime seating, little to no draft." Clearly the system was needlessly complex, but Debbie was having such fun "feeling useful" that it was kinder just to let her cover the beautiful church in hundreds of hideous stickers.

"First rule of show business, Auds, give the people what they want," Hillary said as Audrey shuffled past his pew and flicked his magazine. She thought he was enjoying his role as heckling audience member far too much. Hillary had been Audrey's nanny growing up. Her mother didn't believe in employing professional nannies-"predictable, dull people." Instead of qualified childcare, she had preferred to hire out-of-work actors to supervise young Audrey. Her logic was that actors would have more energy and enthusiasm for the task. Plus, people in the arts would have more interesting things to teach her child than "finger painting and 'Baa Baa Black Sheep.'"

While some of her earlier nactors (nanny actors) had been more competent than others, Hillary had been a great success and had become a permanent fixture in Audrey's life. Vivien held up their bond as a validation of her offbeat childcare choices. The fact that Audrey, to this day, still didn't know the words to a single nursery rhyme and had never once done a finger painting was beside the point.

"Where are the bridesmaids?" asked the reverend.
 
Audrey felt heat rising up her neck. What kind of bride shows up to the rehearsal without any bridesmaids?

"One of the two should be here any minute," she said.

"Reverend!" Debbie called from the...

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593539877
ISBN 13 
9780593539873
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
367
Kontakt zum Hersteller
G.P. Putnam's Sons
https://www.penguin.com/putnam/

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