Read Online The Luckiest by Mila McWarren - Free Book Online Page A

always been able to get him to do anything, and she knows it. “Fine, okay! Where is it, anyway? You haven’t been keeping it in your room, have you? For David to see?”
    “Are you kidding? He doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body—he’d be peeking at it without even waiting for me to leave the room.” Aaron thinks about the serenade and sup­presses a smile. “It’s wrapped and hanging in Jasmine and Stephanie’s room.”
    “Hmm. Is she up yet?”
    “Not sure.”
    “Go get the dress and bring her back with you. We’ll do the fitting in here—you can change in the bathroom.”
    He’s up and out of the bathroom when she struggles to clear the doorway with the dress still wrapped in its bag. Her face is lit up, excited, and he can’t even resent the early morning wake-up when she looks like this.
    Jasmine drags in and face-plants on his bed while Alex gets dressed. “Doesn’t she need your help getting into that?” Aaron asks.
    “At this hour, she can bring her undressed self out here if she needs help.”
    “Remind me never to ask you to be my maid of honor,” he quips, even as his hand strokes her hair while she snug­gles more deeply into his discarded pillow. He hates that it’s probably going to smell like the smoke she dragged in; their friends must have been up late last night.
    Alex shuffles out of the bathroom with her arms twisted behind her, and Aaron zips her up, while Jasmine cracks an eye and squints up at them.
    Aaron spins Alex around and holds her hands out to the side, looking her up and down. “Cups sewn in?”
    “Yep. The seamstress did that, and added detachable straps, and took it in at the waist and the hem.”
    “How does it feel? Can you sit?”
    Alex perches on the edge of the bed, holding herself tense and upright, and there’s not so much as a pucker at the waist.
    “No, I mean really sit. Are you going to sit like that while you’re half-drunk and exhausted from dancing?”
    Alex slides back onto the bed, sprawling against Jasmine. Jasmine laughs and shoves her, and Alex leans back harder, throwing her arms out to the side and stretching.
    “How does it look when I’m really sitting?”
    “The dress looks like a dream. You, however, look like you’ve just puked from too much champagne. You’re the bridal cau­tionary tale.”
    Alex turns her head to face Jasmine. “Remember how sar­castic and bitchy he was in high school?”
    Jasmine slings an arm over Alex’s shoulder. “We’re so lucky he grew out of that.”
    While they’re giving him shit, he grins and digs his phone out of his pocket, and the moment they look back his way he snaps a photo. Jasmine’s hair is everywhere, Alex slouches in her wedding dress and pigtails, and there’s not a swipe of makeup to be seen. They look gorgeous.
    Alex comes after his phone with vengeance in her voice until he grabs her by the shoulders and bends to look into her eyes. “Your dress, girl. Your dress, ” he says, and she crushes him in her arms.
    When she pulls back, Alex says, “Yes?”
    He nods. “Absolutely. Now. Shoes, hair, makeup, jewelry?”
    She grins at him and claps her hands. “Shopping.”
    Two hours later, they’ve made their excuses to the rest of the house and made it to the Galleria in Houston, chatting a mile a minute in the Tahoe while the radio drones beneath their voices. It feels familiar, a comfortable kind of exciting. Alex and Aaron have finally heard the entire, inglorious last chapter of Jasmine-and-Mitchell, and Alex has given Aaron the “ask me later” look, so he knows there’s something missing.
    Just as they pull into the underground garage, Jasmine says, “You know, the hell of it is that Mitchell isn’t even… I mean, he’s good in bed, don’t get me wrong.” Aaron pulls a face at her in the mirror. “And we have a good time when we’re together. But I don’t think…”
    He pulls into a parking space, and Jasmine’s last words hang in the air when he turns off