“Life’s only going to get worse from here,” Hanna had joked, raising her glass in the middle of The Ranch Bar & Grill, a dim wood-paneled restaurant with sticky floors and the best guacamole in all ten square miles of Brady, Louisiana.
The group had clinked their salt-rimmed glasses together before downing the cheap alcohol.
But it wasn’t until this morning when she realized Hanna had unknowingly jinxed her.
“Babe, the power must’ve gone out, and our alarm didn’t go off,” she said louder, shaking her fiancé to wake up.
Seth grunted and rolled over, slowly forming words. “You didn’t hear the thunderstorm last night? You were really out.”
She shuffled out of bed and looked at her phone. Shit.
The salon had opened fifteen minutes ago.
A rush of adrenaline coursed through her body as she threw on her gray cotton pocket dress, slid into her worn-out brown strappy sandals, and tied her long blond hair into a ponytail. Her stomach curdled again. Have mercy.
As she gave herself a once-over in the full-length mirror by the window in their bedroom, Seth appeared with a cup of hot coffee.
“Made from the Keurig with love,” he said, handing it to her and flashing a sleepy smile.
“God bless you,” she said, her head pounding even harder now. “I guess I’ll keep you.” She kissed his cheek as Archie, their two-year-old hound dog, came bounding in to get in on the love. Lexi scratched Archie’s head, as Seth wrapped her in a hug. Even if the rest of the day sucked, it was moments like these that kept her going.
The two had met four years ago when Seth was interning at the veterinary clinic. Lexi had brought her ailing rescue pup Nola in for a checkup, and the sixteen-year-old Chihuahua peed right on the waiting room floor while they anxiously waited for the doctor.
A cute guy in scrubs had run over to help clean it, and Lexi had apologized profusely to the man wiping up her dog’s urine with a roll of paper towels. “She does this when she gets nervous,” she explained to him, fidgeting with embarrassment. Seth had picked up Nola and cradled her in his arms.
“Don’t worry, I do the same thing!” he whispered jokingly to the dog. Seth then looked at Lexi with a twinkle in his eye, and she fell in love right then and there.
When they first started dating, she felt like Cinderella being courted by a prince. His parents were from old money. His dad currently oversaw the highly successful trucking business that had been in the Harris family for three generations. And his mom was a Sumerford, the equivalent to a royal family if Louisiana had a monarchy. She was an heiress to a steady stream of oil money—and a lady who lunched.
Seth and his family went on vacations to places like Barcelona and Hawaii, and they ate things like prime rib for dinner, whereas Lexi’s family often ate fish her father caught from the lake and subsisted on red beans and rice in lean months. She hadn’t realized how broke her family was until she started hanging out with Seth’s.
She was always in awe of his parents’ wealth, but couldn’t help feeling out of place with them. Deep down inside, she worried they looked down on her, wishing Seth would end up with someone from a more well-to-do family.
At least she knew Seth didn’t feel that way. He seemed inexplicably irritated when his parents took them out to stuffy restaurants, and he happily moved into a run-down shotgun house with Lexi on the poorer side of town, despite his parents’ offer to help with rent for a nicer place.
“Why don’t you want their help?” Lexi had asked him one day, as they looked over his student loan contract with an insanely high interest rate written in bold numbers. If her parents were as rich as his, she would have unabashedly accepted their charity.
“You don’t know my parents,” he said. “Everything always comes with strings attached.”
Lexi could understand. His mom Nancy was rather pushy, always making a last-ditch effort to get Seth to drop out of veterinary school and join the family company, or trying to convince him and Lexi to move into a more “proper” house.
According to Seth, the final straw had been when an awkward girl from another family from the country club showed up to their house in a sparkly dress on the night of his senior prom.
As the story goes, his mom had a tux waiting for him, as Seth sat slack-jawed on the couch holding a plate of nachos. His plans for the evening had been to play video games with his friends, commiserating over the fact that his girlfriend had just dumped him. Instead, his mom manipulated him into taking another girl to the prom. He had to see his ex two-step across the dance floor with another guy all night.
Seth would never disown his mom; he was too good of a southern boy for that. But he had strict personal boundaries when it came to accepting help from his parents and Lexi had to respect that.
These days, she and Seth didn’t have a lot of money, with her hair stylist salary being their main source of income while he finished his last two years of veterinary school, but they assured his parents they were doing just fine. But were they doing just fine? Lexi couldn’t help but wonder sometimes.
Lexi grabbed her keys from the kitchen counter, where they sat next to a pile of bills and the luxury bridal magazine she had splurged on a few weeks ago right after Seth proposed. Her sisters had told her she was crazy when she bought it considering it cost twelve dollars, but she insisted it would give her the inspiration she needed, even if she had to do it on a budget.
Her parents couldn’t afford anything more than the wood-paneled church reception hall, and Seth wouldn’t let his parents help on principle, so they had decided they would pay for everything themselves. They had talked about doing an intimate outdoor ceremony at sunset. The setting would be naturally romantic, and she could save a lot of money on a venue, decorations, and even flowers. There are flowers in nature, right?
Still, she secretly felt like she needed to do everything she could to make it feel fancy enough for her in-laws’ approval. She had already gotten some great ideas from the magazine, like draping the reception chairs in tulle and using vintage teapots as vases.
On the cover, a model wearing white-framed sunglasses and a designer lace bridal gown was posed in front of a backdrop that was scattered in red rose petals and crystals. Lexi took a moment to stare at the photo. The girl staring back at her had every quality she wanted to exude on her own wedding day: beauty… style… grace.
“Babe!” Seth yelled as he walked into the living room.
She startled, accidentally spilling coffee on her magazine. “Dammit, Seth!” she cried, grabbing a handful of paper towels and trying to clean off the cover before it stained.
“Jeez, calm down,” he said, walking over. “It’s just a magazine.” He grabbed the paper towel out of her hand and patted the magazine dry.
“A really expensive magazine,” she reminded him. “This is like something you put on your coffee table.”
He pressed a kiss onto her forehead. “It’ll be okay, babe. I’ll put it in the sun to dry.”
“Thanks,” she said, silently praying this wasn’t an omen for the rest of the day.
But when she got to her beat-up used sedan, she saw that her gas tank was almost on empty.
Luckily, the salon was only a few miles away, and it was payday. She just hoped she’d make it to the gas station after work before the car gave out on her.