Chapter 53 The Dress
Harper's POV,
Maya dragged me into the seventh boutique of the day and I was ready to give up and wear sweatpants to Joel's wedding.
"This is pointless," I said, collapsing onto a velvet settee while she rifled through racks. "I'll just wear something I already own."
"You own three pairs of jeans, two hoodies, and that one black dress you wore to your grandma's funeral four years ago." Maya didn't even look up. "So unless you want to show up to your ex's wedding looking like you're attending another funeral, we're finding you something new."
"I hate shopping."
"I know. Which is why I'm doing this FOR you, you ungrateful brat." She pulled out a red dress that was mostly cutouts and held it up. "Thoughts?"
"I think I'd get arrested for public indecency."
"So that's a maybe." She put it back and kept searching.
I checked my phone. Crew had texted fifteen minutes ago from the men's store three blocks away: Found a suit. Looks good. Also bought a tie that matches your eyes. Is that creepy or romantic?
Romantic, I typed back. How much did you spend?
Don't worry about it.
Which meant too much. Crew's relationship with money was still weird after years of having nothing, then suddenly having everything, then spending it all on pills. Now that he was clean and had a stable income again, he kept buying things for me like he was trying to prove something.
My phone buzzed again. Mike says I should practice my breathing exercises before the wedding. In case seeing Joel makes me want to punch him.
Please don't punch anyone at the wedding, I replied.
No promises.
"Found it!" Maya's voice was triumphant. She emerged from the back of the store holding a dress on a hanger, tissue paper rustling.
It was burgundy, almost the color of wine. Long sleeves, high neck, nothing revealing or shocking. But the way it was cut, the way the fabric draped—it looked expensive. Elegant. The kind of dress that made you look twice not because it was trying too hard, but because it just worked.
"Go try it on," Maya ordered.
"It's probably out of my price range."
"You just settled for eight hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. Stop acting like you're broke." She shoved me toward the dressing room. "Try it on or I'm buying it and forcing you to wear it."
The dressing room was one of those fancy ones with good lighting that didn't make you look jaundiced. I stripped down to my underwear and pulled the dress over my head, struggling with the zipper until I finally got it up.
Then I looked in the mirror.
Oh.
The dress fit like it had been made for me. It skimmed my body without clinging, hit just above my knee, made my legs look longer than they actually were. The high neck and long sleeves should have been conservative, but somehow the whole effect was sophisticated instead of prudish.
I looked like someone who had their shit together. Someone who had moved on and built a life and didn't spend three in the morning stalking their ex's Instagram.
I looked like someone who had won.
"Let me see!" Maya's voice came from outside the dressing room.
I opened the door. She took one look at me and her eyes got bright.
"Oh, Harper," she said quietly.
"Is it too much?"
"It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect." She came closer, adjusting the neckline slightly. "This is the one. This is the 'I'm successful and happy and you're an idiot for leaving me' dress."
"I don't want to be the 'I'm successful and happy' dress person though." I turned back to the mirror. "I want to just BE successful and happy, not perform it for Joel's benefit."
"Then why are you going to the wedding at all?"
It was a fair question. One I'd been avoiding answering even to myself.
"I don't know," I admitted. "Closure? Proof that I survived? Some weird psychological need to see him marry someone else so my brain will finally accept that it's over?" I touched the fabric of the dress. "Or maybe I'm still just petty and want him to regret everything."
"All of those things can be true simultaneously." Maya sat on the bench outside the dressing room. "Harper, you spent ten years with Joel. Ten years of building a life around someone who ultimately chose himself over you. You're allowed to need closure. You're allowed to want him to see what he lost. That doesn't make you shallow or vindictive. It makes you human."
"But I have Crew now. I have the settlement money. I'm moving to Vancouver and opening my clinic. I won. So why do I still care what Joel thinks?"
"Because healing isn't linear and closure isn't instant." She looked at me seriously. "You can be completely over someone and still want them to know you're over them. That's not weakness. That's just being a person with feelings."
I stared at myself in the mirror. The woman looking back at me was someone I barely recognized. Stronger. Sharper. Someone who had survived being dumped and evicted and almost sent to prison, and had come out the other side intact.
"I'll take it," I said.
"Damn right you will."
The dress cost nine hundred dollars. Six months ago, that would have been impossible. Now I handed over my credit card without even flinching. The settlement money had hit my account three days ago and seeing that balance still felt surreal.
We left the boutique with the dress in a garment bag. Maya linked her arm through mine as we walked back toward the parking garage.
"So the wedding is in five days," she said. "Are you ready?"
"No. But I don't think I'm supposed to be ready. I think I'm just supposed to show up and survive it."
"Very zen of you."
"Crew's therapist said something about acceptance and letting go of control." I shifted the garment bag to my other arm. "Which is rich coming from someone who's never had to attend her ex's wedding."
"Have you thought about what you'll say if Joel tries to talk to you?"
"I've thought about it extensively. I've practiced seventeen different versions of polite dismissal." I unlocked my car. "But honestly? I think if he tries to talk to me, I'm just going to walk away. No drama. No confrontation. Just... exit."
"That's very mature of you."
"I'm trying this new thing where I don't engage with people who drain my energy." I hung the garment bag in the back seat carefully. "Crew's sponsor calls it 'protecting your peace.' Which sounds like something you'd see on an Instagram wellness account, but it's actually pretty solid advice."
Maya got in the passenger seat. "You've changed."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean six months ago you would have planned some elaborate revenge scheme for Joel's wedding. You would have wanted to make a scene, prove a point, WIN in some visible way." She looked at me. "But now you're just... letting it be what it is. You're showing up for yourself, not against him. That's growth, Harper."
I started the car, letting her words sink in.
She was right. Six months ago, I would have wanted to destroy Joel's wedding. Make him regret everything in front of all his friends and family. Prove that I was better, stronger, more desirable.
But now?
Now I just wanted to close the door on that chapter of my life and move forward.
"I'm still wearing the expensive dress though," I said.
"Obviously. Looking good is the best revenge, even when revenge isn't the point anymore."
We drove back to her apartment in comfortable silence. When we pulled into the parking garage, I saw Crew's car already there. He was probably upstairs waiting for me, wanting to show me his new suit, excited about matching ties and coordinating outfits like we were going to prom instead of my ex's wedding.
And god, I loved him for that. For being excited about things that should be painful. For turning what could have been a nightmare into something we were facing together.
"Thank you," I said to Maya before we got out of the car. "For spending your entire Saturday dress shopping with me even though you hate shopping almost as much as I do."
"That's what best friends are for. Suffering through retail hell so you can look hot at traumatic events." She squeezed my hand. "You're going to be amazing, Harper. At the wedding, in Vancouver, all of it. You know that, right?"
"I'm starting to believe it," I said honestly.
And for the first time in months, that felt like enough.
We took the elevator up to her apartment. Crew was indeed waiting, sprawled on the couch in his new suit, looking ridiculously handsome and completely unaware of it.
"You bought a dress!" he said, sitting up when he saw the garment bag.
"I bought THE dress."
"Can I see it?"
"Absolutely not. You have to wait until the wedding." I hung it carefully in Maya's coat closet. "But I promise it's good."
"Everything looks good on you." He pulled me onto the couch next to him. "We're really doing this, aren't we? Going to Joel's wedding. Closing this whole chapter."
"We're really doing this."
"And then we're moving to Vancouver and never thinking about Joel Hartley again."
"That's the plan."
He kissed me, soft and sweet and tasting like the coffee he'd been drinking all afternoon.
"I love you," he said against my mouth. "Even when you're dragging me to your ex's wedding."
"I love you too. Especially because you're willing to be dragged to my ex's wedding."
Five days.
Five days until I walked into that venue wearing my nine-hundred-dollar dress, holding the hand of a man who actually valued me, proving to everyone including myself that I had survived.
I could do five days.
Probably.