Barefoot Bay: Hold On To Forever (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Maria Geraci

for a second, Felicity felt guilty. Invoking their dead father seemed almost unfair, but on the other hand, she was confident she was doing the right thing. What parent wouldn’t want their child to follow through with a pragmatic plan like law school? After graduating, if Nicki found it wasn’t for her, then she could do something else, but she’d always have the law to fall back on. Plus, if Nicki was so sure of herself, why bother asking Felicity’s advice? No, she was definitely doing the right thing here in swaying Nicki toward law school.
    “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it. Think about Mitch. You want what’s best for him, too. Right?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “Then I don’t see the problem. Look, I get it. You’ve just finished four years of a tough undergrad program and now you’re looking at three more years of school. But you’re also getting married, and as much as you and Mitch love one another, that’s probably stressing you out too. Say you give law school the thumbs down and then in a couple of weeks after you and Mitch have settled into your new lives, you both come to regret it. By then, they’ll have given your spots to someone else and you’ll have to wait and reapply again.”
    Nicki frowned. “Maybe you’re right.”
    “Look, just concentrate on the wedding. This isn’t the time to be making any big decisions. Stick to what you’ve been planning. I guarantee you won’t regret it.”
    Nicki pulled her into a tight hug. “What would I do without you?”
    “You’re never going to have to find out,” she said, squeezing her sister right back.
    After another two hours of going through the available inventory, Abuela was fitted in a simple dove grey below-the-knee dress with a short-sleeved jacket. Ellen opted for a more dramatic cocktail dress in a deep silver with sequins around the collar.
    Felicity didn’t find it as easy. After trying on what seemed like half the store, she still hadn’t found the perfect dress. She was standing in the dressing room cubicle in her bra and underwear when Gussie handed her another outfit to try on. “This is the one,” Gussie said. “I can feel it.”
    Felicity took the dress and drew the curtain back in place, but it was thin enough that she could hear the women mumbling on the other side.
    “I hope this is it, because I’m hungry,” Ellen said. It sounded more like a joke than a complaint, but…
    “It’s the last dress left in her size,” she heard Gussie say in a low voice. “If she doesn’t like this one, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
    Crikey . She hadn’t meant to hold everyone up. Normally she wasn’t so fussy. But this was her sister’s wedding and she wanted to look good. So far everything she’d tried on had either made her feel frumpy or had shown too much cleavage, but this was getting ridiculous. Gussie had excellent taste. If she felt like this dress was the one, then that was good enough for Felicity.
    “I’ll take this one,” Felicity said in a loud voice.
    “Hooray!” Abuela said. “I say we go to the Mexican place and start on the margaritas.”
    “Great idea!” Now all she had to do was make sure the dress fit. Felicity slipped the lime green cocktail dress over her head and smoothed it down over her hips. She stared at herself in the mirror. Oh no . Absolutely not.
    “Go ahead without me. I’ll…meet you there in a few minutes,” she shouted. She was going to have to stay back and figure out what to do. Because there was no way, no how, she was going to wear this in public.
    * * *
    Jack walked into the bridal shop and about a dozen women turned to stare in horror. He put his hands up in the air making the universal sign of surrender. “Not the groom. I promise.”
    The women all breathed a sigh of relief and went back to whatever they were doing before he walked in. He worked his way through the aisles of fluffy looking white stuff and found his mother and grandmother