Hey everyone! You've chosen option 1- Owen forgot to grab Audrey's pink bag with her Maid of Honor dress and her sister Sofia's (the bride-to-be) bracelet, and they can't turn back. So, enjoy this chapter and let me know which option at the end you think should happen next!

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Owen refuses to meet my gaze. "Well the good news is at least I remembered the rings."

"Owen!"

"I'm sorry!" he winces. "I didn't see your bag when I was loading them all into the car."

"It's bright pink! It was like 3 feet away from the rest of my bags!"

"I can go back for it?" Owen suggests, but even he knows it's not an option.

"No. We'd be late."

He frowns and doesn't say anything as he stares out the windshield. The trees flying by us blur together as panic squeezes at my throat. I don't have a dress, or Sofia's tennis bracelet!

Okay, breathe, Audrey. It's not the end of the world, just a complete misstep. It can be fixed. I can fix this.

"I'm going to call everyone I can think of who hasn't left yet and ask them to pick it up." I say, struggling to keep my voice even as I pull out my phone and find the wedding guestlist.

Owen's voice is small when he says, "But didn't everyone leave yesterday or this morning?"

"I know everyone left yesterday, Owen!" I snap, then take a deep breath to reign in the panic. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I need to figure this out. Just keep driving. We need to make it to the store to get Sofia's dress before they close."

Owen sends me a sheepish look but doesn't say anything or offer any suggestions. This is so like him! The bag was right there! But maybe that's on me. I should've known he wouldn't have looked 90 degrees to his left to see the pink bag sitting right there. I should've grabbed it instead of letting him pack the car like he insisted.

I need a dress. I can't stand beside my sister on her wedding day in front of all her guests and be immortalized in photographs in a tank top, jean shorts, and flipflops! This shirt even has a hole in it!

Owen is quiet for the rest of the drive as I desperately call everyone on the guest list, but by the time Owen turns off the highway two hours later, I've exhausted every option and come to the realization that I'm royally and utterly screwed.

We pass a Tims billboard for their Cold Brew coffee, and it makes me yearn to go back in time, to two hours or so ago, when I got my Salted Caramel Cold Brew and was blissfully ignorant of the impending disaster.

I'm going to ruin Sofia's wedding. After all that planning and organizing and stressing and dress fittings, I'm going to stand beside my big sister in a tank-top with a hole in it.

I'm too busy banging my head against the passenger side dashboard to properly hear whatever Owen's saying.

He taps my shoulder. "Audrey? We're here. We've gotta grab Sofia's dress."

I glance up to realize we're stopped in a parking lot, a brick building surrounded by trees in front of us. "Right. Sofia's dress." I undo my seatbelt and step out into the blazing heat. "At least the most important dress is still fine."

"That's the spirit!" Owen cheers, then cringes when I shoot him a look.

The air conditioning hits us like a wall when we enter the store, and I have to stop myself from audibly sighing in relief. The store is small, which is understandable since it's in the middle of nowhere, and there are wedding dresses on display around the main floor. I have no idea how Sofia found this place, but it was carrying the 'perfect dress', and she had to drop it off the other day for last minute alterations.

As we wait for someone to appear, Owen reaches out to touch the lace sleeve of the dress a mannequin is wearing, but I slap his hand away. The last thing we need is him somehow managing to ruin a multi-thousand-dollar dress.

"Hello, I'm Wilma," an older woman approaches us. She's wearing a cushion with pins sticking out on her wrist. "Can I help you?"

"Yes. I'm Audrey, I'm picking up Sofia's dress."

She smiles broadly. "Yes! Let me grab that for you."

"Actually!" Owen calls out, forcing her to return. "Do you sell any bridesmaid dresses?"

I'm so shocked that just came out of Owen's mouth that my jaw drops. I didn't even think of that! I may not get to wear the same dress we picked out, but at least I won't ruin wedding pictures.

"Of course we do," Wilma says. "But as I'm sure you know, the dresses we have are for trying on only, then we order the dress in your size and colour."

I step forward, excited at the prospect of fixing this major problem. I may not be royally and utterly screwed! "Do you have any we can take home now? Any off the rack ones?"

"We have a few. I'm assuming they're for you?"

I nod. "We've had a... mishap... and I need a new bridesmaid dress."

"Hmm." Her lips purse in thought. "Let me show you what we have. I'm not sure we'd have any in your size though. All the in-store dresses are usually bigger and we pin them back for fittings."

"I'd love to see anything you have. Preferably in olive green," I say.

At least if this replacement dress is the same colour as my original dress, it won't be such a big deal. I'll still fit in with the other bridesmaids.

"I'll see what I can find," Wilma says, and disappears into the back of the store.

Maybe I'll get lucky. They say bad things happen in threes, and I've definitely hit all three of them already. Driving with my ex-boyfriend, losing my dress, and losing the tennis bracelet. Three! That means the worst is over and I'm due some good luck.

"They might have the same dress!" Owen says. "See! Everything will work out." He gives my shoulders a little shake. "Loosen up, Audrey. It's going to be fine. Stop glaring at everyone."

"I'm not glaring!"

"Okay, you're not glaring. I meant you should stop staring at everyone in an angry manner."

I shove his hands off my shoulders. "That's literally the definition of glaring."

"Right..." he gives an awkward laugh, and instead of glaring at him, I 'stare at him in an angry manner'.

"Okay, I've found a few dresses close to your size," Wilma says, holding Sofia's dress by the hanger, a few dresses hanging behind it.

Please be olive green please be olive green.

"And one is even in green!" Wilma exclaims.

Yes!

Owen holds up his hand to me, and I'm so happy I can't resist high fiving him.

Wilma places Sofia's dress on a rack near us. "I'm out of bags to put this in, I'm sorry, so just be careful with it."

Sofia's dress is beautiful. It's light and summery and flowy—perfect for an outdoor summer wedding in this heat.

"And here are your options, Audrey." Wilma holds out three dress, each one uglier than the last.

The hope that was building in my chest pops and leaves me feeling deflated. One is muddy brown and so plain it looks like a blanket, the other is blue and looks like something my grandmother would wear, and the other is booger green and looks twice my size.

"Wh—where's the olive green one?"

"No olive green one, sorry sweetie. But we have this green one." She points to the booger green dress, and I bite my lip to stop from crying.

My bad luck was supposed to be over! Three bad things! Ex-boyfriend, dress, bracelet. Three! That's basic math! I'm due my good luck!

"At least you'd still be in the same colour scheme with that green one," Owen suggests softly. "Plus, you're the maid of honour, so you're allowed to have a different dress from the other girls."

He's not wrong. But I just can't tear my eyes away from the monstrosity of a dress. I'm going to stand at the altar with my sister in that dress. Give my speech in that dress. Be photographed in that dress. Sofia's future children will see pictures of Auntie Audrey in an oversized booger green dress. I'll never be able to escape it.

And I'm going to have to live with it, because it's that, or my ripped tank top.

"We'll take it," I say.

At least I packed my shoes in my other bag, which Owen did bring. And a quick glance in the mirror shows all the hairspray is holding up in the heat because my hair looks perfect. So thankfully, it's not all bad. It really could be worse.

Since it's last minute and we have a time limit, Wilma can't make any alterations to the dress for me, so she gives me a bunch of safety pins and shows me how to pin the dress on the inside so they don't show.

After thanking and paying Wilma, I stuff my dress in one of my other bags, lay Sofia's dress out so it doesn't wrinkle, and we're back on the road in no time.

"Can you breathe a bit, Audrey? It's no biggie!" Owen says, following the navigation to the bakery. He turns onto a backroad with only trees and a single lane for each direction of traffic, and pushes his car to 80km per hour. The wind pushing in fresh country hair helps me feel calmer.

"You're right," I concede. "It's not the best, but it's the best we can do with what we have."

"That's the spirit!" Owen exclaims. "You'll look beautiful in any dress you wear anyway, even if it's pukey green."

For some reason, that brings a smile to my lips. "Pukey green? I thought of it more as booger green."

Owen glances at me and gives a surprised laugh. "You know, you're totally right. It's definitely a booger green over a pukey green."

Even though I shouldn't, I laugh. He's just so ridiculous. I shove his shoulder as we both laugh at my tragedy of a dress.

"There's my Audrey!" Owen whoops and turns the music up in the car to as loud as it can go. It's a fun song from the 80s, and since the worst thing that could possibly happen is over, I let myself loosen up a bit and dance along to the song.

"Ohhh! Look what you've done to this rock 'n' roll clown!" Owen sings at the top of his lungs. "Sing it Audrey!"

I can't resist. "Oh oh, look what you've done!"

"Photograph!" We yell-sing together, and all the way through the chorus.

With the wind whipping through the speeding car and the sunny day and the greenery of the trees and the open country road ahead of us, it's fun. More fun than I have any business having with Owen, but fun nonetheless.

"Let's kick it up a notch, Audrey!" Owen yells over the music. He reaches up to where the roof meets the windshield and turns a lever. "Just like old times!"

"Wait, Owen, what are you—"

He presses a button, and the roof slowly starts coming down. I gather my hair at the base of my neck as the roof disappears and the wind picks up.

"Owen! You're going to mess up my hair!" I shout over the music and wind, but he just continues speeding down the road.

"What's that?" he yells back, eyes on the curving road.

"I said—"

There's a flash of white in the sky, then it's gone. Owen saw it too, because he looks at me with wide eyes, lowers the music volume, and checks his rear-view mirror before reducing the speed drastically and pulling over.

I'm almost too scared to move.

"Owen... what was that?"

He bites his lip. "I don't know how to tell you this, Audrey, but..."

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT? Comment beside each option to vote, and add the story to your library to see what happens in next week's chapter, as each mishap gets progressively worse for Audrey and Owen! Voting Ends August 9 at 11:59pm (EDT)

1. A bird pooped all over Audrey's hair and ruins it

2. The wedding dress flew out of the car and landed in the mud