“Now you’ll never marry my son!” my mother-in-law laughed, setting my wedding dress on fire. I wiped my tears, smiled coldly, and said, “Enjoy destroying that dress, because the wedding was never the real trap.” Her face went completely pale when I made one quick phone call…

its soothing circle against my knuckles. “You procured a contingency dress?”

I absolutely had not. But surviving six brutal years in an ad agency where psychotic clients routinely demanded wholesale campaign rewrites three hours before launch had wired my brain for rapid-fire problem-solving. You don’t survive by mourning Plan A; you survive by forcefully continue reading …