“Don’t look at her. She doesn’t mean anything to me.” His voice was rushed, and laced with a hint of panic.
Hadn’t I heard that before? Those exact same words…don’t worry about her. She doesn’t mean anything to me. She is just a friend.Was he doing things that Ididn’t need to worry aboutwith other women too?
“Babe, I was just letting off steam. Colleen doesn’t mean shit to me, it’s always been you. You’re the one for me. It’s always been you.” Dylan stepped two paces to the right, as if blocking the girl from my view could do anything to erase the last five minutes when I had already seen more than I ever wanted of her.
The Colleen in question scoffed at this. “My name’s Collette.”
“Whatever,” Dylan snapped at her, before turning all of his focus back on me. “Look, has it ever occurred to you that all the stress of the wedding was starting to really get to me? I mean I know that this is important to you, but the planning has gone on for over a year. It’s taken up so much of your time that we’ve barely even been able to hangout together anymore.”
Suddenly, all of Dylan’s excuses were just making me feel tired. I’d already had to practically make an excel spreadsheet to figure out seating arrangements. I didn’t have the mental capacity to handle his drama on top of it all.
In the living room, Colleen/Collette had made a beeline to the fancy-looking purse I hadn’t noticed sort of blending into the sofa. She was looking a bit frazzled. Like Dylan’s walrus-face moves hadn’t quite been enough to satisfy her.
“Don’t worry about me, you can finish what you started,” I called out to her.
Dylan’s eyes snapped to mine, widening in horror.
Like I was on autopilot, I reached down to my engagement ring. It had three round diamonds in a platinum band, and had sat in my finger long enough that I already had a faint ring tan. I had literally not taken it off a single time since Dylan had proposed about a year ago. Now I ripped the band off my finger like the metal suddenly burned. Without a word, I placed the ring down on the kitchen table.
I unhooked his key from the rest, placing it neatly down next to my old engagement ring.
“Wait! Is this it? Is the wedding really off?” Dylan emphasized the wordwedding…letting it dangle in the air like bait on a hook to reel me back in. Without a word, I walked away, closing the door on his apartment for the last time.
No.
The wedding wasn’t off.
The venue was set; the decor and catering were perfect. Almost all the details were perfectly planned.
The wedding would still go on… all I needed now was to find a new groom.
CHAPTER 2
AVRIL
Here I was again,back in my childhood room, able to hear all the shenanigans of my siblings and parents through the walls. I had never officially moved in with Dylan… but half of my things were in boxes stacked up in the corner of the room in anticipation of the move.
For months I had lived in transition, between living spaces and never knowing where anything was.
Returning home was like admitting defeat, and I imagined that I’d feel gutted. Instead all I felt was a sense of relief. No more transition. A choice had been made, though it wasn’t the one that I ever thought that I wanted.
But then again, Dylan must not have ever been the man who I had imagined him to be. How had I never seen it?
Had I just been so blatantly blinded by the need for a groom for my wedding that I was willfully ignoring the red flags?
Everything was spinning out of control.
Sharp knocks sounded at my door. I barely had time to shout out a quick, come in, before Zane charged in, phone in hand. The nosiest of all my siblings… I knew that Zane could dig up secrets like a terrier burrowing for rats. But I thought that I would have at least a full day before he was on my case.
“Any reason why your fiancé texted me like twelve times?” Zane waved his phone at me, his face scrunched up in disgust.
“Oh. Yeah. Probably because I blocked him.” Half my attention was still on my binder with the seating arrangements. Should I still invite the Kingston-Storm pack? Technically, they were still friends of the family, but it would be messy. Did I want to make things awkward now by uninviting them, or later at the wedding when they realized their son wasn’t at the altar?
“Oof, what did that shit-stain do?” Zane shook his head before grabbing my second favorite pen off my desk.
I frowned. My brother was so quick to piss all over my fiancé’s—wait, ex-fiancé’s—name. Was I really the last person in the world that realized that maybe everything was perfectly planned for my wedding… except perhaps for the whole marrying Dylan part of it?
“He cheated on me, so he’s my ex-fiancé now.” I didn’t look up from my binder until the clattering of the pen dropping to the floor jolted me out of thoughts of seating arrangements.
