39. I Don’t
Chapter 39
I Don’t
Taz
One week later
“I am a fucking genius!” Daria threw her hands up, after she placed the crown of Montauk daisies on my head. Fall blooming wildflowers.
Daria was right. She was a genius.
She found me a dress of sheer, delicate lace. The lining of the dress matched my skin and made it look almost see-through. On my feet were my black, leather riding boots. The dragonfly bracelet was on my wrist, and I had moved my engagement ring from my left hand to my right, leaving my wedding finger bare, ready to receive a new adornment that would symbolize my second marriage.
Daria was dressed in autumn red, with a slit that, in her words, rode scandalously high.
It all looked so perfect. Everything was right. All of it.
Except for the bride.
I didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong in this.
“I can’t do this.” My voice was barely a whisper.
I grabbed the crown from my head and threw it across the room.
“I can’t do this!” I said, feeling the anxiety grip me by the throat.
My heart beat out of my chest, my eyes watered, and I sank to the ground.
“I can’t do this.” I pulled my hair from all the bobby pins, and they skittered around the floor.
“Oh shit,” Daria said, rolling her eyes as she pulled out a phone.
“I can’t,” I said, my heart breaking. “I can’t do this to him. I can’t ruin his life.”
I looked at my hands, at the ring, at the bracelet.
Snap it.
I placed a finger under my bracelet and tried to break it off. I really did. But there was no strength in me.
I had spent it all in the last week, in complete and total denial. I had gone through the motions. We had made love, moved the trailer to DC, and put my sparse belongings into his condo.
I had a bag in Top and Charlotte’s guesthouse, agreeing that when he was gone, I’d surround myself with people. He kept whining about how he didn’t want me alone for too long. He needed me to have people around at all times, to keep him sane.
But what was I going to do ? Just be his housewife, moving from one residence to another, and moving my schedule around to suit him, and support him? Like I was an extra appendage to his life? An anchor? Because that’s what I would be.
He’d never become president with me. He’d never become much more than what he was.
I would drag him down to my level, and he’d hate me.
“I can’t do this!” I said, as my head pounded with rage. The panic growing and growing like a wave before it crashed onto the shore.
I had to get out of here. I had to leave. I had to run.
Then something hit my head. It was soft and flopped onto the ground.
Then another one. And another. And another.
“What the hell?” I said, looking up as another sock was tossed at my head. “Veder?”
Veder was in a button-down shirt. He’d shaved for the wedding but was still wearing jeans.
He waved the floppy bits of cloth in his hand.
“I got a dozen pairs of these,” he said, holding up a handful of fuzzy socks. “Goose has one too. So does Top, Charlotte.”
Daria leaned her forearm on the door frame, waving her own stack of socks.
“Look, I made them into bouquets!” she said, holding her bundle up, and it was, indeed, woven into a ball on a stick, each sock twisted into a fake flower bud.
“Yeah, you see,” Veder said, theatrically putting his finger to his chin, “The day Griff stormed into the barn, and got all pissy… By the way, you still owe me two hundred bucks for that one… I told him that he couldn’t cure your cold feet by smothering you.”
Veder chuckled, unspooling another sock from his “bouquet”.
“And you know what he said?” Veder’s sea green eyes glinted at me in amusement. “He said he’d get you socks.”
He’d told me the same thing.
I looked down at the enormous, fleece and wool socks on the floor in front of me.
“How you feeling, now?” Veder said, putting down his bouquet on the vanity beside him. “Don’t answer too fast. Really check in with yourself. What’s eating at you?”
“I’m not good enough for him. I’m still… I’m doing nothing but waiting around for a husband to come home, and… and…”
“What is it that you want to be doing?” he asked, his brows knitting together. “Obviously not bounty hunting. Though you seem to enjoy the hell out of that job. What is it that you want to do?”
Veder looked at me, the corner of his lip still tilted up as if he was asking a question that he already had an answer to.
“You know Mellie went to Yale Law School?” Veder tucked his hair behind his ear, smirking at me. “She’s on sabbatical right now. But I hear that Yale has a good engineering program.”
He pushed off the vanity and headed for the door.
“Think about it,” he said, turning to me before he walked out. “If not Yale, I’m pretty sure you could get in elsewhere. “George Washington University in DC has a pretty good program too.”
“What are you? A college recruiter?”
He didn’t answer as he turned around, walking out of his apartment that I borrowed as my bridal suite.
Our wedding was being held in his barn, on Top and Charlotte’s property. The place of so many interesting memories.
“Wait!” I called out. “Are you and Mellie dating?”
The little farm girl down the road? My former landlord?
Veder stiffened, and barely turned around.
“Nah, just friends.”
Just friends.
Griff and I were just friends… once.