Chapter 21 Perry
PERRY
The wedding day feels like walking into a kiln. Everything is hot. Overlit. Too bright to hide inside.
Faith’s venue is exactly what she wanted—the sprawling Baylock estate, ivory drapery everywhere, chandeliers dripping crystal like they also cry at weddings. The floral arrangements alone could fund a small country and hide a large sin.
I am running. I have a clipboard. I have a headset. I have three bridesmaids texting me about lip gloss and one stylist asking if Faith wants the second set of lacquer applied to everyone’s hair, just in case.
I’m the perfect maid of honor. Fetching champagne. Steaming dresses. Reminding the photographer that Faith’s left side is her “camera side,” and no, that is not negotiable, no matter how the light falls.
“If the light is failing, get more lights.”
“She wants natural lighting—”
“Then make it look natural.”
“Perry!” Faith calls from inside the bridal suite.
“I’m here,” I answer on my way to her.
She’s in the center of the room, robe cinched tight, hair halfway curled, face contoured within an inch of anatomical accuracy. She looks like herself if herself was airbrushed, polished, and perfected into a doll designed to look like her.
“Why aren’t the mimosas here?” the bridezilla demands.
“They’re on their way,” I say calmly.
Candy rolls her eyes in the corner. Alexis is already tipsy. Brie is crying because her strapless bra betrayed her.
I solve all of it. I solve everything. That’s my job today, and I’m nailing it, no matter how stressed out this event has made me.
Every time something has gone wrong in the past month, Faith has called me.
Not Jason. Not her idiot wedding planner.
Me. And I have put out every fire. She has been whinier than my infants, but I’ve handled it all, and today is the culmination of my hard work.
I’m not about to let something as trivial as mimosas get out of hand.
Amber, on the other hand, is another matter. She floats in and out like a vulture in couture, commenting on lighting, on seating arrangements, on whether the ivory leans too cream, on how my dress—the most matronly of the bridal party—is a little trashy for such an important event.
Faith selected the blush color, then told us to pick our dress designs, so they’d suit what we were comfortable in. Mine has a high neck, three-quarter sleeves, and is tea-length. Alexis, Brie, and Candy picked low necks, sleeveless, and a length that ranges from mini to don’t-bend-over.
But I’m the problem?
“Oh, Perry,” Amber says sweetly, “you’re doing so well.”
I swallow her sarcasm. Because I owe Faith. I almost detonated her engagement, and this is the least I can do to make her happy, so I ignore Amber’s commentary.
For now.
I look around and can’t help but feel relieved. This is the life I once thought would fix everything. The gown. The venue. The aesthetic. The fake perfection of every choice. Thank God Jason and I didn’t work out. I would have slowly gone insane.
Faith is snapping at the makeup artist now. “I said dewy, not oily.”
“You look beautiful,” I tell her.
“I need perfect,” she replies.
That’s the problem. She needs perfect. And I am trying to be an angel for the day.
We’re only three hours in, and the bridal suite smells like champagne and desperation. Not the fun kind. The anxious kind.
Faith is sitting in the center of it all, looking too sharp, too icy.
Her dress hangs on a rack behind her, gleaming in layers of white that probably required three separate consultants to select.
Thankfully, the dress hunt was long over before I was brought on board to serve as her wedding monkey.
“It’s wrinkled,” she says, pointing behind herself.
“It’s not,” I reply, smoothing the bodice anyway.
“It looks wrinkled.”
“It’s the light.”
“Fix the light.” Goody. More light fixing.
“Candy, stop eating that,” Faith snaps suddenly.
Candy freezes mid-bite over a macaron. Alexis pretends she doesn’t hear anything. Brie is still fighting her bra in the corner, which now somehow feels symbolic.
“I need you to breathe,” I tell Faith softly. “If you keep picking on Candy, she might not make it to the actual ceremony. She’s hanging on by a thread.”
“I am breathing,” she says, not breathing. “They’re not going to fit in their dresses if they keep eating like that.” Her eyes flick to mine. Searching. Measuring. “You’re not going to disappear on me, are you?”
“I’m right here,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere, Faith. I gave you my word.” I have to wonder whether Jason has ever given her this kind of reassurance.
She fans her face. “Don’t make me cry. They’ve already done my makeup like four times.”
Amber reappears like an omen. “You are doing so much work,” she says to me. “Almost like you’re trying to prove something.”
I smile and lie, “I enjoy logistics.”
“Of course you do.” She adjusts her diamond bracelet and surveys the room. “It’s amazing what people will do when they’re…motivated.”
Faith stiffens slightly. “Let’s not rehash the past today. Today is about the future.”
“I’m just saying,” Amber continues, “I’m glad Perry has grown out of her…impulsive phases.”
The air thickens. I swallow. I deserve some of this. I don’t deserve all of it.
Before I can respond, the wedding planner pulls me aside to confirm the procession order. I answer questions about timing, about aisle width, about the flower girl’s meltdown over glitter.
I’m on top of it all. But inside, I am fraying. Because this is so clean. So orchestrated. So phony that it sets my teeth on edge. I’m almost ashamed I ever wanted this life.
Moments later, Alexis has lost one shoe the way my boys do sometimes.
“How do you lose one shoe?”
“I don’t know. Find it,” she says, half-interested.
As soon as I find the shoe tucked beneath the floor-length curtain, Candy has started crying for no identifiable reason.
“Honey, what’s going on?”
She sniffles. “I don’t know.”
“I can’t help if you won’t tell me—”
“Wedding jitters.”
I frown. “You’re not getting married.”
“I thought everyone in the wedding party could get wedding jitters.”
“Not to my knowledge,” I tell her slowly. “What’s actually bugging you?”
“I don’t like the makeup the stylist did.”
“And you thought if you cry and ruin it, they’ll have to do it again?”
She smirks a little. “Maybe.”
“Just tell them you want something else, Candy. They don’t care. They’re getting paid to be here.”
“Oh.” She straightens and wipes her face. “Really?”
I nod. “Go on, take one of their stations. They’ll be right with you.”
“Okay.” She smiles, no sign of crocodile tears to be found.
I’m halfway through a cleansing breath when Brie whispers, “Do you think she knows?”
“Knows what?”
“About…everything.”
Everything? “What’s everything?”
“Oh. You don’t know.” She goes from whispery gossip to a polite smile. “Never mind. You’re doing great.”
It sounds like a warning. And I realize something slowly, uncomfortably.
This isn’t just a wedding. It’s a lie. All of it.
The facade of perfection, the behind-the-scenes bullshit Brie just hinted at, the caked-on makeup, the blown-out hair.
Every inch is a performance, like we’re putting on a play.
Amber drifts back into the bridal suite like she owns the oxygen. She doesn’t interrupt. She doesn’t bark orders. She just hovers. And hovering is worse.
I’m standing by the mirrored vanity, adjusting Faith’s bouquet ribbon, when Amber leans casually against the counter beside me. “You look tired,” she says quietly.
“I’m fine.”
“Of course you are.” She studies my reflection instead of my face. It’s strategic. Makes it feel intimate without being confrontational. “Damian must appreciate the moment today. You should make him feel special to soothe his ego.”
My fingers still. “What?”
“He’s not exactly employed. Or didn’t he tell you?”
I roll my eyes. “He’s starting private practice. No ego soothing required.”
Amber’s mouth curves. “Oh,” she says lightly. “Is that what he told you?”
My stomach drops. “What are you talking about?”
She picks up a makeup brush, twirls it idly between her fingers. “Meron let him go.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“He violated professional boundaries,” she continues smoothly. “Dating a patient. It looked bad. The board didn’t love it.”
“That’s—” I stop. Because it could be true. Meron would absolutely leverage that, particularly if Amber told him to. “He didn’t leave voluntarily?”
Amber’s eyes flick to mine in the mirror. “Oh, sweetheart, he didn’t have a choice. How embarrassing to be the last to know.”
The room suddenly feels too small. I can’t breathe.
Faith clears her throat. “Amber, come take a better look at my eyeliner. It’s too black, isn’t it?”
Amber smirks at me before parting for Faith’s imaginary problem.
He lied.
But so did I. For months. Every phone call. Every kiss. Every time he asked gently about the boys’ father and whether he was in my life, and I said, “Not really.”
The weight of that guilt presses in on me from all sides. My hands shake.
He lost his job.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. No, scratch that. I didn’t tell him the truth. I chose not to. And now, he’s unemployed because of me. Because of my lies.
The guilt I swallowed earlier morphs into something violent. I can’t breathe in here. “I need air,” I mutter.
“Perry—”
“I’ll be back.” I’m not even sure who I’m saying it to. Faith? Brie? Myself?
I can’t be this person anymore. Can’t keep lying to the man I love, just because he might hate me for the truth. It’s not protecting anyone—for fuck’s sake, he lost his job for the fake version of me. All I’m doing, all I have ever done, is fuck things up around me, and I can’t keep doing that.
I step into the hallway. That’s when I see him.
Cruising past with a tray of cocktails for the groomsmen, sleeves rolled, jaw tight, moving like nothing in the world has shifted.
I walk straight toward him. “Damian.”
He turns.
The words pour out of me. “You’re the father of my twins.”
The words hang there. Unfiltered. Irreversible.
He blinks. Just blinks. His hoarse voice scratches out, “I…I have to get these drinks to the groomsmen.” Then he walks away.
The hallway suddenly feels like it’s tilting. Not metaphorically. Actually tilting. Like the ground is unstable, and I’m the only one who can feel it shifting beneath my feet.
Damian doesn’t look back. He just keeps walking. Straight spine. Controlled steps. Tray steady in his hands like nothing seismic just tore through his life. He rounds the corner, and he’s gone.
I expected something else. Shock. Anger. A question. Anything.
Instead, I got logistics. I have to get these drinks to the groomsmen.
The absurdity of it hits me hard enough that I almost laugh.
I step back against the wall because my knees feel unreliable. This is it. This is the moment I’ve been building toward for months. I thought the bomb would take Damian out, not my knees.
Footsteps approach. When I glance upward, it’s Jason. He leans against the opposite wall like this is some casual intermission between groomsmen duties. “Why are you pale?”
I push off the wall. “I…I’m fine.”
“You always get that look when you overthink things,” he adds lightly.
I stare at him. “What do you want?”
He grins a familiar grin. The one that used to disarm me. Used to make me forget what I was angry about. “You know,” he says, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “it’s my last few hours before I’m no longer a free man.”
My gut knows where he’s heading with this, but I will play dumb as long as possible. “Congratulations.”
“How about,” he continues, stepping closer, “you and I find a room around here and do what we do best?”
Damn him for proving my gut right. “What?”
Please don’t say it again. Say anything but that.
He chuckles and reaches out, lifting my chin like he has the right. “Me. You. A private room—”
I jerk away. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m nostalgic, and we had some good times, Per. We can have them again if you—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” I say, my voice colder than I’ve ever heard it. “Ever.”
His smile falters. “Oh, come on—”
“I am not your backup plan,” I snap. “I am not your anything.”
Something flickers across his face—surprise? Offense? “You used to be.”
“Not anymore. Go to the groom’s suite, get some coffee, and forget all about whatever the hell you just tried to pull. That’s my plan.”
He braces a hand on the wall behind me, leaning in far too close. “Per, you know you want me.”
“I don’t want you,” I say clearly. “Not even a little.”
He straightens slightly. “That’s not what it looked like on New Year’s.”
“I was angry,” I say. “That’s over. I don’t want you, Jason. I’m not sure how to be clearer about that.”
He watches me, trying to read something that isn’t there anymore. “You’re different.”
“I am.” I step around him.
He doesn’t stop me.
As I walk away, heart hammering, I realize something terrifying.
In ten minutes, I detonated everything.
I told Damian the truth. He walked away without acknowledging it.
So, I guess we’re…done? Jason propositioned me, and I made the choice to keep that from Faith, because otherwise, I’ll destroy her big day.
And Amber got to explode a bomb right in my face about Damian’s career, which I apparently derailed.
How is this my life?