2. Dolly
2
DOLLY
Jeff’s not here.
Errr…what?!
I repeat Hux’s words, trying to make them make sense. I know what each word means, but something about stringing them together in that order doesn’t compute.
How can he not be here? It’s our wedding.
“The boys get lost on the way over from the Ramblers’ Rest?” I laugh it off, thinking this must be some kind of bachelor prank. Jeff’s brother, Jeremy, would absolutely pull that kind of thing. “Or are they just that hungover. Wait, no…please don’t tell me they’re still drunk.”
Hux swallows hard, the muscles in his throat visibly contracting, his mouth pinned in as straight a line as I’ve ever seen. Flicking his eyes over to the girls, then back to me, he shifts his weight, clearly trying to buy time before he answers. He’s nervous. There’s something he doesn’t want to tell me.
Huxley Hayes has been my best friend since the third grade. To this day, I still feel the butterflies in my tummy when I think about him coming up to me on the playground, leveling me with those hazel eyes and that signature Hayes smirk that was alive and well even at that age, and hitting me with the line, “So, you’re my Wendy,” in reference to us being cast as Peter Pan and Wendy in the class play. He has been by my side for every single important event in my life. No one knows me like he does.
Likewise, no one knows him like I do.
Which is why I know that right now, he’s hiding something. Something big.
“What is it?” I ask. “What’s going on?”
“Jeff’s not here?—”
“Yes, I caught that, Huxley,” I snap. “So, where is he?”
Hux shifts again, this time producing an envelope, holding it out to me. My name is scribbled across the front, my fiancé’s handwriting clear as day. That’s when it hits me.
Jeff isn’t here.
“He’s not coming, is he?” I manage to choke out the words, my voice sounding foreign even to me.
“He left this,” Hux responds, not fully confirming or denying anything.
My heart stops, my stomach rolling as a chill settles over the room, everyone seeming to freeze in place. Holy shit. He’s not coming. The groom isn’t showing up to the wedding.
I’m being left at the altar.
And to think, I had been the one having doubts.
Guess I wasn’t alone in that.
“What does it say?”
“I didn’t read it.”
I nod. Just like Hux. Of course he didn’t. Had it been one of the girls, they’d have held it up to a light or tried to steam it open so they’d know what we were getting into before bringing it to me. But not Hux.
Taking it from him, I park myself on the bench in front of the large lighted mirror. I need to read it. Need to know what it says.
Yet, there’s another part of me that wants to enjoy these last few moments before whatever this holds sets in. The moments where I’m the one wondering in the back of my mind if I’m really going to walk down that aisle.
It’s just cold feet…
That’s what I’d convinced myself. That’s what I had reasoned out after I drunkenly confessed to Alice at my bachelorette weekend that I wasn’t sure that I was in love with Jeff. After six years together—three years of being engaged and planning a wedding, questioning whether or not it was ever really going to happen—I was just all up in my own head, letting the nerves of the day get to me.
That’s all.
Even if deep down I know that’s a lie.
“Do you want a minute?” Alice asks.
I look up at her, the unopened envelope still in my hands. Ummm, do I? I move my head in a circle, unsure if I’m nodding or shaking it no, because I don’t know my own answer to that question. I can’t bring myself to open this stupid envelope.
This is supposed to be my wedding day. The happiest damn day of my life. Instead, I’m sitting here, trying to figure out why the man who allegedly loves me gave a letter to the man who doesn’t love me.
At least doesn’t love me like that .
I know Hux loves me. There aren’t many men who would agree to be a man of honor and walk down the aisle with another guy, plus do all the other wedding duties.
I bet he didn’t have break up with the bride for the groom on his wedding bingo card…
The soft snick of the door closing pulls me back, and I look up, realizing it’s just Hux and me in the room. He drops down in front of me, placing a hand on either side of me, his deep hazel eyes holding on to me like a hug. A hug I desperately need right now.
“Is this really happening?” I whisper.
I feel like I’m watching someone else’s life unfold in front of me. There is no way that this is really how my life plays out. Nope. Because this doesn’t actually happen to real people. It’s a bad subplot on a daytime soap or telenovela. Not the life of a small-town diner owner.
“’Fraid so.”
Great. Just great.
Nodding, I turn back to the envelope. It’s now or never. Really, never might be an okay option. The it’s not happening portion of the day is perfectly clear. Do we really also need the why ?
Yeah, I do. I need to know why he dragged this out for so long, only to end it this way. Why he couldn’t tell me last night.
Ripping through the seal, I tear the paper, as if it deeply offended me in a past life and I’m here to exact my revenge. Consider me Inigo Montoya where that thing is concerned.
Dolly,
By the time you read this, I’ll be at home. My home. This is probably the kind of thing one should tell the other in person, but I felt that some space would be best between us. Because, you see, I’ve been thinking. And I feel that it’s best that we don’t get married. It has become clear over the last little while that you are not what I need in a wife. You simply don’t have the qualities I need in someone. If I’m honest, I don’t see you being a wife to anyone. I should have come to this conclusion earlier, and for that I take responsibility.
I wish you the best of luck in wherever life take you.
Jeff
I don’t see you being a wife to anyone…
Well, he’s right about one thing. Space between us is a good idea. Because my white dress would be splattered with blood had he said this to my face.
I don’t see you being a wife to anyone…
He thinks I would be a bad wife. He’s dumping me on our wedding day because I would be a bad wife.
I wait for the tears to hit. For the sadness to take over and rack my body the same way it does when I watch Mandy Moore tell Shane West she has cancer in A Walk to Remember . But it doesn’t happen.
Instead, it’s shame. Complete and utter mortification.
I feel like I’m fourteen all over again, in the crowded hallway at school, the hem of my skirt getting caught on the heel of my boot resulting in me pulling my skirt down and showing off my thong to half the school. Including the boy I liked.
Except this is worse.
Because most of Hickory Hills, plus a whole bunch of out-of-towners, are currently down in the chapel, waiting on a wedding. One they aren’t going to get. Oh, the rumor mill is just going to love this. I’m going to fuel the gossip of this town for weeks.
“Doll…”
“I…I…”
Snapping my mouth shut, I hold out the letter. There’s no way I’m going to be able to form the words right now, so I might as well let Jeff do the talking. It’s easier that way. Then I can sit here and let the numbness settle in while the life I had planned flies out the window.
The life I had planned out with the guy I wasn’t fully in love with. Who apparently thinks I wouldn’t make a good wife.
Damn, this gets more depressing by the second.
Hux takes the paper from me, shoving it in his pocket without reading it. Well, that makes one person who won’t know my shame. The one person who I’m willing to share it with.
“We’ll destroy that later so we can pretend it never existed,” he says, squeezing my knee. The contact feels good—warm and comforting, cutting through the pins and needles pricking at my soul. “How ‘bout we get you out of here?”
“How? To where? There’s a whole church full of very nosy townspeople down there. And my apartment is packed. And I really don’t want to go to my parents’, because you know Aunt Hattie will find her way over there.”
Oh my God, my poor parents. They’re going to be inundated with “condolences.” My great-aunt—chief gossipmonger herself—being front and center. This is the biggest thing to happen in Hickory Hills in years. This might even top country superstar Dustin Wild coming back to town.
I wanted my wedding to rank. But not like this.
“I’ve got my family running interference. Once they get everyone out of here, we can go back to my place. Margeaux and Gus can go to Hayes House, and Jace can spend the night at Magnolia Manor with Miss Belle and Auggie so we can have the place to ourselves. That way you don’t have to see anyone.”
My insides ease, tension I didn’t realize had taken over releasing from my body. Leave it to Hux to have a plan. In so many ways he’s the stereotypical middle child—stubborn, nonconforming, and complicated—but he’s also steady and unflappable. The perfect yang to my often lead-with-my-emotions yin.
As much as I hate the idea of displacing the brothers he lives with from their own home, the idea of being able to hole up in a place where I know no one will find me is entirely too appealing. And the Hayes family complex is about as good as it gets.
Because on top of everything else, I now have to figure out what comes next. It’s certainly not going to be leaving on my honeymoon tomorrow like I thought. Nope, I’m going to need to see if I can cancel that. The Indigo Royal Resort is probably nonrefundable too. Which means I just flushed I don’t even know how much money down the drain on a luxury, all-inclusive tropical vacation I’m not going to take.
I’m also going to need to open up Dolly’s, the diner my grandmother started and named after herself, then ran up until she passed away, leaving it to me. I’ve put a very large dent in my savings to help pay for this wedding and honeymoon. Something I was happy to do, since it was the start of our life together. Or was supposed to be.
“Do you want to get changed?” Hux asks, his voice soft and gentle, a tone that he uses only with me. I know this, because he barks at everyone else. Even his sister, Willa.
My eyes sweep up and down his crouched form, drinking in how good he looks in his tux once more. It’s a rare occasion that we get him dressed up, and damn, does he look good. There’s just something about the ear gauges and scruffy beard paired with the tailored look that does something to a girl. Then again, I do think I prefer him in his jeans and tee, those tatted arms showing off. The bad-boy look suits him.
“Yeah, should probably get out of this getup,” I answer, gesturing to my dress. “No need to hang out in it. It’s no longer got a job to do. And to think, I haven’t had carbs since Christmas so that I would fit in this thing.”
“Tell you what, we can send one of my brothers over to Ming Garden to pick up takeout and have it waiting back at the house for us. How about that?”
Fuck, I adore this man. He knows all my vices and caters to every last one of them.
“I want dumplings and crab rangoon. Double order.”
“You got it. Let me see if Anton started back this way, and if he has, make him turn around. Then I’ll call in our order. The works, coming right up. You get changed.”
He pops up, winking at me, then pulls out his phone to make his calls, the loss of him paralyzing me. I didn’t realize how much energy I was drawing from him sitting here with me. Energy I need to stand up and make myself get the fuck out of this dress. Because it is not going to take itself off.
Pushing to my feet, I shuffle over to my bag, pulling out the sweats I’d worn over here. Sweats that I didn’t plan on putting on again for more than a week, once I was back in Georgia after a gorgeous honeymoon where I wore nothing but bikinis, sundresses, and the cute lingerie I’d picked out online. Which I think still has the tags on it so I can probably return.
“I, ummmm…getting out of this thing is a two-person job,” I say over my shoulder.
“Right,” Hux says with a wry laugh. “On my way.”
He crosses the room in record time, and I feel his presence in an instant, the closeness of him easing the ache. As if somehow him being near me makes the pain of all this a little less powerful.
“Where do I even start?” His hands hold on to my shoulders as he examines my backside. I laugh, knowing the exact look of perplexity on his face without even looking. “You’re trussed up like the Christmas turkey.”
“It’s called a corset.”
“I don’t care what it’s called. How the fuck do I get you out?”
I laugh again. So much for steady and unflappable. At least until he’s met with a corset.
“Just above my tailbone, tug on the strings, they’ll come free and then you can start to unlace them.”
Hux mutters something under his breath that I don’t catch, and it’s probably better that I don’t. There’s no telling what kind of curses he’s inventing as he unravels the satin ribbons holding me together, but I’m sure they’re creative.
The smooth, silky fabric loosens against my skin, my dress giving way, my ribs and flesh easing with it. Right along with the last of my resolve. Each inch that moves allows for more and more shame to creep in, more and more weight of the situation to pile on. My chest grows heavier with each second and passing swipe of ribbon, making it harder to breathe.
And then the tears show up.
Just one at first. A scout, if you will. One brave little guy checking out the landscape to report back to his comrades. But once he does—once they know the coast is clear—the floodgates open. There’s no holding it back.
My dress falls to the ground, leaving me in my strapless bra and panties, tears streaming down my cheeks. Despite all still being fully covered—at least the good bits—I’ve never felt more naked and exposed.
“Doll…” Hux whispers, gathering me in his arms. I turn, burying my face in his chest and collapsing into him as I cry. Pressing a kiss into my hair, he holds me tight, keeping me safe, rocking me gently. “It’s okay. I know you’re heartbroken, but we’re gonna get through this.”
That’s the thing… I’m not heartbroken.
I don’t tell Hux that. I don’t say anything. I simply continue to cry, keeping my face pressed against him, ruining his crisp white shirt with my now smeared makeup. Because I don’t know how to tell my best friend that the pain I’m feeling isn’t from not being loved by Jeff, but from being left by him.
I’m humiliated. Not heartbroken.