Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
“Ijust heard a rumor that can’t possibly be true. Please tell me you aren’t seriously quitting your job and moving to Italy.”
Vivian hovered over the threshold of Kerry Krieger’s office.
Of all the conversations she knew she was going to need to have after accepting Joe’s proposal, she’d dreaded this one the most. In the two years since she began working at the television station, Kerry had become someone Vivian looked up to, tried to impress, one day hoped to emulate.
It was hard to not feel like she was letting her down.
Vivian stepped into Kerry’s office, closing the door behind her. It was somewhat pointless—the news that she was leaving the television station had clearly spread like wildfire for it to have reached Kerry, who was fastidious about not engaging in something as banal as office gossip.
Kerry stared at her expectantly, and it was the worry in her gaze that flooded Vivian with guilt. She wasn’t sure how she could explain something that she was just working out herself.
Two empty chairs sat in front of Kerry’s desk, practically begging for Vivian to sit down and reevaluate her life choices, but instead she stayed where she was, a bit fearful that if she sat down in one of those chairs, she’d be talked out of the decisions she’d just made.
Vivian took a deep breath. “I am moving to Italy.”
“To get married?”
Kerry said the word “married” like it was an infection you caught.
Vivian nodded.
Kerry sighed. “And he’s in the Air Force? A fighter pilot?”
Vivian nodded again.
“I suppose if I told you that you’re too talented to throw your life away for some man it wouldn’t do anything to change your mind, would it?”
As Vivian was growing up, her mother hadn’t been the most engaged of parents.
She’d been so occupied with her own life that she hadn’t had much time or energy left over to pay attention to Vivian’s.
It wasn’t lost on Vivian that the compliments Kerry gave her, the way she’d taken Vivian under her wing, had meant more because of that absence in her life.
And so, it was harder to know that she was letting her mentor down.
“Your opinion means a great deal,” Vivian answered honestly. “And I know how this sounds—believe me, I sometimes still can’t believe I’ve made this decision myself.”
“But you’re in love?” Kerry interjected, not unkindly, even if the way she said “love” made it sound like it, too, was an infection you could catch.
“I am.”
“And that’s enough?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
Before Joe, Vivian had never imagined it could be enough, never wanted to fall in love, to get married, to live the life that society seemed to expect of young women her age.
Maybe it was seeing how poorly marriage played out in her own mother’s life that soured her on such a commitment.
Or perhaps it was her own personality and her need for independence that made the notion of tying herself to one man unappealing.
But now there was Joe.
And he changed everything.
“I saw myself in you,” Kerry replied. “I thought you had the same fire for this business that I have. I know you said that you never wanted to be on air, that you were comfortable behind the scenes, but you’re a pretty girl, and most importantly a smart one, and I always thought you had a shot. You just had to believe in yourself.”
For a moment, Vivian considered calling off the whole thing—Italy, marriage, Joe.
She saw the future Kerry laid out before her, saw the potential in what Kerry suggested she could be.
And once upon a time, Vivian would have thrown everything away for the chance Kerry described even if she still didn’t envision herself as on-air talent.
But Joe offered her a future, too, a home, albeit one that she would have to pick up and move every few years based on the military’s whims, one where she was happy, one where she felt as though she’d found the one person who made her feel like no one ever had before, and that was a pretty difficult possibility to walk away from.
Kerry sighed. “Go. Get married. I hope he’s worth it. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
The words would have stung if Vivian hadn’t seen the sadness in Kerry’s gaze, the caring in her eyes.
“He is,” Vivian vowed.
Kerry made a noise somewhere between dismissal and disbelief, and then she returned her attention to the papers at her desk, the conversation over.
Vivian lingered for a beat, knowing that the moment had already passed her by, that Kerry was on to the next story, one Vivian would never get to work on.
—
“Are you nervous?” Polly whispered to Vivian as she handed her a bouquet of flowers.
Vivian glanced around, feeling like she was in a fever dream. A truly putrid color of pink stared back at her, the walls, the flowers, the elaborate decor over-the-top.
“I’m in a wedding chapel in Vegas about to marry a man who I’ve thrown my career away to be with, who I’m planning to move to Italy with in two days.
I don’t speak Italian. I don’t know anyone in Italy.
I don’t have a job lined up or any idea how I will fill my days.
And to say our romance has been a whirlwind is an understatement. I’d be worried if I wasn’t nervous.”
Polly laughed. “Don’t tell Frank—ever—but I was so nervous that I threw up on our wedding day.”
“I had no idea.”
Polly grinned. “I hid it well. Which is to say, I don’t know any woman who isn’t a little nervous on her wedding day considering what a risk marriage is and all that. ‘Till death do us part’? How isn’t that a little terrifying?”
“Even for you and Frank?”
Polly laughed. “Especially for me and Frank. There’s nothing wrong with being nervous, Vivian.”
“I love him. I know that. And I know what a good man he is, too. It’s just so big, you know? It’s a giant leap.”
Polly reached out and squeezed her hand, and then she stepped back as Vivian left the side alcove to head down the aisle to where Joe waited for her.
Vivian clutched the bouquet of flowers in her hand, the bright pink blending in perfectly with the aesthetic of the little wedding chapel.
She took a deep breath just as the first strands of music began to play.
She’d never thought much about her wedding, never envisioned the song she would walk down the aisle to, had just assumed it would be the traditional “Bridal Chorus.”
The strands of Elvis Presley crooning “Can’t Help Falling in Love” greeted her instead.
Vivian walked down the aisle with a smile on her face and laughter in her heart, at the song she realized Joe had chosen, at the future that waited for her.
And as soon as she took her first step, as Elvis sang of the unpredictable, unavoidable inevitability of love, all of Vivian’s fears receded into the background.
She knew.
If given the same decision to make time and time again, she would choose Joe every single time.