Chapter 3
CHARLOTTE
The doors opened, the music changed and Charlotte stepped into the light.
Three hundred faces turned toward her. She registered them as a blur: color, movement, the rustle of people shifting in their seats. And then her eyes found Dominic at the end of the aisle.
Everything else dissolved.
He was beautiful. That was the word she always came back to, even though he'd laugh if she said it out loud.
Dark brown hair pushed back from his forehead, jaw sharp and clean, shoulders filling out that charcoal suit like it had been stitched onto his body.
And those eyes — pale blue, almost gray in certain light, the color of winter sky.
The first time she'd looked into them, at that fundraiser months ago with wine still dripping down his shirt, she'd lost her train of thought so completely she'd apologized three times for the same spill.
He was smiling at her now. She smiled back, and the tears came immediately — hot, instant, embarrassing — because this was happening.
This was actually happening. Charlotte Hoffman, who'd spent last Thanksgiving eating leftover pad thai on her couch watching reruns of Gilmore Girls, was walking down an aisle in a five-figure dress toward a man who looked like that and chose her.
Chose her.
She still couldn't quite believe it. Six months ago she'd been grading spelling tests and wondering if the cute barista on Ninth Street was flirting with her or just friendly.
And then Dominic Weston had materialized in her life like something from a book she'd never have the nerve to write.
The dinner invitations. The car he sent because he didn't want her taking the subway at night.
The way he listened when she talked about her students: head tilted, those blue eyes focused, tracking every word.
The night he'd taken her to a rooftop bar in Midtown and the city had been spread out below them like a gift.
She'd been so nervous she'd knocked her drink off the table and he'd caught it: actually caught it, one-handed, without looking. He’d set it back down and said, "You're going to have to relax eventually, Charlotte.” She'd said, "I'm relaxed, I'm very relaxed, I'm extremely—" and he'd kissed her.
Their first kiss. On a rooftop. With the skyline behind them, his hand on the side of her neck and her heart hammering so hard she was sure he could feel it through her skin.
She'd called Kate at midnight from the back of the car he'd sent her home in.
"I think I'm in love with him." Kate: "You've known him three weeks, Charlie.
" Charlotte: "I know. I know that. I know it's insane.
" Kate: "Is it, though? Or is he just really hot and really rich?
" Charlotte: "He's also kind, Kate. He's kind, he pays attention and he remembered that I said my favorite flowers were peonies and he—" Kate: "Okay. Okay. Just... be careful."
She'd been careful. For about a week. And then she'd fallen so hard and so fast that careful stopped being an option.
Dominic was a current. Strong, directional, impossible to swim against. So she'd stopped trying.
She let him take her to restaurants where the menus didn't have prices.
She let him introduce her to his world. The galas, the dinners, the weekends at the family house in the Hamptons where she'd felt like a foreign exchange student navigating customs she didn't understand.
She let him reshape the edges of her life because he did it with such confidence that she assumed he knew what he was doing.
That he knew what they were doing. That this was as real for him as it was for her.
And it was. She was sure it was.
Almost sure.
Her father squeezed her arm. She'd slowed down without realizing it, lost in the memory, in the music, in the reality of what was at the end of this aisle.
She picked up her pace. Smiled wider. Let the tears fall because they were happy tears, the happiest tears she'd ever cried, and she wanted Dominic to see them.
She wanted him to see how much this meant to her.
She was close enough now to see his face clearly. The smile. The posture: straight, squared, perfect. His hands at his sides.
His hands were at his sides.
She registered it and then un-registered it, because she was not going to catalog things that didn't matter on the most important day of her life.
Grooms stood in all kinds of ways. Some grooms kept their hands at their sides.
Some grooms had a public smile, a private smile, and used the wrong one by accident because they were nervous. Dominic was nervous. That was all.
Charlotte reached the altar. Her father kissed her cheek, his mustache scratchy, his eyes red, his hand squeezing hers one final time before he let go. She turned to Dominic and offered her hand.
He took it. His palm was dry. His grip was firm.
She searched his eyes for the thing she needed to see — the tenderness, the awe, the I can't believe this is happening — and found something she couldn't name.
Distance. He was looking at her from behind something, a pane of glass she couldn't reach through.
He's nervous, she told herself. He's overwhelmed. Three hundred people are staring at him.
She squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. The glass between them stayed.
The officiant began. Charlotte listened to the words, the familiar rhythms of a ceremony she'd imagined since she was a girl, sitting on her parents' couch flipping through her mother's wedding album.
Dearly beloved. We are gathered here. In the presence of family and friends.
Each phrase landing in her chest like a bell struck.
A reading. Dominic's cousin, someone Charlotte had met twice, reciting a passage about love being patient and kind.
Charlotte watched Dominic during the reading.
He was looking at the cousin. His face was composed, attentive, appropriate.
She willed him to turn his head, to look at her during the words about love, and he didn't.
She told herself it didn't mean anything.
Then it was time for the vows.
The officiant turned to her first. "Charlotte, would you like to share your vows?"
She pulled the folded paper from the pocket in her skirt, the one she'd insisted on, the only part of this dress that was hers.
Her hands were shaking. The paper was soft from being unfolded and refolded a dozen times at her school desk, the ink slightly smudged where she'd cried on it while writing.
She looked at Dominic. His blue eyes were on her. Present. Waiting. She held on to that.
"Dominic," she said. Her voice wavered on the first syllable and she pressed on. "I wrote this during recess. My kids were playing outside and I was sitting at my desk crying. I just want you to know that up front so you understand the level of mess you're marrying."
A ripple of laughter from the guests. Dominic's mouth twitched. A real reaction, the closest thing to unguarded she'd seen from him all day. She held on to that, too.
"I didn't grow up in your world. I grew up in a two-bedroom apartment in Queens where my dad fixed the dishwasher with duct tape and my mom grew tomatoes on the fire escape.
I didn't know what a benefit gala was until you took me to one, and I'm still not totally sure I know which fork is for salad.
" More laughter. She blinked hard. "But I know what love looks like.
I saw it every day growing up. It looks like showing up.
It looks like paying attention. It looks like my dad bringing my mom coffee every single morning for thirty-one years without being asked. "
Her voice broke. She let it.
"I didn't expect you. I wasn't looking for you.
I backed into you and ruined your shirt.
" She was crying now, freely, and she didn't care.
"And you looked at me like I was a person, not a disaster zone, and you caught my drink before it hit the ground, and you remembered that I like peonies, and you — you saw me.
In a room full of people who were smarter and richer and more put together, you saw me. "
She looked up from the paper. The rest she knew by heart.
"I don't have a dynasty to offer you. I don't have a portfolio or a family name or connections.
I have a classroom full of nine-year-olds who think I hung the moon, and a best friend who'll fight anyone who hurts me, and a heart that is completely, terrifyingly, irrevocably yours.
" She took a breath. "I choose you, Dominic.
Today and tomorrow and every day I'm lucky enough to get. I choose you."
Silence. Then applause: warm, genuine, a few guests dabbing their eyes. Charlotte's mother was openly sobbing. Kate, behind her, sniffed hard.
Charlotte looked at Dominic.
His eyes were wet. It was like something had cracked in him during her words. She could see it, the line running through his composure. He was looking at her with an expression she'd never seen before. Raw. Unarmored. Almost frightened.
She thought: There he is. That's him. That's the man I love.
He blinked and the expression was gone. Sealed over. He squeezed her hand.
The officiant turned to Dominic. "And now, Dominic, your vows."
Standard vows. They'd discussed it: she'd written personal ones and he'd said he preferred the traditional version. She'd said of course, whatever he wanted, and she'd meant it. Not everyone was comfortable being vulnerable in public. It didn't mean the feelings weren't there.
The officiant fed him the lines. Dominic repeated them. His voice was steady, measured.
"I, Dominic, take you—"
He stopped.
The silence opened like a crack in the floor.
His mouth was still shaped around a word. His eyes were on hers, but they weren't.
Charlotte's fingers tightened on his.
He closed his eyes. Opened them. And when he spoke, the name that came out of his mouth was not hers.
"— Jacqueline."