25. Chapter 25
Cate
March - Ten Years Ago
Giving up my apartment felt bigger than it should have.
I stood in the doorway one last time, keys heavy in my palm, staring at the bare walls like they might accuse me of something if I left too quickly.
I told myself it was practical - why pay rent when I was already spending every night at John’s?
But practicality didn’t explain the tightness in my chest.
I could always get another apartment, I reminded myself.
That thought followed me as I packed the last box. As I loaded it into my car. As I carried it into John’s house and set it down beside his things.
Our house.
I told my mom. My sister. Amy. Friends I hadn’t spoken to in months. Every call ended the same way, with laughing disbelief, warm congratulations, and some variation of What took you so long?
John let me pick the date for our wedding.
“Just don’t change your mind,” he said lightly, but his eyes searched my face like he wasn’t joking at all.
I spent days staring at the calendar, weighing each square like it carried consequences. Too far out felt cowardly. Too close felt reckless. In the end, I circled May 17.
Soon enough to know if I was making a mistake. Soon enough to feel brave for choosing it anyway.
John thought it was too soon, worried I was rushing into it. I told him it felt right. And maybe it did, at least some of the time.
Once the date was set, the planning came in waves.
Flowers. Cake. Guest lists. I chose a small church even though neither of us went regularly - not out of faith, exactly, but because a part of me had once imagined walking down an aisle, guests turned toward me, waiting.
It was a fantasy borrowed from old movies, and I’d never told anyone it mattered.
A childhood dream I thought I had let go, but clearly, I was wrong.
The dress was harder.
Amy and I scoured bridal shops until the saleswomen started recognizing us. I tried on lace and satin and silk, gowns that were beautiful and wrong in ways I couldn’t explain. Some made me look like a stranger. Others felt like costumes borrowed for the day.
Nothing fit the image in my head. Nothing felt like me.
I was on my way to yet another appointment, prepared to buy something acceptable, when John called.
“Hey,” I said, glancing at the screen. “What’s up?”
“You haven’t bought a dress yet, have you?”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “No. You know I haven’t.”
There was a pause, one of his deliberate ones.
“I had a thought,” he said.
I sighed. “Should I be worried?”
He laughed softly. “Do you remember that client I met in Nederland last year?”
I did. Of course I did. It was one of the only times he had been gone overnight on business, and it wasn’t because Nederland was far away. No, he had stayed overnight because the client wanted to meet at a bar, and she had insisted on tequila shots that made it unsafe for him to drive…
The client whose catalogs had arrived in the mail not long afterward - catalogs I’d studied before I knew who they came from, before jealousy had taken root.
“I remember,” I said carefully.
“I know you hate when I bring it up,” he continued, voice steady, “but I remembered something you said. About the dresses.”
I exhaled slowly. “Help how?”
“She’s a dress designer,” he said. “She sent me some catalogs back then. You flipped through them once. You pointed to one gown and said, ‘If I ever get married, it would be in something like that.’”
My grip tightened on the steering wheel.
He remembered that?
“I called her,” he continued. “Gerry’s expecting you at three.”
“You what?”
“I did it for you,” he said, softer now. “You shouldn’t have to settle.”
I wanted to be mad. I really did.
But beneath the irritation was something else, something warm and inconvenient.
“I did love those dresses,” I admitted.
“Then go,” he said. “Get whatever you want, no matter what it costs.”
I should have been angry. Maybe part of me was. But curiosity won.
Amy drove with me. I couldn’t face it alone.
By the time we reached Nederland, my nerves were shot. I’d built Gerry into something threatening in my head - tall, blonde, effortlessly beautiful.
The woman who greeted us was none of those things.
She was short and round and bright, with red lipstick, too many bracelets and an energy that filled the room.
“Oh my!” she said before I could even introduce myself. “You must be Cate.”
“You’re Gerry?” I blurted.
She beamed. “The one and only. And John told me everything about you,” she added cheerfully.
My heart stuttered.
“He did?”
“Oh yes. He showed me your picture last February. Said he was going to marry you someday.”
Last February.
We’d only been dating a few months; almost a year before he proposed.
Before I’d even let myself believe that was possible.
Gerry led us to a small back room. She flicked on a light, then stepped aside without saying a word.
The dress stood there, waiting.
It wasn’t loud. It didn’t sparkle or shout or demand attention. It didn’t look like something pulled from a magazine or meant to impress a room full of strangers.
It just… was.
Pale pink. Soft, almost warm in tone, like it had been touched by light instead of dyed.
The fabric fell in clean lines, skimming instead of clinging, fitted just beneath the bust before drifting down in a way that felt intentional but unforced.
White ribbon traced the waist, delicate and quiet, and antique pearls were sewn along the bodice - small, imperfect, and real.
My breath caught.
Not because it was beautiful, though it was, but because something inside me loosened. Like I’d been holding myself tense for weeks without realizing it, braced against a choice I wasn’t sure I wanted to make.
This didn’t feel like a costume.
“I saw it immediately,” Gerry said softly, as if afraid to break whatever had settled over the room. “In the photo John showed me. You didn’t look like someone who needed to be dressed up. You already knew who you were.”
My fingers curled against my palm.
John had shown her my picture.
I stepped closer, drawn in without thinking, my hand hovering just above the fabric before I finally touched it. The silk was cool and smooth beneath my fingertips, grounding in a way I hadn’t expected.
This is it.
The thought landed whole and certain, without panic or second-guessing. No internal debate. No list of reasons. Just knowing.
I turned to Gerry. “Can I try it on?”
She smiled like she’d been waiting for that exact moment. “Of course.”
Inside the small fitting room, I slipped out of my clothes slowly, carefully, like the moment deserved respect. The dress was light in my hands as I lifted it, almost fragile, and I found myself holding my breath as I stepped into it.
When I pulled it up and turned toward the mirror, something in my chest gave way.
It fit.
Not perfectly in the way gowns were supposed to fit - cinched and sculpted and altered - but perfectly in the way John fit into my life. Without force. Without convincing. Like it had been shaped around me instead of the other way around.
My shoulders relaxed. My breath deepened. I stood straighter without trying.
For the first time since we’d set a date, since boxes had been packed and apartments emptied and words like forever had started circling too close, I didn’t feel like I was stepping into someone else’s life.
I felt like myself.
My hand drifted instinctively to the thin gold chain around my neck. John believed in moments like this - chance encounters, quiet alignments, things falling into place without being chased.
This felt like one of those moments.
When I stepped back into the room, Amy’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Gerry didn’t speak at all. She just circled me slowly, adjusting nothing, searching for flaws she didn’t seem to find.
“It doesn’t need much,” she finally said, almost reverent. “If anything.”
I swallowed, my throat tight.
“How much?” I asked, though the number already felt irrelevant.
Gerry hesitated. “Seven fifty was what I had in mind… but for you…”
“That’s fine,” I said quickly. “I’ll take it.”
There was no hesitation. No bargaining. No waiting.
Because some things, once found, shouldn’t be questioned.
Afterward, Amy followed me home in silence.
The dress hung in the backseat, wrapped carefully in tissue and garment bags, like something alive I was afraid to startle. I kept glancing in the rearview mirror, half-expecting it to disappear.
John was waiting when I got there.
He looked up the second I walked in. “Did you find one?”
I nodded.
His smile was instant and unguarded. “I knew you would.”
That night, after he’d fallen asleep, I stood in the doorway of the spare room and unzipped the bag just enough to see the pale fabric inside.
I touched it lightly, like it might remember me.
It felt strange, how something meant for a single day could feel so permanent. How a dress could carry meaning before it had ever been worn.
For the first time since saying yes, I felt steady.
Like I wasn’t stepping into a future someone else had planned.
Like I was choosing it.