CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
When I got home, I immediately started unpacking. The ritual of emptying out my bags, putting my stuff away, made me feel more like myself again.
Until I came across my bridesmaid dress. I sat down on the edge of my bed, half-heartedly wishing I’d tossed it in the trash when I’d had the chance. I ran my finger across the silky material, remembering why I hadn’t been able to do it then and why I wouldn’t do it now. I stuck it in my dry-cleaning bag, hoping they could get the bloodstains out.
I’d been operating at a no-feelings level, where I pushed everything aside and forged ahead with what I had to do, but that dress had made everything come rushing back and my sadness was like a weight crushing my chest, making it impossible for me to move or breathe.
Grabbing my purse, I reached for my happy box. And as I unfurled my little scrolls of paper, they weren’t having their regular effect on me. I didn’t feel better. Not even the one with the five gold stars on it. Instead, all I saw was Camden picking up the box off the ground, reading the words to me, and it was like I was back in front of that hotel, when he was taking care of me. I wanted him here so badly that my entire body ached from longing.
I made the mistake of getting on my phone, just to see the latest. There weren’t any messages from my attorney, Gerald, but Desiree had forwarded me a link. It was a story from Amber’s Instagram. I clicked on it.
“I hired Something Borrowed because my friends were all too selfish to stand up with me. And that company promised me discretion. That no one would know. Then the owner, Rachel Vinson, gets splashed all over the internet and shows up at my wedding! Everyone knew that I had to hire bridesmaids! I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life. She ruined everything. I am going to sue her and shut her and her deceitful operation down.”
That made me feel sick. All I ever tried to do was give women the weddings of their dreams and support them. And here was someone saying that I’d wrecked her day.
My doorbell buzzed, and for one heart-stopping moment, I hoped it was Camden. I let myself entertain a brief fantasy that somehow he’d shown up and would take me in his arms and make all of this okay. But that was stupid. He’d made it pretty clear things were over and hadn’t rushed back to New York just to look me up.
I went over to the door and pushed the button. “Yeah?”
“It’s me.” Krista. “I have something you’re going to want. Let me up.”
I was tempted to tell her to go away but was too intrigued by what she might have. I pushed the buzzer to let her in the front entrance and unlocked my apartment door for her.
My faith was rewarded when she walked in with a pizza from Waldy’s, one of my favorite places in the city.
“Pepperoni, extra sauce, and light cheese,” she said. “Just the way you like it.”
She set it down on my kitchen counter and I folded my arms. “I feel like this is an information pizza.”
“It absolutely is an information pizza,” she said, walking over to my couch and getting comfortable. “But in both receiving and giving info. Because I’m guessing you haven’t been online recently and I think there’s something you should see.”
I got out two plates and grabbed slices for both of us and then joined her on the couch. “Oh, trust me, I’ve been online. I’ve seen all the carnage. I’m well aware of the fact that we’re about to be sued into oblivion and that we may all be out of a job tomorrow.”
She took her plate and set it down on her lap. “I’m talking about this.” She showed me her phone, and there was a clip of Sadie talking. My heart pounded painfully in my chest, worried about how much more damage she could do.
“Sadie must be so mad at me,” I said.
Krista ignored me and turned up the volume on her phone, and Sadie’s voice filled the room.
“Hey, everyone. Well, I guess you’ve all seen my wedding footage by now. I left early so I think most of you saw it before I did. But there’s two things you need to know. First, that my mother is an adult and made her own choices. She has personal issues that affect me and my family. I know I’ve hidden that part of my life from everyone, and I shouldn’t have because I’m not the only person dealing with something like this and should have shared. Maybe I could have helped someone. Maybe you could have helped me. I don’t know.
“And two, Rachel Vinson is a goddess. Because of my mom and her addiction, I’ve always kept people at arm’s length. I don’t have really close friends that I could ask to stand up with me on the most important day of my life. I heard about Rachel and her business, which is ingenious, by the way, and hiring her was one of the best things I’ve ever done. She and all of the women she works with are amazing and you guys would be lucky to hire her. I’ve talked to so many of you online about your weddings, about your bridesmaids getting wasted or being petty or just acting awful and making your wedding day harder. I didn’t have any of that. I had the best support system in the world who did nothing but put me first. Rachel did everything in her power to make this the most unbelievable wedding ever. Even when things went wrong, and they so obviously did, she always had my back. I’m so thankful to her. I didn’t just have an amazing maid of honor, I got a new friend.”
Sadie was supposed to be on her modified honeymoon, enjoying her new husband. Instead she was online, defending me.
It was then that the tears finally broke free, like an overflowing river breaching a dam. I’d been holding them in for so long, I couldn’t stop. My chest heaved and ached, my throat burning. Krista scooted over and put her arms around me, hugging me as I sobbed.
I had truly prepared for Sadie to throw me under the bus in order to protect herself and her brand. I should have known better. I should have given her the benefit of the doubt.
Once I’d turned myself into a soggy, snotty mess, Krista got up to grab me some paper towels so that I could clean up my now slightly swollen face. My eyes hurt. I wondered if they were puffy and bloodshot.
“I can’t believe she did that,” I said.
Krista replied, “I can. Everything she said was true. You twisted yourself into knots for her.”
“But I didn’t prevent all of that stuff from happening. I should have.”
She frowned at me. “I love you, but that is so idiotic. You can’t control other people and you can’t control the world, either.”
“I just really messed up.” Because I had been distracted by falling in love with Camden Lewis, but there was no way I could speak his name, given my current state. I was only barely hanging on and was so close to another huge emotional outburst.
“What is the deeper thing going on here?” Krista asked. “Why do you always have to succeed? Is this about trying to please your unpleasable parents?”
“What makes you say that?”
“So many things in our life go back to our parents. My mom married an abusive man and I ended up following in her footsteps, reliving some of the same patterns. We can’t let that kind of stuff have control over us.”
I had to admit that she was right. I knew my parents adored me, but I often felt like I’d failed them in one aspect or another. Yes, I’d won a position in student government, but my mom had wanted to know why it was only for treasurer and not president. Yes, it was great that I’d been accepted to UCLA, but why didn’t I get a full-ride scholarship? How nice for me that I’d started my own business and employed over a dozen people, but what about that whole grandchildren thing?
My mom was only human and probably had her own insecurities and issues that affected her and made her behave the way she did. Because I loved her, it was easy enough to forgive, but maybe Krista was right and I needed to examine and undo the ways that it had wormed into my life and made me feel panicked about failing.
About a potentially fantastic relationship failing before I had even given it a chance.
Krista handed me another paper towel. “You did the best you could and that’s all anyone can ask of you.”
“Maybe it’s part of being an only child,” I said.
“Maybe.” She nodded. “But I don’t know what that’s like. I have four sisters and they’re all pains in my butt.”
That struck me as funny and I laughed. It was the first time I’d laughed in the last twenty-four hours and I was grateful for it. Then I remembered my situation and sobered up. “We don’t know what’s going to happen with the company.”
“One thing at a time,” she told me. Then she sat silently for a moment, as if carefully considering what to say next. “What about Camden?”
His name was like a knife being plunged into my gut. I actually scooted back on the couch, as if I could get away from the pain. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
Because I could think about Sadie and what had happened at the wedding and it was upsetting, but it wasn’t world-ending. And when I thought about Camden ... it was just more than I could bear.
I didn’t want to think about moving forward with a life that didn’t include him.
I couldn’t let myself go down that path.
“Just tell me what happened. You should tell someone.”
She was right. I’d already shed every tear that had been stored up inside me, so maybe I could get through this without completely breaking down. So I confided in her, telling her all the details of what had happened, what he’d said, how he was finished with me. With us.
“Where do you get that from?” she asked. “He didn’t say he wanted to break up with you.”
“I inferred it from him walking away from me. I’m pretty good at reading those kinds of obvious signals.” He didn’t stay and fight. That was the part that mattered.
She frowned at me. “Maybe he just needed a second.”
“Well, he’s had lots of those.”
“Okay,” she said in a tone that clearly said she didn’t agree with me. “But you didn’t stay and fight. You walked away, too.”
Color rose in my cheeks. “I didn’t. I had a job to do.”
“You know you always do that, right? Make everything in your life about work. It was okay to like Camden. It was okay to feel hurt that he walked off. What’s not okay is blaming him.”
Despite my deep denial, even I could recognize the truth in her words. “He hasn’t texted or called.”
“Doesn’t he have that big business deal he has to worry about? While dealing with a broken heart because you left him without a word? Plus, if I know you, and I do, you haven’t texted or called him, either.”
It was like her words had slapped me across the face. I actually put a hand up to my cheek, as if it were stinging with shock. I’d been so focused on myself I hadn’t thought about what Camden might be going through. Even though I wanted to tell myself differently, he’d had real feelings for me. Was he feeling the same kind of heartbreak right now?
And I’d fled, like a thief in the night, trying to escape my crime scene and avoid paying for my mistakes.
I should have been braver. “He must be so mad.” I whispered the words.
“You thought Sadie was mad at you, but look at what happened there.”
“It’s not like Camden can make a video where he tells the world he loves me. He doesn’t have social media. Plus, I’m pretty sure cameras hadn’t been invented yet when he bought his phone.” Joking about his flip phone brought that stabbing feeling back. Was I ever going to feel like myself again? Or would there always be a part of me that missed him?
“You’re the one who is always telling me to never give up,” she reminded me. “Maybe you shouldn’t give up with him, either.”
All of this pain and heartache was happening because I couldn’t stick to my boundaries. “I shouldn’t have broken my rule.” Everything could have been avoided. Well, the reception might still have gone up in flames, but my heart wouldn’t be like a block of ice that had been dropped on the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces.
“Your rule is stupid,” Krista told me for the thousandth time. “Do you know how much socializing goes on at weddings? How everywhere you look it’s all love and romance? It’s a fantastic place to meet men. I totally made out with that Rick guy.”
My eyes went wide. “Dan’s cousin, who you said was going to get back together with his girlfriend?”
“He probably did. Rachel, it was just kissing and it was fun. Technically I didn’t break your rule,” she said.
“My rule isn’t supposed to have loopholes.” Although that hadn’t stopped me from throwing it out the window so that I could spend time with Camden. The pain pierced me again. I couldn’t think about him.
So instead I asked her, “Do you want to watch a movie with me?” I needed the distraction. If she left me alone with my thoughts, not only was I going to eat an entire large Waldy’s pizza by myself, but I would completely obsess over Camden. Reliving what had happened, thinking of all the ways I could have fixed it sooner but didn’t. How if I’d forgotten all about my stupid rule and taken a chance with him earlier, I could have asked Sadie for her help and things would have been fine.
I guessed now I would never know and I had only myself to blame.
Krista said yes, so we watched a romantic comedy that didn’t seem romantic or comedic to me, but it was better than sitting alone, overstuffed and super sad. Or thinking about how the last movie I’d watched had been with Camden.
My phone buzzed at me, but I reached over and turned it off without looking at it. Tonight I was going to forget about the rest of the world.
I would resume my workplace-drama, broken-heart, and existential-crisis issues in the morning.