Walk a Mile
1. Chapter One
Chapter One
Now
“It’s a month out.” I fight to keep my voice calm and controlled, even as my stress hormones kick into overdrive. I stand tall on the raised patio, hands on hips, looking out over the formerly green and gorgeous rolling hills where I envisioned my wedding taking place. Now the area is half-submerged in floodwater after the torrential rains that pounded the East Coast last week. “Surely it will retreat by then.”
Matilda, the country club’s event coordinator, clears her throat uncomfortably and pats the coil of deep brunette hair that rests at the base of her neck. “Yes, but it will be extremely muddy. Even now, you can see the leaves and debris floating in the water. The grass will have to be—”
“So you’re telling me I can’t have my wedding here,” I interrupt.
“Of course not,” she says quickly. “You’ll remember that we have a beautiful indoor space. We can easily relocate—”
My mother chooses that moment to cut in. “How do you justify charging fifteen thousand dollars just to use a space,” she says, arms crossed, manicured nails tapping against her linen blouse sleeves, “that's not properly protected against flooding? This is Coastal Carolina, for god’s sake.”
I watch as the first tinges of red color Matilda’s cheeks. “We’ve done everything we can, but unfortunately, there are many properties in the area that are being affected by the storm. I apologize for the inconvenience, truly.”
“My daughter and her fiancé planned for an outdoor wedding and reception,” Mom says. I’m beginning to feel like a kid at the pediatrician’s office, listening to others talk about me and my life while I’m right here. Still, I don't jump in—that would only turn my mother's ire onto myself, which wouldn't be helping anybody. “All the decisions—even her dress—were made with that in mind. Nothing will match if we move the wedding inside.”
“We can certainly reschedule for a later date. Actually, I just had a spot open up for the outside area on a Saturday in August.”Matilda turns to me with a tight smile and tries to draw me back into the conversation. "Would that work for you, Nina?"
“Can I trust that the lawn will be back to its previous condition by then?” Mom fires off, not giving me a chance to respond. I note her use of ‘I’ instead of ‘we’, and not for the first time, I wonder who this wedding is really for.
Matilda lets her professional mask slip, and I see a glimpse of annoyance cross her face before she covers it. “Yes, ma’am, assuming we don’t get rain like that again.”
Mom looks at me, one eyebrow arched with interest. “Nina, maybe we should—"
“No,” I burst out, breaking my silence. “No. It’s fine. Let’s go look at the ballroom and figure it out."
“But the flowers will clash—"
“Let’s go look,” I repeat, an edge coming into my voice, “and see what we need to change.”
Mom purses her lips. Her narrowed eyes hone in on me, and I stare right back at her. “I’m not asking Travis to pay for this wedding to be completely redone from top to bottom, Nina Lynn.”
I turn on my heel, wincing at the cramp in my foot. Even after years of wearing heels almost every day, my legs still regularly beg me to make a different choice. “Then I’ll pay for it."
What I really mean is that my fiancé, Daniel, will pay for it. I wonder if, once we’re married, it will stop feeling so strange to claim his money as my own.
The three of us form a chorus of clicking heels as we go back through the ornate French doors that bring us back to the club’s offices. Mom is breathing loudly, not because she’s actually out of breath—she's in a committed relationship with her Peloton, after all—but because she wants me to hear her seethe.
Matilda walks ahead of Mom and I and leads us down the hall. She glances back at me, fake customer service smile firmly in place. “You must be eager to start your life together.”
I blink. “What?”
“With your fiancé.”
We move forward a few more steps. Matilda is looking at me expectantly, and after my silence goes on a bit too long, so is Mom. “Oh,” I get out eventually, hoping my voice doesn’t sound as flat to her ears as it does to mine. “Of course. Absolutely."
“Do you want to video call him so he can see the ballroom?”
I just barely stop myself from laughing. It’s two in the afternoon. I can’t even imagine how Daniel would react if I called and interrupted his workday with wedding details. “No. He’s an investment banker. He has more important things to worry about than this.”
“Ah,” says Matilda. She treats me to the same expression she had when my mom was being a bitch, and I belatedly realize that I’ve come off as a snob.
We arrive at the entrance to the ballroom. Matilda stands to the side, extending her arm to signal us ahead of her. Mom walks in like she owns the place, hiking her Coach bag up her shoulder as she goes. I step in behind her and immediately inhale.
It’s true that we were shown this space before, but I barely took any time to notice the details, since I had already decided that I wanted to have the wedding on the lawn. Now I turn in a slow circle, taking in the large round room with purposefully weathered stone walls, a high domed ceiling, and large stained glass windows.
It’s beautiful, like a church. Many people would love to be married here. But it doesn’t look anything like the open, emerald-colored field where I wanted my wedding to take place.
Mom begins interrogating Matilda, and I wander off under the pretense of getting a closer look at the guest chairs pushed against the wall. I run my hand mindlessly over the upholstery and think about what I’ll say to Daniel when we speak tonight. He doesn’t understand why we can’t just get married in New York City, where we’ve lived together for the past three years. It’s been a point of contention with us throughout our entire engagement—which is strange, because we didn't used to be a couple who argued often. In our relationship, his preferences have tended to be the default, and I've generally been happy to go along with them.
But on this, I have fought, and on this, we've disagreed. I already dread telling him that we’re going to get married in an elegant but generic ballroom that has a thousand equivalents back in the city. I know exactly how the conversation will go—he’ll start by expounding on how it’s ridiculous to have the wedding in North Carolina in the first place, how it's my choice that has put us in this position of having to make last minute changes. The complaints about the travel and the days he’ll need to take off work will ratchet up. Just anticipating it makes me tired.
My mind flickers back to what Matilda said earlier, about the possibility of pushing the wedding back. I had been quick to dismiss the notion, but—
No. My first instinct was right, I decide: better to go ahead with the original date, even if the wedding turns out to be wildly different than the one I had envisioned. There are so many of Daniel's business contacts on the guest list; changing the date would be way worse than moving everything inside.
Matilda and Mom walk over to me. There is tension in Mom’s shoulders and a frown playing on her lips, and I wonder what they’ve been talking about.
Matilda gestures to the chairs I’ve been pretending to look at. “We have slipcovers for these, if you don’t like the cream color.”
I try to refocus on the present. The plans. The details. The things I flew all the way here to take care of. “What options—”
“Excuse me?"
Startled, the three of us turn to see a man standing in the doorway. He’s wearing clean but faded jeans and a polo with some kind of logo on it. A baseball cap is pulled low over his brow, casting a shadow over his face. Something about his posture—feet planted apart, hands in his back pockets—strikes me as familiar.
Matilda steps forward. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Wendy,” the man says, and now his voice sounds like one I should know. “She called me about the flooding on the lawn.”
“Oh, yes. Great.” Matilda pulls a radio from her pocket and speaks into it. “Wendy? Hoyt Landscaping is here for you.”
There’s a reply, but it’s background noise to me as my mind processes the name she’s just uttered.
With a flash of panic and a mind to flee, I straighten quickly. At that exact moment, he notices my mother.
"Kelly?"
He pushes his hat up, and... yes. There he is. Now that I can see his face, it’s undoubtedly him—of course it’s him. He has the same hazel eyes, the same square jaw, the same slightly overlarge nose. I’m completely unprepared to see him here, and I find myself clasping my hands behind my back, letting my nails dig into my palms.
Matilda is still speaking into her radio, seemingly oblivious to the reunion unfolding in front of her. Her voice is the only sound in the room as the man and my mom stare at each other.
I watch as he flicks his gaze from my mom to me, just briefly, and then snaps his entire head in my direction. It’s taken him this long to notice me, I realize, because I don’t look at all like the girl he used to know. A lump rises in my throat, and I force myself to swallow it down.
He takes a few steps further into the ballroom but leaves a healthy distance between us. I don’t know how I didn’t recognize his voice earlier, because I remember exactly what it used to sound like as the soundtrack of my life when he breathes, “Nina.”
There’s no hiding now.
I see the moment he notices the three-carat diamond on my left hand, and I raise my chin defiantly, letting the boy who was once my entire world know—and reminding myself—that he has no place in it now. “Hi, Theo.”