by Mimi Grace
“She’s here?” Retta asked, frowning.
“Yeah. They had a whole mix up at the hotel about check out time, so she’s finishing her preparation in the church’s nursery.”
“I’ll be back,” Retta said to him, scooting out of the pew. He watched her exit the auditorium, wishing he could escape too.
The woman seated next to him tapped his shoulder. “Here,” she said, holding out a wrapped hard candy. “To pass the time.”
As Retta walked through the halls of the church, she greeted the people she recognized. The farther she walked, however, the quieter it became. None of the doors were labeled, so she knocked on each one before entering.
“Irene?” she called into a vacant, dark space that held extra chairs and tables.
In another room she found the harpist tuning her instrument for the ceremony. Retta marveled at how big the instrument was in person.
The musician looked her way, and Retta backed out apologetically. “It’s beautiful,” she said as she closed the door behind her.
When she arrived at the last room, she hoped it was the correct one. It was much too hot to be speed walking through the hallway like she was.
She knocked and peeked inside but only found an empty nursery. Instead of immediately heading back to the auditorium, she exited the building through the back entrance, hoping to catch a breeze. She stepped outside and found stagnant air and a small field, unkempt with overgrown grass and an abandoned pew.
Retta moved to return indoors and report back to her mother when she spotted something white move in her peripheral vision.
Her cousin was standing against the side of the building vaping in her poofy wedding dress.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Retta said as she approached Irene.
“I’m here,” her cousin replied brightly, but it wasn’t until Irene sniffled and ran her fingers underneath her eyes that Retta recognized her cousin had been crying.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Irene said, laughing but her laugh got cut off by a gulp that involuntarily turned into a sob.
“Oh my God,” Retta said as she neared and awkwardly patted her cousin’s back.
When Irene’s tears subsided, she looked up. Her makeup was slightly smudged, and her eyelashes definitely would need to be glued down again before she walked down the aisle, but as usual, she looked great.
“I’m sorry,” Irene said, taking another inhale from her vape. “It’s the nerves, you know?”
“Of course,” Retta replied, withdrawing her comforting hand. “It’s okay.”
Irene nodded, gazing into the shabby field.
Remembering her assignment, Retta produced the dainty hooped earrings. “I was told to give you these.”
Irene looked at the accessories but made no move to grab them. Instead, she said, “I like your dress.”
Retta pushed up her glasses. “Thanks. I like yours too.”
They both laughed a little bit before Retta once again held out her hand with the earrings and said, “All right. I’m going to head on inside—”
“Is this weird for you?” Irene asked, blowing a big puff of smoke into the air from the corner of her mouth. “Being here?”
Maybe it was the fact her charade with Duncan was winding down, but Retta stopped short of responding with her usual pacifying answer. “Yes.”
“Why did you come?” Irene asked.
Shrugging, Retta said, “Because people expected me not to.”
“So, you’re trying to prove something?”
“Yeah, that this”—She gestured around them—“doesn’t bother me.”
“But it does,” her cousin said.
Retta had spent a year saying none of this fazed her, acting cool and collected as her ex’s new relationship played out in front of her. But she’d had a lot of feelings.
“Can I ask you something?”
Irene paused with her vape pen in her mouth. “Sure.”
“Why him?” Retta briefly questioned the wisdom of broaching this overdue conversation at this moment. “Out of everyone on this damned planet, why him?”
It had been salt in the wound, no, a gut-punch when she’d been confronted with Chris and Irene’s relationship on social media a month after her breakup. She’d literally chucked her phone across the room when she saw the picture of them smiling in each other’s embrace. There’d been a lot cussing, some rageful prayer, and an emergency friend hangout with Nia and Kym.
Irene sniffled and avoided eye contact. “I didn’t do it to hurt you. Chris is so impressive and accomplished, and I was drawn to that after years of dating guys who didn’t keep stable jobs and couldn’t bother to remember my birthday. If it could’ve been anyone else…”
Retta nodded, looking up to the sky and blinking rapidly. She’d bottled up her anger, disappointment, and hurt for so long.
That approach had stalled her emotional recovery in service of not giving people any more reason to pity her. Her pride had been on the line.
When Retta finally got a grip on her tears, she found her cousin watching her.
“I’m sorry,” Irene said.
“It’s fine.” Retta shook her head. “That’s a lie. I was pissed. It felt like a betrayal, and it was embarrassing having everyone trying to figure out what flaws made Chris dump me for you.”
While they stood in silence, staring at the untidy bush in front of them, something from Retta’s soul released. Her admittance made her lighter.
“But if I’m being honest, you and him are more compatible,” Retta said. This was her olive branch. She didn’t want to spend the next decades avoiding her cousin and building resentment over a guy she didn’t even have feelings for anymore. “Country clubs and fancy events have never been my scene.”
Irene laughed, wryly. “They get old fast.”
“Yeah, they do, don’t they?” Retta said smiling as she produced the earrings she’d been sent to deliver. “This has been an unexpected but nice conversation—”
“I never dreamed about my wedding day until I was planning this one,” Irene said.
“I don’t think that’s unusual,” Retta replied, dropping her outstretched arm.
“But I also have this feeling that this will be the last interesting thing I do with my life.”
Retta frowned. “That’s not true. You have plenty to look forward to. You still do pageants, right?”
“I stopped two years ago.”
“Well, you’re still young.”
“I’m almost thirty,” her cousin said.
She was twenty-four.
“Even so, you have time,” Retta said.
“Perhaps, or maybe I’ll forever be known as Chris’s wife who placed third in a national pageant one time,” Irene said, taking a long drag from her vape pen. “And when I hit my middle ages at thirty-five, I’ll have to do something like run a marathon to feel alive. I fucking hate running.”
“Okay, well, firstly midlife starts a little later—”
“But if I needed to run, I could. It’s just one foot in front of the other…”
Her cousin was mostly talking to herself now, hence the senseless words coming out of her mouth. Before Retta could finally extricate herself, Irene looked at her with wide eyes. It was like the sun had come out.
“You good?” Retta asked.
Instead of answering, Irene pulled out her phone and rapidly moved her fingers across the keyboard. When she stopped after a minute, she said, “I need you to do something for me. Tell Chris and my mom I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Leaving,” she said as she picked up her purse and started running as fast as her heels and big dress would allow toward the front of the church.
“Wait,” Retta shouted, hobbling after her. “Where are you going?”
Her cousin turned long enough in the flurry of white tulle to say, “I can’t marry Chris right now.”
“I-I don’t underst
and?”
Irene’s attention was pulled by a message that arrived on her phone with a ping. “I have to go.”
“You’re not getting married?” she asked, her heart pounding as she advanced toward her cousin.
“No.”
“Okay, okay,” Retta said, finding it hard to formulate words. “That’s fine. We’ll walk in together, and you can tell your mom.”
But Irene was backing away shaking her head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Wait—”
But Irene was off, running through the parking lot, dropping her vape pen along the way. Retta tried to catch up, but she stopped when she spotted the yellow cab in the church lot. Her cousin entered the car, barely pulling in all the material that made up her dress before shutting the door. The cab drove off, and just like that, Retta was left in horrified silence.
No one was out there. The attendees were probably sitting in the auditorium waiting for the festivities to begin. She had to tell someone. Who did she tell? God, what if she had to announce it to everyone. Retta furiously fanned herself with the wedding program until a strong grip encircled her upper arm.
“Retta,” Duncan said. “What’s wrong?”
She might throw up.
“Look at me. Look at me,” he said. “Baby—”
“Irene left.”
Duncan frowned. “What do you mean she left?”
“I mean she’s a fucking runaway bride,” Retta said, looking down at her hand where she still held her cousin’s earrings. “I found her crying. We talked. It was actually a really good conversation. Therapeutic and what not. Then she said she wasn't down with this whole marriage thing and left.”
Duncan held her on either side of her face. “I'm going to grab your mother.”
He disappeared into the auditorium and shortly returned with her mom.
“What’s going on?”
Retta retold the sequence of events as fast as she could.
“Oh, dear God,” her mom said before moving into action and heading into the main part of the church.
Duncan grabbed her hand, and they followed, stopping right behind the pew closest to the door. There was no need to take a seat.
“This is so bad,” Retta whispered as she watched an uncomfortable version of “Telephone” unfold where her mother whispered into the wedding planner’s ear who then walked over to Irene’s mom. All three of them then approached Mrs. Washington, who then went up to her son to deliver the news.
The auditorium held a stable hum of chatter, but the noise increased as people sensed something was off.
Meanwhile, Retta knew she would’ve keeled over from the anxiety of watching all of this go down if Duncan hadn’t been holding her. She appreciated the comforting circles he was making on her arm.
Chris might be her ex, but watching his face drop when his mother told him the news was something she couldn’t find glee in. She knew what it felt like not to be chosen. And it sucked.
Moments later, he stepped front and center on the church stage. Everyone fell silent save for a baby who wailed like she knew what was coming.
“There will be no wedding today,” Chris said, his voice booming through the sanctuary.
There was a collective gasp and a beat of silence before fevered conversation commenced. Stepping off the platform, Chris strode out of the auditorium with his mother and a few other relatives in tow. As he passed them, Retta’s hand automatically reached out, but he was too far away and too focused on his exit to have noticed.
As the pastor of the church approached the microphone, Retta turned to Duncan and said, “We need to go.”
Duncan and Ms. Edie sat next to each other and across from Retta at the dining table. They’d broken down what had happened at the wedding to the older woman, but now they were in a meditative portion of the conversation where Retta would once in a while say, “I can’t believe it” and take a sip of her tea.
However, Duncan could believe it. And both Irene and Chris should consider themselves lucky that it happened now and not several kids and thousands of fights later.
“If you ask me, he got what was coming to him,” Ms. Edie said.
“Granny, not now.”
The light admonishment made something twist in Duncan’s stomach. Retta had reached for Chris as he’d stormed out of the church. She felt protective of him despite who he’d planned to marry. That much was clear.
Ms. Edie let out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, okay, then. What’s the plan? Are you two leaving tomorrow or heading back today?”
“I’m cool leaving tomorrow morning,” Retta said, looking at him for confirmation. “There’s no point in rushing out of here now.”
Duncan nodded. “That works for me.” He might be sleeping in the smallest bed imaginable and surveilled by a cat all through the night, but there was something comforting about being in this house.
“I’d planned to order pizza while you were at the wedding, so if you want any, you’ll have to pitch in,” Ms. Edie said.
“I can throw together some cocktails to make it a real party,” Duncan said.
Ms. Edie pointed to him with her thumb and spoke to Retta. “I love this boy.”
Her granddaughter smiled and rolled her eyes.
“All right, I’m going to take Levi out for a walk,” the older woman said.
In the meantime, Duncan and Retta cleared the remnants of their lunch. He then moved to his makeshift bedroom to get some clothes he could change into.
When he entered the kitchen, he found Retta leaning over the counter, studying her phone. The pretty dress she wore paired with the house slippers were oddly adorable.
“Look,” Retta said, holding up her phone. “We’re adding Earl Grey éclairs to our fall menu. Omar sent me some of the photos he took for the website.”
Duncan drew closer and looked at the stylistic overhead photos of the oblong dessert. “It looks really good.”
Retta smiled and examined the photo again. “On Monday I’ll bring some over.”
He froze. They hadn’t discussed anything about how they would interact after their “relationship” ended. It was expected that they’d remain friendly. But as he changed out of his suit in the bathroom, panic wanted to claw its way through him as the truth became clear. He’d grown attached.
Their bargain had technically been fulfilled regardless of the disastrous wedding. Right now he should be doing everything in his power to get back to his real life where he was single, but he wanted to stay.
Leaving the bathroom, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do until he started packing his bags and reorganizing the living room. It was necessary for him to leave now.
Retta walked into the room then with a glass of water. “Do you want to watch a movie? I have—”
She looked at the duffle bag slung across his chest.
“Where’re you going?” she asked.
He coughed to clear his throat. “I think I should go.”
“I thought we’d decided to leave tomorrow.”
“Yeah, then I realized I could make it back before sunset and actually sleep in a bed tonight.”
Something compressed in his chest as he watched her eyes dim a little.
Her features straightened as she said, “You’re right. There’s no reason for you to stay.”
The conversation was operating on two levels, and he had the impression this was their breakup. When he spoke next it was a wonder his voice didn’t falter. “Thank your grandmother for me.”
He refused to look at Retta as he left the house. While walking to his parked car across the street, he spotted Ms. Edie round the bend with Levi.
Changing his destination, he approached the old lady who’d stopped to study him.
“I’m leaving.”
You mean running.
She looked at his jacket and bag. “I see that.”
“I want to thank you for your hospitality and—”
“Better get going then. Do
n’t want to hit traffic.”
It was a weekend; there’d be no traffic.
Though he thought he was making the right move, the farther away he drove from Ms. Edie’s home, the harder it was to shake off the dull ache in the middle of his chest.
Retta stood looking at the front door that Duncan had left through. She felt heat, so much heat on her face and her body. She wanted to step out of her skin, leaving it behind to crawl into a corner.
Retreating upstairs, she peeled the silly dress from her body and scrubbed her face of the suddenly garish makeup. She found herself here, embarrassed and pining, because she hadn’t made a big enough effort to distinguish the fake from the real. In the back of her mind, she’d foolishly hoped they’d continue like this.
Armed with a 1000 piece puzzle she’d found on a shelf in the bedroom, Retta walked downstairs ready to distract herself all evening. She was surprised to find her grandmother in front of the stove.
“I thought we were ordering pizza,” Retta said, coming over to stand beside the older woman and look into the pot where she was browning onions and garlic.
“I don’t know. I felt beef stew would be more appropriate today.”
It was then that Retta’s tears had no other choice but to fall.
Chapter Nineteen
There’s a moment in the middle of an activity you’re doing for the first time when you realize it is harder than you expected.
Duncan reread the instructions for the blueberry scones with lemon glaze for the third time and looked back at the soupy mess he had in his bowl. There was no reason why he shouldn’t have perfectly pliable dough at this point.
Grabbing the hefty bag of flour, he added more of the powder to the mixture. While combining the extra ingredient, the buzzer to his apartment rang.
He’d been expecting Anthony to come through with some documents that needed signing, but when his friend stepped into his apartment he had nothing with him.
“How are you?” Anthony asked, reducing the volume on the TV before taking a seat on one of the stools at the kitchen counter.
Duncan looked up from where he’d dropped the more solid dough onto the counter to roll. “Fine?”