Melanie Harl0w
Copyright © 2014 Melanie Harlow
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.
This is a work of fiction. References to real people, places, organizations, events, and products are intended to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real.
ISBN-13: 978-1496129628
You reign in such inward retreats of my soul that I know not where to attack you; when I endeavor to break those chains by which I am bound to you I only deceive myself, and all my efforts but serve to bind them faster.
Heloise d’Argenteuil
Top Five Reasons (Out of 100) I Am NEVER
Coming Out Of This Blanket Fort
1) 220 hand-engraved invitations.
2) $18,000 hand-pieced Vera Wang gown.
3) 1500 Felicity roses imported from Ecuador.
4) Bridal portrait on the current cover of Wedding Chic magazine.
5) Text message from fiancé calling off dream wedding a week before it happens.
I threw the pen on the floor and propped the pad of paper against my headboard. If anyone managed to get past my locked bedroom door, they could read the list and not pester me, unless they wanted to hear the other ninety-five.
“Mia, please. You have to come out of there.” Coco rattled the handle before pounding on the door again.
“No, I don’t.” I pulled the crisp white sheets over my head and yanked my pillow into the tent with me. Embroidered on the pillowcase in navy thread was TBM, for Tucker and Mia Branch. The monogrammed sheet set had been a wedding shower gift, along with monogrammed towels, a duvet, some throw pillows, a set of luggage, and even a bathrobe. The softest, most comfortable bathrobe in the universe. Tainted with Tucker Branch’s initials.
“Then you have to let me in.”
“Why? Do you have wine?”
“It’s nine A.M!”
“And?”
“Mia, please. You don’t have to come out. I just want to talk to you. Come on, we’ll…make a list or something. You love making lists.”
I did love making lists. They calmed me, made me feel like I was in control, on top of things, sticking to a plan. But all over the floor were crumpled and wadded-up lists with titles like Pooping Your Pants in Public and Other Things That Are ALMOST As Humiliating as This But Not Quite and Not 10, Not 50, but 100 Reasons Why Tucker is a Fucker, and I was pretty sure making another one would not make me feel better. “No deal. And who’s we? Who else is here? I told you not to let my mother in again.”
“No, your mother went back to Chicago. It’s just Erin. She’s making some coffee.”
Coffee sounded pretty good, actually. Maybe not as good as wine, but a close second. I waffled a bit, and Coco sensed my hesitation.
“You can put some Bailey’s in it,” she coaxed.
Good enough. I threw the sheets off me and slid out of bed, a king-sized monstrosity with a horribly uncomfortable mattress that Tucker bought purely because it was the most expensive one in the store. I told him it was too soft for me, but he’s the kind of person who just assumes the most costly brand of anything is always the best. Now I was stuck sleeping in it alone.
Alone, between my expensive TBM-monogrammed sheets on my expensive squishy mattress in an expensive fucking suburban townhouse that I didn’t even own. I’d moved out of my cool downtown Detroit loft months ago, and there was a waitlist to get into that building.
FML. That’s what I need to monogram on all this shit.
It gave me an idea, which brightened my mood a bit, so after unlocking the door I went into the adjoining bathroom and grabbed my nail scissors from a drawer. I avoided looking at myself in the mirror—I was almost positive I’d showered at least once in the last week, but my curly hair probably looked like I’d stuck my finger in a socket and then been rolled over by a Zamboni. Multiple times.
That’s pretty much how I felt, too.
When I emerged, Coco was opening the curtains and cranking open the windows in the bedroom. She wore running shorts and a hoodie, and her long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
“Oh my God, Mia. It’s so stuffy in here.”
“You wanted to come in,” I reminded her. I sat on the bed and took one king-sized pillow on my lap. Then I carefully started cutting the monogram from the case.
Coco gasped. “What are you doing? Those are expensive sheets!” She tried to grab the pillow from me, but I held on tight.
“I’m cutting the TBM off this pillowcase. Wait, I guess I could leave the M. Only the Fucker’s initials have to go.”
Coco sighed and let go, dropping onto the bed beside me. “And this will make you feel better?”
I shrugged as I went back to work. Snip. Be gone, TB. For fucking ever. “It might.”
“You plan on cutting his name off everything in here?” She glanced around. “It’s gonna take a while.”
“I’ve got time. I took a few weeks off, remember? Because I’m supposed to be getting married tonight and going to France tomorrow.” The words were so bitter in my mouth I wanted to spit after saying them.
“Well, I can think of a lot more fun things to do than this with that time off. Even going to work is better than this.” She shook her head and pointed at me. “You’re leaving the house today, even if I have to drag you out of here by your hair, caveman style. I can’t see you in this depressed funk any longer.”
I cocked a brow at her. “Didn’t you hear me? It is supposed to be my wedding day. Now it’s nothing but a gazillion-dollar fiasco.”
She looked down her nose at me. “I heard you. And I know. I helped plan your gazillion-dollar fiasco. But it’s been a week since Tucker called it off, and you’ve been holed up in here long enough.”
“Yay, you’re awake.” Erin entered the room with a tray and set it down on the bed. It held three cups of coffee, a pitcher of cream, and a bowl of sugar. One of the cups said Branch Industries on the side and another had a photo of Tucker and me on it, a gift from his little niece, one of the few people in his family I would miss. But Tucker’s handsome face made my guts churn.
I gave Erin the stink eye. “Coco said there would be Bailey’s.”
Erin rolled her eyes but left the room to retrieve the booze.
“It’s in the bar cart in the living room!” I called. “Bring the whole bottle!”
“Here. Have some of this, please.” Coco handed me a cup with the Devine Events logo on the side, which was the event planning business we ran together.
“I’ll wait for the liquor,” I told her, going back to my cutting. When the first king-sized pillow was done, I reached for the second. “You know, I don’t even like these sheets. I didn’t want plain white. I wanted the blue ones with the paisley. A little damn color.”
Coco picked up a throw pillow and bunched it under her chin. “Then why’d you register for the white?”
“Because Tucker insisted. He said I could plan the wedding any way I wanted to, but he got to make our interior design choices.”
“What’s he got against color?” She looked around. Everything in the room was white, navy, or gray.
“Beats me. But the man’s favorite color is pewter, for fuck’s sake. This entire house looks like one giant cloudy-ass day.”
The corners of Coco’s mouth lifted. “A joke. That’s a good sign.”
I stopped snipping and met her eyes. “That wasn’t
a joke.”
“Come on, Mia.” She took the scissors from my hand and set the mutilated pillowcase aside. “It’s time to start getting over this. You know, there’s color outside. And wine. And meals. When’s the last time you ate something decent?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” The seven days since I’d gotten the Dear Jane text from Tucker were a bit of a blur—I remembered trying desperately to reach him the first day, succeeding on the second when he finally returned my frantic calls (from Vegas, mind you), and a lot of screaming, crying, and phone-throwing after that. Days three, four, and five were a haze of wine and naps and dealing with my mother, and days six and seven were spent wallowing and making lists. And now defacing pillowcases. I glanced at his closet door with a laser beam eye—maybe his precious custom suits would be next.
I was reaching for the scissors again when Erin returned with the Bailey’s and poured a shot into each cup. That actually made me smile a little—my girls never let me drink alone.
“OK.” She handed Coco the Branch Industries cup and held up the one with the photo on it. “To waking up and starting over.”
“Cheers.” Coco clinked mugs with Erin. “I was just saying the same thing to her. You have your entire life ahead of you, Mia. And we’ve already decided this was a blessing in disguise. He didn’t deserve you.” She touched her cup to mine before taking a sip.
“You decided that. I will never feel that this humiliation is anything but punishment.”
“Punishment for what?” Erin asked. “What could you possibly need punishing for?”
I groaned. “God, so many things… For ignoring everyone who told me Tucker would never settle down and feeling so fucking superior that I was proving them wrong. For ignoring that little voice in the back of my brain telling me something was off. For refusing to admit to anyone—or even to myself—that everything wasn’t perfect between us, and maybe getting married wasn’t the right idea.”
“Even so, you don’t deserve punishment.” Erin rubbed my leg. “You’re human, Mia. We all make mistakes.”
“This was more than just a mistake. I deliberately ignored any sign that I was making the wrong decision. All I could think about was pulling off the dream wedding. And it was nothing but a stupid fantasy.” Anger at myself knotted with my wrath for Tucker, pulling my stomach muscles so tight they ached.
“See? That’s what I’m saying,” Coco soothed. “You knew this was coming, deep down inside. Better to know now before you married him, right?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and lifted the cup to my lips. The bitterness of the French roast laced with the sweetness of Bailey’s tasted so good, I took two more big swallows before speaking. “I know. Rationally, I know what you’re saying is true, but all I can think about are the thousand little details that were supposed to make this day the biggest, bestest day of my life.” I gestured toward my closet door, where a wedding dress still hung, wrapped in its protective bag. “That’s my wedding gown over there. Which I paid for myself. Which I should be wearing tonight at five o’clock when four hundred-plus people watch me walk down the aisle on the rooftop of the Ritz. Oh, God—” I gave Coco a panicked look. “Tell me someone called the Ritz.”
She rubbed my hand. “Those things were taken care of. And you do so much business with all those vendors, most of them didn’t even keep your deposit.”
Relief loosened the tension in my shoulders. I’d been so out of it over the past week, I wasn’t sure what had been done. I’d had clients cancel a wedding once or twice in my career, but never with only a week to go. “It wasn’t my deposit. They can keep Tucker’s money, for all I care. He won’t miss it.” I took another glug of coffee. “What about the guests?”
“Done,” said Erin. “You’ve got nothing to worry about except moving forward.”
“I’m totally doing that.” I lifted up a pillow with a hole in the case. “See?”
Erin paled, not easy for a girl with her fair Irish complexion. “I’m just gonna take that gown out of here, OK honey? Be right back.” She set her coffee cup on the tray and grabbed the dress, scurrying from the room with a worried expression.
I watched her go, a vise squeezing my heart. “That dress was the one, Coco. I felt it the moment I put it on. Now I’ll never wear it again.”
“You might,” Coco said hopefully. “You never know.”
“I won’t. I’ll die an old maid, cold and alone. I won’t even have cats because I’m allergic to them.”
She rolled her eyes. “Mia, please. You’re twenty-seven.”
“But I wanted to be married by twenty-eight, and now that’s impossible! I wanted to start a family by thirty, and I’ll have to scrap that plan too!”
“Now you just sound ridiculous. Your uterus is not going to shrivel up and die at age thirty.”
“Sorry for being ridiculous about my dreams.” My chin jutted out. “But that’s how I feel.”
She rubbed my back. “You want to talk about it some more?”
“What’s left to say?”
“I don’t know. Are you…are you sad about losing Tucker? Or just about the wedding?”
I swallowed hard. “Both, I guess.”
“Do you still love him?”
My first reaction was revulsion, but then his handsome face swam before my eyes. And I could still smell him on the sheets. He always smelled so good, and dressed so impeccably. And he could be thoughtful and generous and fun. We’d had so many plans together, starting tonight. Tucker, how could you do this to me? My throat tightened. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“I wish you would have said something about those doubts you had. I feel awful that I didn’t sense them. I see you every day. We talked about this wedding nonstop.” Her blue eyes were full of guilt.
“It’s not your fault. I put on a good show.” I shrugged. “People were always saying what a perfect couple we made. I was trying to be that.”
“You looked perfect,” Erin clarified as she returned to the bed. “But no one knows anything about anyone else’s relationship for real. Look at my parents—married for twenty years before my mom got sick of his closet alcoholism and mean behavior and left. People were shocked. I can’t tell you how many of her friends said to her, ‘Your marriage seemed so perfect.’” She shook her head. “They were clueless, even her best friends, because in public he was so charming. She kept it all in because she was embarrassed.”
I grimaced and brought my coffee to my lips. “I know that feeling.”
Coco toyed with her coffee cup. “How was it between the two of you when you were alone? Did things feel right?”
“I guess so. I mean, he’s not the most open person in the world. He didn’t talk about his feelings a lot, but he did say he loved me. And he was romantic in some ways, always getting me little gifts—or big ones, even—and taking me places and stuff.”
“Yeah, he loved showing you off, that was obvious.” Erin’s tone was harsh. “And showing off how good he was to you.”
“But what about when you were alone alone?” Coco went on. “Was the sex still good?”
“Not as good as it should have been.” I shrugged. “It was OK. He’s hot, and he got the job done, I suppose, but there wasn’t much variation on the theme.”
Erin laughed. “What was the theme?”
“Fast and clean.”
Coco choked on her coffee. “What?”
“Yeah,” I said, warming to the subject. It actually felt good to finally speak the less-than-perfect truth. “He has two positions he likes, and once we get into one of the Approved Positions, that’s how we stay until he’s finished—which doesn’t take long. He doesn’t like moving around because that causes wet spots on the sheets. He has an aversion to bodily fluids.”
“Oh my God.” Erin’s jaw hung open. “You must be joking.”
“No. And he doesn’t like oral sex for the same reason.”
“Not even blow jobs?”
I shook my head. “No
pe. And forget about the other kind. Oh, and after he’s finished, he races to the bathroom to clean himself up. Whether I’m finished or not.”
Both of them sat there blinking at me in disbelief. “Holy shit, Mia,” Coco said. “I’m pretty sure the universe did you a big favor here. You deserve a way better man than that asshole. I don’t care how good looking he is. Or how rich. Any man that jumps out of bed to go clean himself up before making sure his woman is satisfied is a prick.”
“Agreed.” Erin nodded emphatically. “I wish you had said something about this sooner.”
“Why? I wouldn’t have listened to reason. I was too busy planning metro Detroit’s most glamorous wedding of the year,” I said, quoting from the article in Wedding Chic magazine. They’d done a whole profile of me, complete with photo shoot. “Oh, God, that stupid magazine article…all those pictures.” I slammed my eyes shut.
“Forget that. No one reads that magazine anyway.” Erin put her hand on my arm. “And some other scandal will replace you on Facebook.”
I opened my eyes to see Coco glaring at Erin. “It’s on Facebook?” They’d confiscated my laptop days ago, probably so I couldn’t check social media.
My friends both bit their bottom lips, and Coco glanced to her left, which she always does when she lies. “No, no. She just meant people have sent messages on Facebook hoping you’re OK.”
“Christ, Coco. You’re the worst liar in the world.” I set my cup down and flopped onto my back. “It’s OK. I’m sure it’s all over the Internet that Tucker Branch jilted me a week before the wedding. People love gossip. I’ll just have to deal with it.”
Silence.
Propping myself on my elbows, I opened one eye and frowned at their nervous expressions. “What?”
“Well,” Erin began as Coco’s eyeballs flicked to the left again, “it’s not so much the gossip as Tucker’s post. Uh, posts.”
“What posts?”
“He, um, tweeted something about barely escaping a burning building by ditching the ball and chain. And he followed that up with a lot of pics of himself with girls in Vegas.”
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