Page 26 of Center Ice

I stood to make sure she was fine, but she was already coming toward me. “You scared me half to death, Jake!”

“I’m so sorry.” I was the only other person out, so I’d assumed she’d spotted me as easily as I’d seen her.

“There usually isn’t anyone else out this early.” Her labored breathing was starting to slow.

“Really? People don’t want to watch the sunrise?”

She pointed behind me. “They usually watch from the comfort of their balcony.”

That did make some sense. “I needed to get out of my room.”

Her eyes scanned my face like she was deciding something. “Mind if I sit?”

“Not at all.” Before I got the words out, she fell back on the chair next to me.

“You really upset me, Jake.”

I flinched. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t bother asking what she meant. I knew my words had hurt her, but I couldn’t take them back.

“You got in my head.”

I shifted so I could look down at her. “Really?”

She closed her eyes. “I had my intern go through as many past couples she could find, from our list of weddings, to see who was still married. Seventy percent.” She rolled her head toward me and glared. “Seventy percent are still together.”

“That’s not bad,” I admitted. Considering the average, she should be happy.

“It should be higher.” Her words were just loud enough for me to catch.

“Maybe, but it doesn’t say anything about you as a wedding planner. They wouldn’t have stayed together if they picked different flowers or had steak instead of chicken.”

She sighed. “I know.”

“So why does it bug you?”

“Because I knew each of them, if only for a little while. I saw their excitement. How in love they were. What happens between the wedding and the divorce? What makes them decide to end it? How can you go from wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone to never speaking again?” Marriage was something I’d dreamed about my whole life. All I wanted was to spend my life with the person that loves me most. As much as I thought about my wedding, creating hundreds of possibilities, what I care about most was life after that single day.

I leaned forward on my elbows. “I doubt for most couples that it’s one big thing. I think a hundred little things build up. Sometimes it’s money or infidelity or lying. Sometimes two people just grow apart.”

She blinked. “Is that what happened with your parents?”

“No,” I shook my head. “My mom had cancer when I was a kid. She beat it, and the day she went into remission, my dad celebrated by giving her divorce papers. Cancer’s expensive, and my mom wasn’t the same woman she was before. She was tired and frail and needed help as she recovered. He didn’t want the debt, and he didn’t want to be a caretaker. He said that wasn’t what he agreed to when they got married.”

She gasped. “No.”

“It was pretty terrible. He gave her full custody of me and never looked back.”

“So she raised you alone?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Yeah, she never remarried. I don’t think she even looked at another man after that.”

I’d be forever grateful for my mom’s sacrifices, and I always wondered what she would have done if she didn’t have me. Would she have met someone else and remarried? Was she only protecting me from the prospect of more pain, or was she also protecting herself?

Maybe it was fear of getting hurt that made me this way. But I had logic and statistics on my side.

She sighed and looked up at the sky. “I can see why you would think marriage is a farce and love isn’t real when that’s your experience with it.”

“What about you?” I asked.