AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thanks.” I locked my purse in my desk drawer as I booted up my laptop.
“You okay?” she asked softly. “I think what you did was really brave.”
I lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I don’t know what I am right now but thank you. I probably could have handled it a dozen other ways, you know?”
“You did what you had to. My mother’s been divorced four times—I think she wishes she’d backed out. At least with the last two.”
“We all have twenty-twenty vision in hindsight. I just got lucky because I happened to overhear him saying something at the rehearsal dinner that got me thinking. By the time I got to the church, I knew I couldn’t do it.” I really hadn’t wanted to talk about this today, but Corrine was a friend. And she’d been one of the people I’d left sitting at the church. I felt like I owed her at least a small explanation.
“Honestly, I always wondered what you saw in him. He’s good-looking, I guess, but he was always so full of himself. Obviously, I didn’t spend a lot of time with him, so I didn’t think it was my place to say anything. He seemed like a real narcissist, and I couldn’t figure out what you saw in him.”
“It was all set up by my dad and I allowed myself to get swept up in it.”
“Well, at least you came to your senses before you had kids or anything.”
I shuddered. “I totally dodged that bullet.”
We grinned at each other before a familiar voice spoke behind me.
“Look who it is. Everyone’s favorite runaway bride.” Ellen Hayes-Camalleri, PhD. was a ballbuster and a half. She didn’t like me and I couldn’t stand her, but we’d found a way to coexist over the last couple of years. While she already had her doctorate, she’d been working eighty-hour weeks to publish the results of her work, hoping to someday be running her own lab somewhere like Harvard or MIT. And she drove me crazy on a daily basis.
I’d hated having to invite her to the wedding, but it would have been a huge insult not to. Now I was probably never going to hear the end of it.
“Dr. Camalleri, you have a phone call!” someone called out from the other side of the room.
“Saved by the bell,” Corrine whispered as Dr. Camalleri headed in the other direction.
“I’m sure she’ll find me,” I murmured.
“I’ll come up with a question or five,” Corrine said, winking. “Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.”
“Thanks. I totally owe you a drink.”
“And I will collect.”
I turned to my computer and opened my email. As expected, the DNA sequences were ready and waiting. A series of clicks opened a file and my heart dropped. In front of me was a hot mess, much like my life. Back to step one. There was no moving forward without knowing the exact locations of transgene insertion. With a heavy sigh, I stood up. Back to the tissue culture room to start again.
Usually, it was easy to immerse myself in work, but my head was all over the place today. Instead of focusing on tissue cultures, I kept thinking about my wedding dress, of all things. How much I’d loved it and how it was now in its storage bag in the back of the closet of my old room at my parents’ house. How I’d probably never wear it again. How I hadn’t had a chance to talk to the friends and family who’d come in from out of town. The lobster dinner I’d never gotten to enjoy. The honeymoon I wasn’t on.
It wasn’t about Jarvis. I couldn’t care less if I ever saw him again. But I’d missed out on everything a wedding day was supposed to be, and while he wasn’t the man I was supposed to be with, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d ever have this chance again. Even if I eventually met someone special, I couldn’t expect my parents to put on another wedding, and with a future in academia, I most likely wouldn’t have the money either.
Okay, knock it off.
I spoke sternly to myself. It wasn’t like me to get melancholy, and I had a lot of work to do. Even though I’d only taken off a few days instead of the full week I’d planned, I wanted to finish my studies and get my PhD. Until it was official, most things in my life would have to wait.
* * *
I wasa few minutes late to the rink that night, and I skidded onto the ice as my dad and the other volunteers were taking roll. Johanna, a seven-year-old girl who wore her hair in a thick braid down her back, came stumbling over to me.
“I wanna be the goalie tonight,” she announced.
Yesterday, she’d been all about playing defense.
“You can’t just be the goalie,” I told her gently, squatting down so we were eye level. “You don’t have the right equipment.”
Her mouth pulled into a pout. “But you said we could be anything we wanted to be if we worked hard.”
“And I meant it. But being a goalie is different because of the equipment. You have to tell us ahead of time so we can find the right pieces in your size.”
