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“I felt kind of dumb.”
“For missing me?”
“Yeah, it’s just that I’m so in love with you. I hate being away from you.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said those words, but it was still wonderful to hear, nonetheless.
“I love you,” I told him.
“Anyway, it got me to thinking.”
“Yeah?”
We were near the falls, and he’d stopped then to take me by the hands and look me in the eyes.
“I don’t want to be away from you anymore.”
I thought at this point he’d ask me to move in with him, instead he got down on one knee. “Marry me?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a navy-blue ring box.
I was in shock. We’d only been dating for nine months. I knew Monty was more traditional—with a name like Montgomery Allen Prescott III, could he be anything else? But marry him? Then I thought, doesn’t the saying go,When you know, you know? And I knew Monty was the one for me. Well, I thought I knew. More on that later.
So, I told him yes. And he kissed me and then showed me the ring, a very classic round-cut diamond on a platinum band.
We’d planned the wedding for the next summer, and because his parents—Montgomery Allen Prescott II and Jillian Prescott—were affluent and knew a lot of affluent people, and Monty was their only child, they asked if they could pay for the wedding.
My dad, who’s never been one to turn down a discount, had no problem with this. My mother, however, insisted that they help. The Prescotts said my parents could pay for the flowers. Which just happened to be around the amount of money my parents had set aside for my future wedding. That’s right. The flowers alone cost as much as my parents were planning to pay for my entire wedding.
Jillian Prescott was an interesting person. She was a little out of touch with the world, having been born into money, and then married into more money, and so when she asked if she could just plan the wedding, I thought,Why not? I had a busy job, and it sounded kind of nice to just show up at my wedding. I helped pick colors and flowers, and I chose my own dress (with her approval), and my own bridesmaids—which were Abby, Ava, and Sarah. I’d wanted to ask my cousin Amelia, but she was in the midst of divorcing douchebag Ethan, so that felt in poor taste. And that was pretty much all I did for my own wedding.
Jillian picked the venue—the Four Seasons in Seattle. She picked out and sent the invites (they were a boring white thing I didn’t care for) and decided the table arrangements, the menu, and the band that would play. She chose the officiant (an older man from the church Monty attended while growing up), found the photographer … she basically did everything.
I liked Jillian; I really did. She was definitely weird, as uber rich people tend to be, but she had her heart in the right place for the most part. She loved her son and wanted him to be happy, and she welcomed me into their lives with maybe not open arms, but more like stiff ones, similar to a robot. I was happy—or at least I thought I was.
It was at my bridal shower—planned by Jillian, of course—which was a month before the wedding, that I felt like something was off. First of all, one of my bridesmaids, Ava, was in tears the entire time and kept having to leave the room (which was Jillian’s living room since she had the shower at her overdecorated super-sized house). Abby had told me that she thought something was going on with Ava’s parents, but she wasn’t sure.
When I saw Monty that night at dinner, he seemed preoccupied with his phone, which kept pinging with texts. He’d set his phone down for only a moment when I saw her name on the screen—Ava. It was a text notification on his lock screen, which was a picture of this B and B Monty said he’d always wanted to take me to. It wasn’t weird for Monty to get texts from Ava, or anyone else in the friend group that I’d been welcomed into when I first moved to Seattle. But this time something didn’t sit well with me.
So, I asked him about it, and he shrugged me off, saying she was having some issues at work. The story didn’t align with Abby’s, but that could also be written off since Abby wasn’t sure what Ava had been upset about at the bridal shower.
I let it go, thinking it was just me being a nervous bride. And I was nervous. The closer this wedding came, the more I wondered if I was the right fit for Monty and his family. I didn’t want their lives; I wanted what my parents had. Comfortable, happy. Not extravagant and over the top, like the Prescotts are. So, I just tucked those thoughts into one of my brain compartments that was labeledStuff Mila needs to stop worrying about.
The week of the wedding arrived, and honestly, I was mostly looking forward to it being over. It felt like we’d been running a marathon that final month, with all we had to do, and I was exhausted.
One night, a few days before the wedding, Monty came over to my place in a panic.
“Has Ava called you?” he asked me. His hair was messy, liked he’d been running his fingers through it, something he did when he was stressed.
“No,” I told him.
“Okay,” he said. “If she does, don’t believe a word she tells you, okay?”
“Okay?” I said, not sure why he looked like he was going to lose it at any moment. But then I asked him something that had been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now. Call it a sixth sense or whatever, but I had to know. “Is there something going on between you and Ava?”
Monty had stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at me like I’d grown a third head, like I was out of my mind, but it was also one of those looks that was so forced that I knew. I knew I was on the right track. It felt like a punch in the gut.
“No,” he said, emphatically.
