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I’d told my mom how Tate had, in the beginning of our relationship, spent some time ignoring me after we’d slept together. I had told her about the time we’d spent apart and how when we decided to try being together, things between us were special. And I believed him when he said he’d never been in love before, that it had scared him when he’d had feelings for someone for the first time in his life. After caring only about himself for a long time, it came as a shock to his system. Being vulnerable, allowing someone into your heart and head, that was big.
“I don’t know,” I said, miserable.
“It’s all so much.
It didn’t help that Tate was away all week for work, smoothing over a deal with a major national media network. Whenever I spoke to him, he sounded stressed and tense, and I didn’t want to bother him with details about the wedding, and have him think maybe I was adding to his stress. But he had been the one who wanted to get married in the first place? I was happy for us to keep seeing each other, to stay engaged, and have a bit more time on my own in the city, finding my feet. Did I really want to be Mrs. Sagarro so quickly? It could wait, couldn’t it?
My mother wasn’t helping. She started telling me about a friend who’d been engaged for ten years before they called off the whole thing because she found out her fiancé was gay.
“Tate is definitely not gay,” I said, annoyed. She was making things worse.
“How would you know?” my mother said. “Linda told me the sex was great and she never suspected a thing.”
I didn’t want to think of friends of my mother having “great” sex. Who knew what that entailed?
"It’s okay, Mom,” I said, “It’s going to be okay.”
But that evening Tate didn’t call, just sending me a curt message to say he’d be back in time for the wedding.
I was staying in the house, keeping an eye on his daughter Summer, who was eleven going on twenty-one. We’d always been great friends, but was I ready to become a stepmother? It sounded horrible. Would I have to dress differently now, wear my hair up? Stepmothers were strict, weren’t they? Was I going to start telling her to clean up her room? Shouting at her to stop swearing or be more respectful to us? I really hoped not.
I could barely sleep that night. Whenever I nodded off, I had memories of wedding dresses being torn and running in the rain. I didn’t need a therapist to help me analyze those. I was beginning to feel worse and had to call in sick at work the next day.
“Wedding fever, huh?” the receptionist sniggered and I put down the phone, went straight to bed and fell asleep. I spent the day in bed and sometime during the night, I woke up disorientated, convinced someone was in bed with me. Another nightmare! I was about to start screaming when Tate said, “Shh…it’s me.”
“Tate!” I was so glad he was back. I felt his arms around me, holding me tightly.
“Are you okay?” He asked me, concern and love filling his voice.
“No,” I admitted. “I’m freaking out about the wedding.”
He laughed, “Shall we call it off?”
I was horrified, “What? And what about the caterers and the venue?”
“Who cares?” He said, “We’ll pay them and that’s that.”
“And all the guests, what do we tell them?”
“Whatever we want,” he said, kissing my nose. “We say the stars weren’t aligned, or the timing wasn’t right or your spiritual guru advised against it.”
“I don’t have a spiritual guru,” I said, laughing now too.
“They don’t know that!”
“You wouldn’t mind calling it off?” I ask.
“I mind only about you,” he said.
It was dark in the bedroom, I couldn’t see his face, but I could smell him and feel him and I was utterly reassured by his presence. “I’m so glad you’re back,” I muttered, pressing my head against his chest.
“You sounded a bit off yesterday,” he said. “I thought I should come back and check on you.”
“I’m glad you did,” I said. “It got a bit much. Someone from a TV channel called to ask if they could film the wedding for an entertainment channel? He said they would send helicopters anyway. I mean, for me, I’m nobody!”
“You are not nobody, Evie,” he said. “You are the girl who stole my heart, who finally got one of the most eligible single men in Silicon Valley. That is a story. Everybody wants to know how you did it. If it is a sex thing or something you do with your legs…”
“Stop,” I was laughing now. But I knew what he meant.
