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If she was this disinterested so early on, how was the marriage going to turn out? She couldn’t even remember ever having a conversation with Matt about what they expected from each other. They had even gone four months without having sex, both too busy with their jobs on top of the wedding planning.
With her heart mostly set on her business, she didn’t realize she was walking into a commitment she hadn’t really planned on.
The door was to her right, where her stepfather and father were waiting wait to walk her down the aisle. To the left was the window, wide enough to fit three of her. If she didn’t know better, she could’ve sworn they built it for a bridal escape. After all, the hotel was still getting paid. They wouldn’t care if the wedding actually proceeded.
If she went for the window, the consequences could be… painful. But could she live with it? Probably. The money that went into paying for the wedding was no problem. Money was never a problem for her. No, the problem was Grace Kim.
Her family, her mother in particular, would be humiliated. It probably won’t look good for Matt to be jilted at the altar, either. Reputation was a big deal in their coterie. But she knew Matt would be fine. His parents on the other hand…
Would it really be that bad to just get married? Matt was a good guy. Responsible, a good head on his shoulders. His mother was a stay-at-home parent and his father owned half of some electronic company in Seoul and Shanghai. His sister managed a small, independent music studio, so they were loaded.
If she married Matt, they’d have the basic marriage anyone would expect from them. It was good. It was stable. But why was she dreading it?
She’d talk about this with Sarah in passing, and it never came up as an actual issue since there were no conflicts to air. Everything wasperfect. Perfect, perfect. That stupid word only came back at her like a mock.
If it really was idealistic, then why was she wavering? And at the worst time.
Charlie huffed, felt the weight of her situation bearing down on her, and sat down as far as her dress allowed on the neatly upholstered bench in front of the mirror. The ticking of the clock on the wall taunted her, only a half hour left before the door opened.
A sign. She needed a sign!
Where would a sign come from when she was confined in a single room?
Out of ideas, she reached for her phone on the accent table where the leftover accessories sat. Unlocking the screen, she checked on her social accounts, a habit she developed since her business took off. Marketing and advertising were necessary to build and maintain her brand, so her phone was never far.
She browsed through her account, noting the contents. Her list of photos mostly contained food, beauty products, more food, her friends, and outfits of the day. There were only a handful of pictures of her and Matt. A wedding, a group picture, yet another wedding…
Pulling up Matt’s profile, she found the contents almost identical. He had photos of his dog, his colleagues at his practice, social outings with his friends, some of his shoe collection, and just one or two posts of them together. They didn’t evenlooklike they were dating.
How was this possible?
Rick pulled to the front of the resort, musing to himself how it took nearly ten minutes to get from the gates to the front of the building. The facility was unnecessarily massive. He knew they had a world-renowned golf course attached to it, but it didn’t diminish the fact that it was an enormous waste of space.
Did they really need a one-lane driveway lined with flowers and columns stretched down to Athens like it was Ancient Greece?
This would, of course, be the venue of choice for the Park-Ha wedding. His brother’s friend Charlotte had a taste for the finer things in life. Most of her choices were always needlessly ostentatious, but to each their own.
When arriving at the arched driveway where the entrance was, he declined the valet parking offer and stopped at a curb. His phone rang just in time.
“I’m here,” he said as he opened the line.
“Can you come in? I can’t really leave right now,” Alex requested.
“No, I can’t come in. I’m parked at a fire lane because you said this was going to be quick. I have the equipment. Come get it,” Rick grumbled. Alex had asked to borrow Rick’s DSLR camera as one of the wedding photographers canceled at the last minute. Alex was no professional, but he could snap a few photos with no problem.
“Come on, it’s a wedding and youknowCharlie. It’sopen bar.”
Rick grimaced. “It’s a wedding I wasn’t invited to.” Not that he cared, since he hardly knew the bride, but he wasn’t into weddings and definitely wasn’t interested in crashing, open bar or not.
“Charlie won’t mind. Come on in.”
Alex had asked Rick to be the replacement photographer for Charlie’s wedding. But weddings weren’t his specialty and he would not spend his time chasing around the bride and groom on his days off, so Alex offered to help as an interim photographer.
Why did they need another photographer, anyway? There were already four of them on location.
How many angles did the bride need in one setting?
He rolled his eyes. “Alex, I’m giving you ten minutes to come out. The workers here are giving me looks.” One attendant at the front was specifically eyeing him since he parked, probably annoyed by him taking up space without paying.
