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Okay, I hadn’t actually made it to the altar because if the groom isn’t up there, why would the bride parade down the aisle at all.
“Owww, stop it!” Someone had stepped on my veil again, jerking my head back. I’d have taken it off long since, except it was attached to my head with so many pins and clips and product, I didn’t know where to begin. I might have to shave my head later just to get it off. “Ouch! Bartender!”
“Yes, ma’am?” the young man who’d been pouring for me said. “Another?”
“Not ma’am,” I corrected. “Miss.” I might as well get used to the fact I’d be “miss” for a while, probably forever.
“Another?” He held up the bottle of tequila invitingly, and I registered that was what I’d been drinking. I was going to have such a headache tomorrow. Still, how much worse could it get?
“Sure.” I watched him fill it to the top. “But that wasn’t why I called you over.”
“Yes, ma—err, miss?”
“Do you have a knife back there?”
Alarm flickered in his gaze. “It’s not that bad. You will find love again.”
“What? Owww. Stop it!” I clung to the edge of the bartop to keep from falling over as yet another person trod on my long, long veil. “I didn’t even want one,” I grumbled.
“A knife? But you asked…”
“A freaking veil. I did not want to be dressed up like a meringue about to top the cake instead of a person entering into a lifelong, loving partnership. But nooo…do you or do you not have a knife?”
His forehead, which had been wrinkled in concern or confusion cleared. He reached down and brought up a pair of long scissors. Shears maybe they’d be called? “I think this would work better, but are you sure you don’t just want to take it off? It looks expensive.”
“Don’t you think I would if I could?” My voice rose to Karen-like volume, and the people on either side of me shifted away. I let out my breath in a whoosh. “I’m sorry. None of this is your fault and here I go treating you badly. I should leave.”
He set the shears down on the bar and patted my hand. “Judging from your outfit and the way you are knocking back those shots, you’ve had a very bad day.”
“But that’s no excuse to be rude to you.” I never behaved this way. If I’d actually gotten married into that family today, that snooty-high-society bunch of jerks, would I have begun to be like them in time? In self-defense? I shuddered at the thought, feeling a little less drunk than a minute ago. “Yes, it’s been a very bad day, but I’m already wondering if it’s for the best.”
“If he or she walked away from someone as pretty as you and as nice as I suspect you normally are, it is completely their loss.”
I laughed a little at that. “I’m going to give you a huge tip for putting up with me. You don’t have to say such sweet things, too.” His kindness had the tears I hadn’t wanted to shed threaten to fall. “Really. I don’t deserve it.”
“I think you do.” He waved the bartender over and spoke low to him. The man nodded and returned to serving customers. “Now, if you’d like a little help with the veil, follow me.” He picked up the shears and lifted the flip-up part of the bar at the end. “Coming?”
“Yes, please.” I hopped down off the stool, managing to tangle my feet in the thousands of yards of lace, going down in a poof of satin and tulle and silk and beads and other things I’d grown to hate.
I decided to just stay there, on the floor where someone had spilled something made with rum and also whiskey. Maybe everyone would just walk around me, respecting my misery until closing time when I could rip myself free of the sticky trap and crawl home to my apartment.
Oh gods. It wasn’t my apartment anymore. I’d moved out a week before to avoid a new lease period. I’d been staying in the new house where Claude and I were to have lived happily ever after. I had nowhere to go. Sure, I had some money, but not enough for first and last and security on a new apartment. Pawing through the layers of skirt, I hunted for my phone. I had to reach him. He owed me something. An explanation at least.
Tears had begun to stream down my cheeks, and I’d had no luck finding the device when a hand thrust through the fabric and into my shadowed line of vision. “Let’s go.” The bartender to the rescue. “Before you end up on everyone’s social media pages.”
“Like I haven’t already.” I’d be in the newspaper, too. Not because of me, of course. I was nobody. But Claude was somebody. Old money was always that. But I took the bartender’s hand and let him help me to my feet and around the bar toward a curtained doorway. “You should just leave me by the dumpster.”
He chuckled, but it wasn’t a mean one. “Now, now. A broken heart can always heal in time.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think it’s broken.”
“What?”
He paused on the other side of the curtain, lifting a layer of veil from my face. “Then why were you getting married?”
“I have no idea.” And it all let loose then, a storm of sobbing and crying and otherwise making the kind of scene I’d judged other women for many times. “None.”
When he finally got me to calm down and sip a glass of water until I could breathe properly again, I found myself sitting on a folding chair in a storeroom filled with paper products of all kinds. “You good?”
