Page 70 of Only Be Mine

John let me pick the date for our wedding.

“Just don’t change your mind,” he said lightly, but his eyes searched my face like he wasn’t joking at all.

I spent days staring at the calendar, weighing each square like it carried consequences. Too far out felt cowardly. Too close felt reckless. In the end, I circled May 17.

Soon enough to know if I was making a mistake. Soon enough to feel brave for choosing it anyway.

John thought it was too soon, worried I was rushing into it. I told him it felt right. And maybe it did, at least some of the time.

Once the date was set, the planning came in waves. Flowers. Cake. Guest lists. I chose a small church even though neither of us went regularly - not out of faith, exactly, but because a part of me had once imagined walking down an aisle, guests turned toward me, waiting. It was a fantasy borrowed from old movies, and I’d never told anyone it mattered.

A childhood dream I thought I had let go, but clearly, I was wrong.

The dress was harder.

Amy and I scoured bridal shops until the saleswomen started recognizing us. I tried on lace and satin and silk, gowns that were beautiful and wrong in ways I couldn’t explain. Some made me look like a stranger. Others felt like costumes borrowed for the day.

Nothing fit the image in my head. Nothing felt like me.

I was on my way to yet another appointment, prepared to buy something acceptable, when John called.

“Hey,” I said, glancing at the screen. “What’s up?”

“You haven’t bought a dress yet, have you?”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “No. You know I haven’t.”

There was a pause, one of his deliberate ones.

“I had a thought,” he said.

I sighed. “Should I be worried?”

He laughed softly. “Do you remember that client I met in Nederland last year?”

I did. Of course I did. It was one of the only times he had been gone overnight on business, and it wasn’t because Nederland was far away. No, he had stayed overnight because the client wanted to meet at a bar, and she had insisted on tequila shots that made it unsafe for him to drive…

The client whose catalogs had arrived in the mail not long afterward - catalogs I’d studied before I knew who they came from, before jealousy had taken root.

“I remember,” I said carefully.

“I know you hate when I bring it up,” he continued, voice steady, “but I remembered something you said. About the dresses.”

I exhaled slowly. “Help how?”

“She’s a dress designer,” he said. “She sent me some catalogs back then. You flipped through them once. You pointed to one gown and said, ‘If I ever get married, it would be in something like that.’”

My grip tightened on the steering wheel.

He remembered that?

“I called her,” he continued. “Gerry’s expecting you at three.”

“You what?”

“I did it for you,” he said, softer now. “You shouldn’t have to settle.”

I wanted to be mad. I really did.