Chaos Girl Rewrites the Script novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wine I Didn't Throw
At the engagement gala Tilda ends the engagement before the hero can, returns the ring in an evidence bag and keeps the dress, and Quincy follows her out to ask who told her what he was going to say.
I had eight minutes before I was supposed to throw champagne at the nicest girl in town, and I spent them reading a fire exit map.
It hung beside the hand dryer in the ballroom bathroom.
It showed two exits, and a planter blocked one of them.
The hands holding my clutch were not my hands.
The nails were long and pale pink, and the left one wore a diamond big enough to need its own insurance rider.
My last memory was a train platform, my phone and chapter thirty of a billionaire romance.
I had spent a week one-starring its villain in my head.
Her name was Tilda Ellerby, and the mirror said it was mine now.
In chapter thirty-one, she died on a pier.
Before that, she ruined her own life, and it started tonight.
At nine-fifteen Quincy Moncrieff would tap a microphone and end our engagement in front of two hundred people.
Then I would throw a glass of champagne at his assistant, Posy, who had done nothing, while his mother's photographer got every second of it.
The clock above the sinks said 9:07.
My phone buzzed with a text from Posy.
"You look amazing, I can tell! See you Thursday at the lunch. I saved you the window seat."
I hadn't heard about any lunch.
His mother must have told her.
I took a plastic bag from the dispenser, a brow pencil from my clutch, and went out.
Posy was waiting by the door in a yellow dress, holding two flutes.
"Drink this, you look pale," she said. "It's the good one."
It was the glass I was supposed to throw.
I thanked her and set it on a passing waiter's tray.
Posy squeezed my arm. "Whatever happens tonight, I'm on your side."
She flipped open a tiny paper calendar, circled something, and tucked it back into her clutch.
Across the ballroom, Marguerite Moncrieff stood beside a photographer and pointed at the champagne tower.
On the stage, Quincy tapped the microphone.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming," he said. "Tonight I have an announcement."
I walked up the stage steps, which took exactly the length of his first sentence.
Then I took the microphone out of his hand.
"Good evening. Quincy Moncrieff is ending our engagement tonight," I said. "I've saved him the speech."
Nobody in the ballroom moved.
"I have notes," Quincy said, very low.
"They're on your phone. Draft saved at 6:14."
His hand stopped halfway to his pocket.
So I ended it first.
I pulled the ring off, dropped it into the plastic bag and wrote 9:14 p.m. across it in brow pencil.
"Item one of twelve," I said, and handed it to him.
The photographer lowered his camera, then raised it again.
"Items two through twelve will be couriered with receipts," I told the room. "One cashmere throw, never unwrapped."
"One orchid, deceased. My fault, so I'm keeping the pot."
"One bracelet, which your mother's insurer will want back, so please sign for it."
Somebody near the front laughed and tried to turn it into a cough.
Quincy Moncrieff, who had not been interrupted since he was nine, said, "Tilda, that's enough."
"Almost. The dress is not on the list."
I held up the skirt so the people in the back could see.
"It cost nine thousand four hundred dollars, the tags are tucked into the side seam, and I am keeping it."
Then I handed the microphone to the band leader, who took it because he didn't know what else to do.
"Play something," I said. "He's single now."
I walked down the steps and across the whole ballroom.
I did not throw anything.
Behind me, two hundred people started talking at once.
At the coat check I held up my ticket.
"Forty-one," I said.
The attendant was still staring at the stage.
It took her two tries to find my coat, the camel one my grandmother Hattie gave me for my birthday.
"Tilda."
Quincy had come down the aisle without anyone stopping him.
He stood close enough that I could see he was not angry.
He was frowning at me, and he checked his watch before he spoke.
"You didn't throw anything," he said. "My mother's photographer is going to be very disappointed."
"I'm trying something new."
"My notes were on my phone. Nobody has ever seen those." He stopped. "Who told you what I was going to say?"
In the book, he had never asked me a single question.
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