Married as a Dare? Sorry, It's for Life novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Dare Reception
Britt throws a reception on Nathan's paid-for June hall booking. He walks in, cancels it and takes his cake, and Bowen follows him out.
On Saturday a coworker from the clerk's office texted Nathan a photo of a flyer.
It was pink, with glitter on it.
"THE DARE RECEPTION," it said. "Come celebrate Britt and Bowen! Saturday, 7 p.m., Marlow Grange Hall. Cake and dancing."
Nathan read the address twice.
The Grange hall was where he and Britt were supposed to marry on June fourteenth.
He had put down the deposit eight months ago, with his own card.
He drove there in the dress shirt he had worn to his grandmother's funeral, because it was the only dark one he owned that was clean.
The parking lot was full.
There was a banner across the front doors in Britt's bubble letters.
"Married as a Dare? Sorry, It's for Life!"
Nathan stood in front of it for a second.
Then he went inside.
The hall was warm and loud.
Strings of white lights ran across the ceiling, the same lights he had chosen for June.
Sixty or seventy people stood around round tables.
Half of them worked at the courthouse or the dental office, and the other half were friends of Britt's he had known for two years.
A cake stood on a table by the dance floor, three layers high, with two plastic grooms and one plastic bride.
He had ordered that cake.
It was the vanilla and raspberry he had picked at the tasting, and Britt's name was piped on it in pink.
The conversation around him died by tables.
Britt stood by the cake in a white dress.
It was not a wedding dress.
It was a short white dress, and she had pinned a little veil in her hair.
Bowen stood beside her in a gray suit, holding a plastic cup he had not drunk from.
His eyes found Nathan and flinched away again.
"Nate!" Britt said, loud and bright, and the room turned. "You came! Everybody, my ex came to say congratulations."
Somebody laughed nervously.
Nathan walked down the middle of the room to the cake table.
He took the folded contract out of his jacket and laid it by the knife.
"Hello, Britt."
"You didn't have to wear black."
"This is the Grange hall contract," he said, and spoke to the room. "It has my name on it, and my card number, and my signature."
He turned a page.
"I paid for the hall, the lights, the cake, and the band you hired for tonight. The band is in the parking lot with my deposit on their van."
The guests had gone quiet.
"I booked this for June fourteenth," Nathan said. "I did not book it for February eighteenth, and I did not agree to a reception for my fiancee's marriage to another man."
"It's a dare," Britt said. "It's funny."
"Then I'll make it funnier."
He turned to the hall manager, who was standing by the kitchen door with her hands pressed together.
"Ma'am, I'm canceling every booking under my name, as of now."
"Oh, honey," the hall manager said. "I'm sorry. I told her it was only for tonight, she said you'd be fine."
"I know you did."
He looked at the band, then at the guests.
"Everyone's free to stay," he said. "Britt can pay you."
A silence went around the room, and then one of Britt's own friends set her glass down and picked up her coat.
Another one followed.
Britt's face went red.
"You're humiliating me in my own reception."
"I'm taking back my money, Britt. You did the humiliating at my window on Tuesday."
He picked up the cake knife.
Everyone watched him.
He cut one slice out of the bottom layer, put it on a paper plate and took a fork.
He ate one bite while looking at her.
"It's good," he said. "I paid for it."
Somebody in the back snorted with laughter and tried to hide it.
He picked up the plastic grooms from the top, dropped them in the trash can by the table and left the bride on the cake.
Then he put the paper plate down, rested his hand on the table and said the last thing he had come to say.
"Bowen."
Bowen finally looked at him.
The green eyes were steady and sick.
"If you want to marry her," Nathan said, "you should know she planned this for a month."
Britt grabbed his arm.
"Stop talking."
"I'm done," Nathan said, and pulled his arm free.
He walked to the door through the middle of seventy people who made a path for him without being asked.
The cold hit him in the parking lot.
He had his keys in his hand when he heard the doors open behind him.
Boots crossed the gravel.
They were big, slow and angry boots.
"Nathan," Bowen said.
Nathan turned around.
Bowen stood under the Grange hall light with his gray suit jacket open and his hands in fists at his sides.
Through the open doors behind him, seventy people were watching the back of his head.
"We need to talk," Bowen said. "Right now."
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