A Decade For Nothing novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: I Don't
At the altar Lydia reads a text, says "I don't", and leaves with her cousin while 140 phones record; Levi finds a photo that says he was at a hotel with Macy on the one night he was in the ER with his grandmother.
At ten past two on a Saturday in June, the officiant asked Lydia if she would spend her life with the man standing in front of her.
I was that man.
A hundred and forty people sat in rows on the lawn above Lake Erie, and a good half of them had their phones up.
Lydia had held her phone through the whole ceremony, tucked into the stems of her bouquet.
I had teased her about it that morning.
She had said it was only so her father could reach her.
Now it buzzed against the flowers, one short pulse, and she looked down.
I watched her read it.
Her mouth stayed open a little.
Her eyes went to me, then to the second row, then to me again.
"Lydia?" the officiant said.
"Take your time," I said, because she had gone white.
I took her free hand.
It was cold.
Ten years ago she had sat down next to me in a night class.
I had not stopped loving her since.
I thought she was about to cry from nerves.
"I don't," she said.
The lawn went silent.
Somebody's phone chimed with a camera sound, and then another.
"Lydia," I said quietly. "What's wrong? Talk to me."
She pulled her hand out of mine.
She pushed her engagement ring off her finger, put it into my palm, and folded my fingers over it.
"I know what you did," she said. "Don't follow me."
"I don't know what you mean."
She didn't answer.
She turned and went down the aisle alone, her train dragging in the grass.
Her cousin Macy was already out of the front row to meet her.
Macy put an arm around her and walked her toward the cars.
Lydia's father stood up in the second row.
Gordon Oakes did not go after his daughter.
He looked at me, buttoned his navy coat, and sat back down.
I stood on the platform with a ring in my fist and a hundred and forty people looking at me.
Nobody said anything.
My grandmother, Ada, was in the front row with a cast on her left wrist.
She was staring at Gordon, not at me.
Joel came up the steps beside me, still holding the real rings in their box.
"Levi," he said. "Buddy. Say the word and I'll clear this lawn."
I did not say the word.
I looked at the guests instead, at the phones, at the faces already deciding what I had done.
It had cost eleven thousand dollars to feed these people, and I had paid for most of it.
So I took the microphone off the stand.
"Thank you all for coming," I said. "The wedding is off. The dinner is not."
My voice shook, but it carried.
"There's food inside. There's an open bar. Please eat it. I paid for it, and I would hate for it to go to waste."
A few people laughed, awkwardly.
Nobody got up.
"Go on," my grandmother said loudly from the front row. "He's not going to ask twice."
They started to move.
Joel and I walked down the back steps to the bridal suite, because that was where Lydia's things were.
The room smelled of hairspray and lilies.
Her dress bag was gone.
Her phone charger was gone.
On the dressing table sat a sheet of hotel notepaper folded once, with my name on the front in her handwriting.
I opened it.
"Ten years, and I had to find out from a stranger. I can't even look at you. Don't call me."
I read it twice and still did not understand it.
That morning Macy had found me in the hallway outside, straightening my boutonniere with her small cold fingers.
"She's nervous," she'd said. "She was up all night. Honestly, Levi, I've got her. Go breathe."
Joel had held out a glass of champagne for her, and she had turned it away with a hand flat on her stomach.
"Not for me today," she'd said, and then smiled.
I had watched her step out of Gordon's car an hour before that, and I had thought nothing of it.
Joel's phone went off in his pocket.
Then mine did.
Then every phone in the building seemed to chime at once, down the corridor and out on the lawn.
Joel took his out and turned the screen toward me.
It was a photo sent from a number with no name to the whole guest list.
A man in a dark coat, his back to the camera, walked through the revolving door of the Brecken Hotel with his hand on a blond woman's back.
The woman was Macy.
The time stamp said March 18, 11:06 p.m.
Under the photo it said: Ask Levi whose baby she's carrying.
I stared at the date.
On the night of March 18, I had been in the emergency room with my grandmother's broken wrist, from ten forty until nearly two in the morning.
I had not left her side once.
But in the photo, the man wore a coat like mine, and he had my height.
Everyone in that building was about to look at him and see me.
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