Forgotten Groom in the Back Alley novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Back Door
Jude is dropped at the service entrance on his wedding day, watches Yvette vow with Brodie, speaks, walks out and cancels the bill.
On my wedding day, Yvette's car dropped me at the banquet hall's service door, next to the dumpsters.
I was the groom, and I was supposed to walk in through the trash.
Yvette got out and opened my door herself, smiling.
"Back way, love," she said. "I'll take Brodie in the front so nobody sees us arrive together."
Brodie sat in the passenger seat with his tie already straight and didn't turn around.
"Five minutes," Yvette said. "Then it's us, for good."
She kissed my cheek, got back behind the wheel and drove off to the front with Brodie beside her.
It was the ninety-ninth time she had left me somewhere so people wouldn't talk.
I had counted them.
I stood in a puddle of kitchen runoff with my good shoes already soaked.
Years ago Yvette had told me that a director dating her own engineer would wreck his reputation.
Every year since, her best friend Brodie Kohler had been her cover.
Brodie got the passenger seat on company trips while I took the ten-hour bus.
Last month Yvette promoted him to team lead, over me, the most senior engineer on the team.
I had told myself she did it all for my sake.
I ran for the passage round to the front, to catch the car before it reached the doors.
The passage between the bins was narrow, and a cook had left a tray of fryer grease by the door.
I went down hard in it, and the suit I'd bought for this day came up black from the shoulder to the knee.
A woman in a black blazer pulled the service door open from the inside and stared at me.
She had a clipboard and a headset, and a name tag that said Hazel, Events Manager.
"You're a guest?" she asked.
"I'm the groom."
Her eyes went to the grease, then to the list on her clipboard. "The groom's name on my sheet is Brodie Kohler."
"Then the sheet is wrong."
She didn't argue. She pushed a stack of napkins into my hands and pointed down the hall.
I wiped my face as I walked.
The ballroom doors were open at the back.
Two hundred of our coworkers sat in white chairs, and Yvette stood at the front in a long ivory dress.
Brodie stood next to her.
An officiant was reading a line about forever, and they were saying their vows together, word for word.
Brodie kept rubbing the pale stripe of skin around his left ring finger.
He'd had that stripe since before I joined the team, and he rubbed it whenever he was nervous.
The officiant said, "You may kiss."
Yvette kissed Brodie's cheek, and the whole room cheered.
A director from finance stood on his chair. "My favorite couple is finally married!"
Everyone clapped.
The staff invitation had Brodie's name beside hers.
Yvette had said that was for the office, and that I would understand.
I had said I did.
I walked up the center aisle in a ruined suit, and heads turned all the way down the rows.
"Yvette," I said, loud enough for the back rows to hear. "I'm the groom."
The room went quiet.
Yvette didn't look at me.
She turned to Brodie and said, in her softest voice, "Are you nervous? Come here, I'll give you a hug."
I reached for her hand.
She pulled it out of mine without a glance and put both arms around Brodie.
Nobody in that room looked at me except to wonder what I was doing there.
Somebody near the front laughed, because they thought I was the joke.
I took the ring out of my jacket pocket.
She had given it to me three years ago and told me to keep it hidden in a drawer at home.
I set it on the gift table, in the basket full of cards, and nobody stopped me.
So I walked out the front doors.
Hazel caught up with me in the lobby, out of breath.
"Mr. Taggart, I'm sorry. It isn't my business."
"What isn't?"
She turned her clipboard around.
The wedding had been booked three months ago, and the card on file said Jude Taggart.
"The balance is forty-one thousand, two hundred dollars," she said. "It posts tonight at midnight."
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was Yvette: Don't make a scene, love. Come round through the kitchen, we'll do photos at five. I'll explain everything tonight.
"Cancel it," I told Hazel. "All of it."
"Then they'll have to pay at the door. In front of everyone."
"Good."
I wiped my hands on the napkins, and I went back in through the front.
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