He Married His Childhood Sweetheart for Her Prank, I'm Nobody's Mistress, EVER novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Announcement
At a gala Delphine takes the microphone and calls Rodney her husband, and Emme leaves in front of the phones; by morning the clip is everywhere.
At the memorial gala, Delphine took the microphone and called my fiancé her husband.
Three hundred people were in the ballroom, and half of them were holding up phones.
I was standing by the ice sculpture with a glass of champagne I hadn't touched.
Before the doors opened, Delphine had zipped me into my green dress.
The zipper had stuck in the powder room, and she had laughed and fixed it and kissed my cheek.
"There," she said. "You look like someone who's never been cold a day in her life."
Then she had pressed a small gift bag into my hands, the way she did every winter.
Inside were wool socks, grey, with a tag in her handwriting: So you don't freeze again.
I had thanked her.
I always thanked her.
Her brother had died pulling me out of a frozen lake four winters ago, and the gala was held in his name.
On stage, she lifted a hand and the room went quiet.
"Everybody who knows me knows I love a good prank," she said.
People laughed.
"Well, Rodney and I have been planning this one for three months."
She held out her other hand, and Rodney walked up the steps in his charcoal suit.
He didn't look at me.
My phone buzzed in my clutch.
It was a text from him, sent that morning, and I had read it four times already.
Whatever Delphine says tonight is a bit. Trust me. I'll explain after.
I had trusted him.
Delphine slid her arm through his and turned to the crowd.
"My husband and I got married at the courthouse in September. Surprise!"
The ballroom exploded.
Somebody whistled.
A woman at the next table shrieked and clapped, and a dozen phones swung toward Delphine's face.
Rodney stood there and let her lean her head on his shoulder.
I put the champagne down on the ice sculpture's tray.
My hand was steady, and that surprised me.
Delphine's phone was lit on the podium, and the photo on its screen was projected on the wall behind her.
A Hennepin County marriage license.
Rodney Michael Ashworth.
Delphine Rose Stroud.
The stamp was dated in September.
September was before he gave me the ring.
I walked toward the stage.
People turned to look, and the phones turned with them.
"Is that her?" a man whispered.
"The girlfriend. Oh my God."
"Poor Delphine."
Rodney saw me then.
He went white and took a step toward the edge of the stage.
"Emme, don't."
Delphine covered the microphone with her hand and looked down at me with her wide blue eyes.
"Emme, it's a joke, I swear. Nothing's real. The paper's just a paper."
"Then why is it stamped?" I said.
She blinked.
Behind me, three of her crew girls kept filming, and one of them said, "Oh, she's going to cry."
I wasn't.
I looked at Rodney.
He was the man who had held my hair back at Gran's funeral and cooked me eggs every Sunday for three years.
He was the man who had never, in all that time, said no to Delphine.
"You said to trust you," I said.
"I know. Emme, let me explain. It's a technicality, it's nothing, she needed me to..."
"You married her in September. You proposed to me in October."
He closed his mouth.
The ballroom had gone so quiet I could hear the ice sculpture dripping.
I pulled my engagement ring off and set it on the edge of the stage, next to his shoe.
It made a small sound against the wood.
"I'm not anybody's mistress," I said.
Somebody gasped.
Delphine's hand went to her mouth, and I saw a crew girl lean in for a close-up.
"I'm not staying for this," I said.
So I stepped out.
I walked the whole length of the ballroom with three hundred people watching.
The doors at the end opened onto the parking lot and the black lake behind it.
I didn't look at the lake.
I got into my car and drove straight to Bea's, and I didn't cry until I was on her stairs.
She opened the door in her scrubs and pulled me in without a question.
I fell asleep on her sofa with the gift bag still in my fist.
When I woke, the sun was up, and my phone was lit with four hundred notifications.
The first was a clip somebody had posted at midnight.
It showed me in the green dress, walking out through the applause.
The caption said: Mistress storms out of wife's gala.
It had two million views.
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