His "Childhood Friend" Planned My Wedding? Cool, I Planned My Exit! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: A Pelican Magnet

Dexter comes home early with a $3.99 magnet for Casey and a handmade pearl clip for Lindy, and his mother sends the guests a seating chart with Lindy at the head table as family.

Dexter's suitcase hit the doorframe at seven the next morning.

He was a full day early.

I was on the couch with a cold cup of coffee, and the spare room door behind me was shut on six taped boxes.

"Ugh, I'm dead," Dexter said. "I took the dawn flight so I could surprise you."

He kicked off his shoes and did not look at me.

I had promised myself I would leave before he landed.

But I wanted one more thing first. I wanted to see whether he would tell me anything true on his own.

I gave him until Saturday.

He dug in his bag and tossed a lumpy paper sack onto the coffee table.

"Souvenir," he said. "For you."

Then he lifted a flat white box from the inside pocket of his suitcase. It was tied with a gold ribbon.

"Don't touch that one. It's Lindy's."

"What is it?"

"A hair clip. Handmade pearls. She has a photo shoot Saturday and her old clip broke."

He said it the way he would say he'd picked up milk.

I opened my paper sack.

It held a refrigerator magnet shaped like a pelican. The price sticker said $3.99, and one wing was cracked.

I held it up.

"This?"

"What? You like birds."

I had never once said that.

In March I had pointed at a pair of silver earrings in a mall window. Forty dollars.

"We can't throw money around," Dexter had said. "The wedding's expensive enough."

So I had left them there.

Later that morning I looked up the maker of Lindy's clip. Four hundred and fifty dollars.

"Did she ask you to buy it?" I said.

"No, I just passed the shop. It looked like her."

"It looks like her," I agreed.

He didn't hear anything in my voice.

That night his mother called while we were making dinner.

"Casey, honey, tell me the seating chart is done."

"I'm still working on it."

"Still? We have sixteen days." Denise Pennick sighed into the phone. "Lindy came by last week and we went over the menu together. She thinks a plated dinner is stuffy for your crowd. She suggested food trucks."

I put down the knife.

"Lindy is changing my menu?"

"She's being thoughtful. You work so hard, and I didn't want to stress you."

"Denise. It's my wedding."

The line went quiet.

"Of course it is," she said, and her voice went cold. "No one's taking it from you. Don't be defensive."

Dexter came out of the shower with a towel around his neck.

"Who's that?"

"Your mother."

I put her on speaker.

Denise kept going. "Oh, and the banner for behind the altar. Lindy found the wording a little plain, so she wrote something better. I'm sending it over."

My phone buzzed.

My wording: We built this on ordinary Tuesdays, and we kept showing up.

Lindy's wording: Two shores, one tide, and finally we are all home.

Dexter read it over my arm.

"Hers is better," he said.

I looked at him.

"Do you even remember what I wrote?"

"Yeah, of course."

"What did you think of it?"

He scratched the back of his neck.

"It was fine."

I had rewritten that line half a dozen times, over three nights.

Denise wasn't finished.

"Casey, I say this because I love you. A bride needs to have a feel for these things, and you can be a little stiff. Watch how Lindy does it. You might learn something."

I ended the call.

Dexter's face hardened.

"Did you just hang up on my mother?"

"I'm not going to sit here and take notes on how to be more like Lindy."

"She's trying to help."

"And you? Where are you in this?"

"What do you mean, where am I?"

"Why is Lindy running our entire wedding?"

He groaned and rubbed his face.

"She isn't running it. You work late every night, and my mom needed someone to talk through ideas with. What's the big deal?"

"You never asked me."

"So now I need your permission to have a conversation?"

The menu. The banner. The flowers. The playlist.

Anything that was meant to be ours had been handed to Lindy the moment it took effort.

Dexter picked the pelican magnet off the counter and carried it to the fridge.

"Here. Look, it's cute."

I watched him press the cracked wing against the door.

"Fine," I said. "Put it there."

He grinned, because he thought he had won.

My phone buzzed on the counter, and then buzzed again.

Denise had sent a group message to all one hundred and twenty guests.

It was the final seating chart.

At the head table, between Dexter and the empty seat beside him, one name was typed in bold.

Lindy Sayre, Family.

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