I Don't Need Your Blue Roses Anymore novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Pink Is Fine
Six days before her wedding, Anneliese watches her fiance and best friend plan her birthday in pink without asking her, and walks out. Home, she finds the wedding fund her grandmother left her down to $3,112, every transfer approved by Mallory.
I turned twenty-nine on a Monday, six days before my wedding.
My fiance, Dean Pallister, and my best friend, Mallory Stafford, sat across from me in the upstairs room of our favorite restaurant.
They were planning my birthday party.
They went from the pink theme to the guest list, and from the guest list to the party favors.
Nobody asked me what I wanted.
Mallory had ordered my usual iced tea before I got there, and it was sweating on the table in front of me.
She was wearing my sapphire bracelet again, the one I'd lent her in June.
She sat in the chair set aside for the guest of honor, tapping her phone and reading out vendor prices.
Dean looked up when I stayed quiet.
"Annie, you choose the gift boxes," he said.
Then he added, "Go with pink. It's easier."
We had been together seven years.
He knew I loved blue, and he knew I had never once chosen pink.
I picked up my bag and walked out.
"I'm not going to that party," I said at the top of the stairs.
Neither of them looked up.
Downstairs, the event manager was crossing the lobby with a pink dress over her arm.
Two days earlier, Mallory had pulled that dress off a rack of blue ones I'd been looking at.
She had said pink would photograph better.
"Mallory," the manager called up the stairwell, "the dress is here. Try it on, and I can send it out for alterations today."
I heard Mallory laugh from the top of the stairs.
"Anneliese and I wear the same size anyway. I'll model it so she can see it."
Dean's voice came after hers. "You're a lifesaver, Mal."
They hadn't noticed that I was gone.
I got into my car, and my phone buzzed.
It was a photo from Dean.
Mallory stood by the window in the pink dress, holding a bouquet of pink roses.
The light was perfect, and her face was sharp and clear.
Dean knew exactly how to find a good angle.
In every picture he'd taken of me, my hair was across my face and the frame was blurred.
He would hand the phone back before I finished posing and say, "All done."
A second message came in.
*Pretty, right? Imagine you in it at your party.*
I began to type, then deleted it.
I tried again and deleted that too.
In the end I sent back: *Fine.*
I drove home to our rented house in Pasadena.
On the way I passed the turn for my father's street in South Pasadena.
Mallory had never set foot inside my father's house.
In seventeen years she had always waited in her car at the curb, even in the rain, and I had stopped asking her to come in.
That was just how it was.
The wedding bills were fanned across the dining table.
Every one was addressed to *Wardell and Pallister wedding, c/o Mallory Stafford*.
Beside them sat the ring box.
The ring was rose gold with a pink diamond, and it was one size too big.
I had told Dean it didn't fit and that I wanted to take it back.
His face had gone hard.
"Mallory picked that out for you," he'd said. "You were busy, so she went."
Then he'd said, "If you take it back, she'll think you don't appreciate her."
I hadn't been busy.
Nobody had told me there was a ring to pick.
I pushed the box and the bills to the far end of the table.
I wasn't going to the party they'd planned, and I wasn't going to the wedding they'd planned either.
So I stepped out.
I put my passport, my laptop and my grandmother's quilt into a suitcase.
I took the blue dress from the closet, the one I'd tried on alone in a shop two months ago and never mentioned.
I left the ring on top of the bills.
Before I closed the laptop, I opened the bank app to move my grandmother's money somewhere safe.
It was the wedding fund, $140,000 she had left me for a house.
I had not touched it since the funeral.
The balance read $3,112.
I tapped the history.
There were twenty-two transfers in four months.
Every single one was approved by the same authorized user.
It wasn't Dean.
It was Mallory.
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