I'm Still In Love With the Groom novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Sign at Baggage Claim
Annie lands in Denver for her best friend's wedding and finds the groom holding her name on a sign: Ryan, the fiance who vanished six years ago, under a new name, still carrying the key she painted.
The man waiting at Denver baggage claim held a sign with my last name on it, and I knew the handwriting before I looked at his face.
DORSEY, in purple marker, with a long tail on the Y that ran under the whole word.
My best friend has drawn her Ys that way since our freshman dorm.
I had landed at ten to four on a Tuesday with a carry-on, a garment bag and a maid-of-honor dress that cost me $240.
I planned to wear it once.
Kat, the bride, had texted during my layover.
"Caterer disaster, so I'm sending Sam to get you. Tall, grumpy, holds a sign. BE NICE."
So I looked for tall and grumpy.
The man by the pillar was tall.
He wore a gray fire-crew T-shirt and had a sunburned neck and a long white scar down his left forearm.
His hair was shorter than I remembered, and his shoulders were wider.
He lowered the sign.
I stopped walking, and a stranger's rolling suitcase hit the back of my leg.
Ryan Brewer was looking at me from forty feet away, and he was not surprised.
He had been standing at that pillar a long time, practicing what to say.
"Hi, Annie," he said.
I am a forensic accountant.
I am paid to see what people hide in plain sight, and I read every receipt that touches my hands.
I had looked at the invitation on my refrigerator for four days and seen nothing.
Six years ago, three weeks before our wedding, I was on my parents' living room floor gluing tea lights into jars when my phone buzzed.
"I can't do this. I'm sorry. Don't look for me."
Three days later the FBI raided his father's investment firm.
Brewer Capital turned out to be a forty-million-dollar Ponzi scheme, and my parents had $310,000 in it.
I never saw Ryan again.
Until the pillar.
The invitation was cream card stock. Katherine Salazar and Samuel Garland, Saturday, October 10.
October 10 was the date I had picked for my own wedding.
I told myself Kat had forgotten.
Ranches book up, people forget, and Samuel Garland was nobody I had ever met.
"Where's Sam?" I said.
My voice came out calm and ordinary.
Ryan studied my face for a long moment.
I watched him read me the way he used to read me across a loud bar, one look and he had all of it.
Then his expression changed.
"She didn't tell you," he said.
It was not a question.
"Tell me what? Where is Sam?"
He raised the sign an inch and let it drop to his side.
"I'm Sam," he said. "Legally. I changed it in 2021."
I said nothing.
The luggage carousel buzzer went off behind me.
"Annie, I swear to God, Kat told me you knew. She said you knew and you were coming anyway."
Kat had said no such thing to me, about anything.
"I'm here, aren't I?" I said.
I don't know why I said it.
Pride, probably.
Pride is cheap, and I always have some on me.
He reached for the garment bag.
I let him take it, because my hand had stopped working.
He walked me out to a gray pickup in short-term parking, and before he opened my door he hung the bag from the hook over the back window and tucked the plastic up so the hem would not drag.
He did that for every dress I owned, every Saturday, for three years.
I got in and looked straight ahead.
My phone buzzed in my lap.
It was my mother.
"Landed? Don't forget, the receiver's check came again today, $2,500. Tell Kat congratulations from us."
I had never opened one of those envelopes, not once.
I put the phone face down.
Ryan climbed in on his side and reached for the ignition, and that was when I saw the key ring.
A truck key. A padlock key. A plastic fire-crew tag.
And one small brass apartment key with red nail polish on its head.
I had painted that myself in the summer of 2020, so he could find our key on a ring full of his old office keys.
He still had it.
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