My Best Friend Ripped Off My Veil, So I Took Back Every Dollar novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Your Turn Is Over
Holly's best friend tears off her veil, the best man hands her bouquet to the groom's assistant, and Holly walks out; her phone shows the house fund at zero.
Melanie ripped the veil off my head the moment the music started.
Pain tore across my scalp.
Hairpins pinged on the stone floor of the aisle.
The lace I had spent all spring choosing slid down my back and landed at my feet.
"You're done, Holly," Melanie said. "Somebody else is walking this aisle."
I looked at her and could not make the words mean anything.
She was my maid of honor. She had zipped me into this dress an hour ago.
She had also taken my phone and my keys that morning and put them in her bag.
"I'll hold everything," she'd said. "Whatever happens today, I've got you."
"Melanie, what the hell are you doing?"
Two hundred people sat on white chairs on the ridge, and every one of them had turned around.
The best man stepped up beside me.
He was my fiancé's cousin, the one who ran his crews, and I had never heard him say ten words in a row.
He took the bouquet out of my hands.
He did it gently, and he did not look at me, which was worse.
I watched him carry my flowers down the aisle to the front row.
A young woman stood up to take them.
She was my fiancé's assistant. She ordered his lunch and fixed his calendar, and she had sent us a candle when we got engaged.
She was wearing a wedding dress.
It fit her. Somebody had measured her for it.
The best man offered her his arm, and she took it and smiled shyly at the floor.
Nobody in the chairs made a sound.
At the end of the aisle stood the arch of white roses I had picked out myself.
My fiancé waited under it in his navy suit, holding the ring box.
He held it in both hands, the way he held anything he was afraid to drop.
"Dalton," I said.
My voice came out small, so I said it again.
"Dalton. Say you're not doing this."
He looked up at last.
He didn't look angry or sorry. He looked tired.
"Holly, please don't make this a scene," he said. "It's better this way. For everybody."
"Better," I said.
"You'll land on your feet. You always do."
Ten years.
I had met him in the library the first week of sophomore year.
I had cosigned the lease on his first apartment.
I had put my father's life insurance into our house fund because Dalton said a house would make us real.
My father had been gone five years, and I had never touched that money for anything else.
The assistant reached the front with my flowers in her hands, and she did not look at me once.
Someone in the third row had a phone up.
Then another, and another, until a whole row of small black rectangles was pointed at me.
I could have run.
I could have dropped to my knees and picked up the hairpins and cried while they filmed it.
I stood up straight instead.
My scalp burned where the pins had been.
"Give me my phone," I said to Melanie.
She took it out of her bag and put it in my hand. It was switched off.
"Don't look at it yet," she said, and her voice was soft and kind, the way it had been when we were nineteen.
I looked at her flat white shoes and her loose dress.
I had asked her last night why she was wearing flats to a wedding, and she had said her feet hurt.
She had turned down the champagne this morning, too, and sat down every time there was a chair.
I did not know why any of that mattered yet.
I turned around to face the guests.
"Dinner starts at six," I said. "The bar is open until eleven. I paid the deposit, so please enjoy it."
A few people made a noise that was almost a laugh and stopped itself.
"Holly." Dalton's voice cracked on the second syllable.
I didn't turn around.
So I stepped out.
I walked up the aisle through two hundred people, with my hem dragging on the stone.
My aunt Annette sat in the last row on the aisle, with her purse on her knees and her mouth set.
She stood up and fell in beside me without a word.
We were almost to the parking lot when I held the power button down.
The phone lit up and buzzed through everything it had missed since morning.
The top alert was from the bank.
"Joint Savings: withdrawal of $184,000.00. Available balance: $0.00."
The date on it was Thursday.
Annette read it over my shoulder, and I felt her go still.
Behind us, the string quartet started to play.
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