My Husband and My Best Friend Betrayed Me on Our Wedding Day. Twice. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Last Night, Right Where You're Sitting
In the wedding car Stefano says he slept with Valeria's best friend Bianca the night before; Valeria steps out, tells the church steps, and her first husband Luca waits at the curb with a claim about the night she lost the baby.
Two hundred guests stood up and clapped when the priest said I was Stefano's wife.
Bianca cried hardest in the front row.
She had planned every minute of the day, down to the napkins.
She had planned my first wedding too.
She had a tissue ready for me before I reached the end of the aisle.
"You look perfect," she whispered, and pressed it into my hand. "Don't you dare ruin that mascara."
I laughed and let her fix my veil.
She was my best friend. She had been since we were eight years old.
On the church steps a waiter held out a tray of champagne.
My first husband stood alone at the bottom of the steps, and the waiter offered him a glass too.
He shook his head.
Half a glass had put him to sleep in a chair at our own wedding party, and I had never let him forget it.
He was also Stefano's half-brother.
Stefano had invited him. "Family should be there," he had said, and smiled.
Luca did not look at me. He looked at the front row of the church, where Bianca was still dabbing her eyes.
Then the black wedding car pulled up, and the driver opened the door.
Stefano got in beside me and the car pulled away from the curb.
"I need to tell you something before the reception," he said.
His voice was flat.
"I cheated. Last night. With Bianca."
I turned to look at him.
He pointed at the leather under me. "Right there. She sat on my lap in that seat, and I didn't stop her."
"Stefano."
"She's got more fire in her than you will ever have, Valeria. You're soft. You always were."
He leaned back and crossed his ankles.
"And you should know why I married you. Luca had you. Luca had everything. Now I have his wife, and I have his chair at Dad's table."
I could not breathe.
The car smelled of vanilla. It was Bianca's perfume, the drugstore kind she had worn since we were fourteen.
It was in the seat. It was in my veil, where her hands had been ten minutes ago.
Three years ago I walked into my own bedroom, five months pregnant, and found Luca in our bed with her.
He did not get up. He did not say my name.
He lay there with his eyes half shut, and Bianca pulled the sheet over her shoulders.
I ran. I missed the last three steps of the stairs.
I woke up in the hospital, and the baby was gone.
I had never asked Luca one question. I had signed the divorce papers inside a month.
Now I sat in a wedding dress next to his brother, and it was the same woman again.
I looked out the window. We had not even reached the corner.
"Stop the car," I said.
The driver looked in the mirror. "Ma'am?"
"Stop the car."
"Don't be dramatic," Stefano said. "Two hundred people are waiting for us at the hall."
I took off the ring and dropped it in his lap.
"You can tell them yourself," I said.
So I stepped out.
I walked back up the street in a wedding dress with the train over my arm.
The guests were still on the church steps, holding their champagne, and they turned to watch me come.
Aldo Sorrentino, Stefano's father, stood at the top with his cane.
"Valeria," he said. "What is this?"
I stopped on the third step, loud enough for every row to hear.
"Your son just told me he slept with Bianca last night," I said. "In the car you paid for. Ten minutes after he married me."
Nobody moved.
Bianca came down the steps at a run with a coat over her arm.
"Oh, honey, you're shaking," she said. "Whatever he said, he's drunk, he doesn't mean it. Come here."
She reached for my shoulders.
I stepped back, and the vanilla reached me first.
"You smell like the car, Bianca."
Her hands stopped in the air.
"Valeria, I would never."
"Say it to my face," I said. "Say you weren't in that seat last night."
Her mouth opened and nothing came out.
Stefano walked up the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets.
He did not hurry.
"I said it," he told the crowd. "I'll say it again, if anybody missed it."
A woman in the third row dropped her glass.
Aldo said, "Stefano," very quietly, and Stefano only shrugged.
I looked for the one person who would have understood. My mother, Rosa, was in the second pew, and she had her hand over her mouth.
I turned away from all of them and went down the steps.
A grey car had pulled up at the curb with the passenger door already open.
Luca stood beside it. He had not drunk anything. His hand was on the roof, and the knuckles were white.
"Valeria," he said. "I've waited three years to show you something about the night you lost the baby."
"Two minutes," I said.
I got in.
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