Oops, Wrong Bride? Fine. No Wedding. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Wrong Bride
At the altar Liza's best friend tears off her veil and takes her place, the groom laughs, and Liza cancels the wedding she paid for and walks out, until her father's text tells her to come back and smile.
I was standing at the altar, smiling so hard my cheeks hurt, one breath away from saying "I do" to Trey Mattox.
Then something ripped at my scalp so hard my eyes watered.
My head jerked back.
Twelve bobby pins went pinging across the stone floor.
I turned around.
Shelby Witt, my best friend since we were five, my maid of honor, stood right behind me.
She had my mother's veil balled up in her fist.
Three yards of Chantilly lace my mother was married in.
Shelby smiled at me.
"You can stop now, Liza," she said. "The rehearsal's over. Thanks for keeping my spot warm."
I couldn't move.
I couldn't even put my hand up to my hair.
I looked at Trey.
He was grinning. Both dimples.
He held his hands up.
"Oops," he said. "Wrong bride."
Somebody in the third row laughed.
Then the whole groom's side laughed.
Shelby's girlfriends in the pews had their phones up already. Every one of them.
The officiant cleared his throat and looked down at the paper in his hands.
"I, uh. I have the license here," he said. "It says Trey Mattox and Shelby Witt."
"It does," Shelby said, and she shook the veil out and set it on her own platinum hair.
"Trey," I said.
My voice came out small. I hated that.
"Did you know?"
"Babe." He laughed again and rubbed the back of his neck. "Come on. It's a wedding, not a funeral. Be a good sport."
"A good sport."
"You can still be in the pictures. You can be maid of honor."
Shelby held her bouquet of white peonies out to me.
My peonies. I'd driven to the flower market at five that morning to pick them.
"Hold these for me," she said. "Like you always do."
I looked out at the church.
One hundred and sixty people looked back at me.
Trey's mother, in the front pew on the groom's side, wasn't even surprised. She was checking her lipstick in a compact.
And on my side, in the front pew, sat my father.
Gene Gatling had walked me down this aisle four minutes ago.
He'd kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand and given me away.
Now he sat with his hands folded on his knee, perfectly still, looking at the stained glass.
He didn't stand up.
He didn't say my name.
Something in my chest went very quiet and very cold.
I'd paid for this wedding.
Every peony. The string quartet. The Harbor House ballroom. The shrimp and grits for one hundred and sixty people.
Sixty-two thousand dollars. Eight years of four a.m. shifts at my mother's bakery.
I reached past the officiant and unclipped the little microphone from his robe.
"Liza," Trey said. "Don't be dramatic."
I turned to face the pews.
"Hi, everybody," I said into the mic. "Thank you for coming."
The laughing stopped.
"In case you're wondering, I paid for all of this. The flowers. The music. The dinner you were about to eat."
I pulled my phone out of the hidden pocket in my skirt. My mother had sewn it in for her own wedding.
I found the Harbor House catering manager and hit call.
I held the phone to the mic so the whole church could hear it ring.
"Harbor House events," a woman said.
"Hi. It's Liza Gatling. The bride."
"Oh! Congratulations, honey!"
"Thanks. Please stop cooking. The reception's cancelled. Pack up the shrimp and send it to the shelter on Meeting Street with my compliments."
Silence on the line.
"You're sure, honey?"
"I've never been surer of anything."
I hung up.
The quartet in the balcony had stopped playing halfway through a note.
I looked up at them.
"You four are paid through six. Go home, have a drink on me."
The cellist actually saluted.
Shelby's smile had slipped.
"You can't do that," she hissed. "That's my reception."
"No," I said. "It was mine. You can have the groom. He's the only thing here I didn't pay for."
I reached up and pulled my mother's veil off her head.
It came away with a few strands of platinum caught in the comb.
Shelby yelped.
I folded the lace over my arm and handed the microphone back to the officiant.
"Sorry about your robe," I said.
Then I walked down the aisle by myself.
My train dragged behind me. My hair was half down.
My honeymoon suitcase sat in the vestibule where I'd parked it that morning, packed for a week in the sun.
As I passed the front pew, a hand clamped around my wrist.
My father's.
"Sit down," he said under his breath, in his soft deacon voice. "You're embarrassing Shelby."
I looked down at him.
"Shelby," I said. "I'm embarrassing Shelby."
"Sit down and stop this, Liza."
I pulled my wrist out of his hand and kept walking.
Every face turned to follow me.
All of them stayed in their seats.
All but one.
In the very last pew, a big man in a gray suit with the sleeves too short had stood up.
Hayes Mattox. Trey's older brother.
I'd met him maybe five times in three years, at the far end of his mother's dinner table.
He wasn't laughing.
He walked ahead of me and pulled open the heavy oak door, and the hot May light came pouring in.
I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and wheeled it out past him onto the church steps.
"Truck's on the corner," he said. "The green one."
"I don't need saving."
"Good," he said. "I'm a terrible driver for saving. I'm just leaving."
My phone buzzed in my skirt pocket.
It was my father.
"The reception goes ahead. I've paid for it."
A second text came under it.
"Come back and stand behind Shelby in the photos and smile. Or don't bother coming in to the bakery Monday."
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