The One Who Waited novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Backless
At a bridal fitting Derek tells Merry a backless dress isn't for her anymore and leaves with Skye; that night she ends fifteen years, and when he sneers that nobody will marry her at her age, she names the man she's marrying on the thirty-first.
The dress was backless, and Derek looked at me in it like I'd embarrassed him.
I had only put it on for a joke.
Tamara was the bride. I was the maid of honor. We were in a bridal shop in the Garment District on a Thursday night, and she had tried on ten dresses.
The next one didn't fit her shoulders, so she shoved it at me.
"Put it on. I need to see it move."
It was ivory silk, plain in front, cut all the way down to the base of my spine.
When I stepped out of the fitting room, Derek had just come in to pick me up.
He was standing by the mirrors with his phone in his hand.
Tamara whistled.
"Derek. Look at our Merry. Isn't she gorgeous? Fifteen years, man. When are you putting a ring on it?"
The two clerks smiled at him.
So did I.
I was thirty-four years old, and I still waited for his face to go soft when he saw me.
He looked up from his phone.
He looked at my bare back in the mirror.
"Take it off, Merry," he said. "A backless dress isn't for you anymore."
One of the clerks stopped folding a veil.
I stood very still on the little velvet platform.
Derek sighed and came over and touched my cheek.
"Don't look at me like that. We'll get married. I promised, didn't I? You don't need to pull stunts like this to pressure me."
"It's Tamara's dress," I said. "I'm trying it on for Tamara."
"Sure."
He went back to his phone.
I turned around and looked at myself.
Below my left shoulder blade there was a scar, three inches long and shiny pink.
I got it when I was nineteen, in a bar in Ithaca, stepping in front of a bottle that was meant for Derek's head.
He used to kiss it.
I changed back into my jeans with my hands shaking so hard I couldn't do the button.
When I came out, a woman in a cream sweater set had her arm through Derek's.
Long honey hair. Gold hoops. Twenty-seven, maybe.
"Merry, hi! I'm so sorry, I have to steal him for the investor dinner."
She held up her phone like an apology.
"I'll take you for coffee another time, okay?"
Her name was Skye Ambler.
She was Derek's "wellness coach."
Derek kissed the top of my head without looking at me.
"Tamara can drive you home. Don't wait up."
The bell over the door jingled behind them.
Both clerks looked at me with so much pity I wanted to crawl under the platform.
Tamara drove me back to Bank Street with her knuckles white on the wheel.
"What the hell was that? In front of strangers? Fifteen years, Merry. He told you give me five years and I'll give you the world. That was three five-years ago."
"I know."
"The whole city's saying he's going to dump you for her."
"I know, Tamara."
She looked at me at the red light.
"Then why are you still there?"
I didn't answer.
She didn't know about the radio yet.
Nobody did.
Three weeks ago, I'd been driving home from a double shift at midnight, and the car radio had been playing Skye's podcast.
"Midnight Confessions." Three hundred thousand listeners.
A caller said he was a founder in his thirties.
I knew the voice before he finished the first sentence.
"My girlfriend keeps pushing to get married. She's gotten older, she's not as cute as she was. She's always scheming. Honestly? I don't even want to go home."
Skye had laughed, warm and low. "You deserve peace, babe."
The next thing I remember was the guardrail on the West Side Highway.
A stranger called the ambulance.
In the ER, the nurse stitched my forearm and asked if I wanted to call family.
I thought about it for a long time.
Then I called someone else.
When I got home that night, Derek had been on the couch with a whiskey, listening to the rest of the episode.
He never noticed the gauze on my arm.
He never noticed the bruise at my hairline.
He still hadn't.
Tonight I didn't go to bed.
I sat on the living room couch in the dark with my coat still on.
Derek came in at ten after three.
He smelled like whiskey and a sweet vanilla perfume that wasn't mine.
He saw me and flinched.
"Jesus, Merry. You scared me."
On every other night for fifteen years, I'd have been in the kitchen making him a glass of water with electrolytes.
I stayed where I was.
He rubbed his temples.
"Is this about Skye? You know I hate those dinners. She handles the investors. She's good with people like that. It's business."
"Okay."
"Don't be so emotional. Once the IPO's done, we'll plan the wedding. I swear."
"Derek," I said. "Let's break up."
He laughed.
Then he saw I wasn't laughing, and his face went flat and mean.
"At three in the morning? Seriously?"
"Seriously."
He tossed his keys in the bowl by the door.
"Merry. Look at yourself. You're not a kid. You're thirty-four. If you walk out on me, who exactly do you think is going to marry you?"
I stood up and took my phone out of my coat pocket.
I opened the calendar.
October thirty-first was already marked, in red, since the night of the crash.
I turned the screen around so he could read it.
"Luke Darrow," I said. "On the thirty-first."
The color left Derek's face all at once.
He hadn't heard that name in fifteen years.
Neither had I, until the night I called him from the ER.
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