Page 31 of One Wrong Move

But at least I attempted to do one of the things on my list. A few of the others, such as stay out all night or get a tarot card reading, still seem too daunting, but researching last night in bed made them feel more real. Made the possibilities of all kinds feel more real.

Aadhya is upbeat at work. The gallery is throwing a giant start of summer cocktail party in a few months, and she walks me through all the things we need to do before then.

Finally, I think. A job with actual stakes—a job that requires me to think, and act, and be creative. We spend half the day planning out the organization of the space, and the rest of the time entertaining buyers.

A call comes in while I’m walking home.

I stare at the name on my screen for long seconds. Panic unfurls in my stomach, grips my chest, making it hard to breathe. The instinct is to shut my phone off entirely. To drop it on the ground and watch it crack and shatter.

But I had seen the emails, too. The cancellation of our venue so close to the wedding is… well. We won’t get our deposit back. Not for the venue and not for the caterers.

And we need to deal with it.

I take a deep breath and lift the phone to my ear. “Hello.”

“Harper,” he says. Dean’s voice isn’t angry, and my fight or flight response slowly drains away. “How are you?”

“I’m good. How are you?”

“Great, yeah. Calling from the office. It’s your… afternoon now, right?”

“Yes. It’s 5 p.m. my time.”

“Awesome.” There’s a pause, and it’s not entirely comfortable. “I’m guessing you’ve seen the emails.”

“Yes. I told you, I’ll pay my half. Just give me a few months?—”

“Harper,” he says. “We don’t have to cancel.”

I close my eyes and lean against the wrought iron fence beside the sidewalk. Not this. Not again. I can’t have this discussion again, can’t handle the cajoling, the guilting, the anger. He has many tactics, and all of them are grating.

“We’ve spoken about this.”

“You’ve spoken, but I don’t agree,” he says. This time his voice is harder. “I say we keep the reservations?—”

“I’ve already told the venue to cancel. I’ve made all the arrangements, and I’ll pay my half as soon as I can, Dean.” My voice is firm. It’s easier to be firm over the phone than when he’s in front of me, his eyes turning hard, and his temper rising.

“I don’t care about the money,” he says, and I know it’s a lie. Because he’s always cared. When it mattered, he was happy to throw it in my face, that it was his apartment we were living in, that it was his family’s beach house. But when I tried to contribute, he always turned me down, too.

I’ll never live like that again.

“Look, will you at least call my mom? To explain yourself? She’s heartbroken,” Dean says. “She doesn’t understand why you just left. She thinks of you like a daughter, you know. Gave you those family diamonds last Christmas.”

“I gave them back,” I whisper. Of all the tactics, guilt is the one I find the hardest. I have no defense against it.

“Harper,” he says. His voice is coaxing, but there’s anger beneath it. “New York is your home. What are you doing, running off to a different country? Doing a traineeship at twenty-eight? You would be?—”

“In the future, just text me about the wedding logistics,” I say. My hand is shaking around the phone. “Bye, Dean.”

“Ha—”

I hang up and immediately turn my phone on airplane mode. I don’t want another call or a text—nothing. My breathing is hard. I keep walking. Focusing on one step after the other, and not on the panic still squeezing my chest tight.

When will it end? Being reminded of him, the barrage of emails about the canceled wedding arrangements, my friends and family asking me what happened…?

Guilt makes my stomach churn. His mother had been wonderful. She will never realize, never will see that her son is anything other than a prize. In many ways, he’s a great man. Until I understood he wasn’t—not for me.

The mold he expected me to fit into was too tight.

---