Page 121 of The Life-Changing Magic of Falling in Love

I hug my arms to myself to try and ward off another head-to-toe shiver. That’s another thing I don’t understand. The weather app said today was supposed to be super sunshiny and hot.

It is super the opposite.

Despite my teeth chattering I try calling him again but when he doesn’t answer anxiety adds to the goosebumps until I’m left with one great big humiliating: What if I’m being ghosted?

No.

Zach wouldn’t do that to me.

Not before the wedding.

With shaking hands, I pull up the app to check my car rental booking because the way my day’s going… Okay, there’s nothing to suggest it isn’t going to be delivered to my place on schedule which gives me an hour to get back, change out of this ridiculous outfit, and pack the car. I could then swing by Zach’s and pick him up and still do the two-hour-drive in time.

If he hasn’t ghosted me…

Dread makes friends with Anxiety and together they skip hand in hand through my system.

I absolutely cannot not turn up to Jasmine’s wedding. But the thought of having no distraction to stop me getting overwhelmed – worse, the thought of letting Sarah down? All of a sudden this feels like a lot.

My breathing is coming quicker and the oxygen seems thinner as I start pacing to try and find a solution amid what feels like rapidly diminishing options. I need a lifeline. Someone who’ll – what is that noise? Wow, okay, I’ve been so busy pacing I almost missed my phone ringing.

‘Yes?’ I answer breathlessly, thinking I should have checked who it was because why, yes, my mother has used my siblings’ phones this morning to check I’m still arriving.

‘Hey Ashleigh, what’s up with the calling?’

‘Zach? Thank God. Where are you? Are you on your way?’

‘On my way to…?’

I stop pacing.

It couldn’t be as simple as he forgot, could it?

‘To Memorial for the read-a-thon?’ I explain. ‘Which is actually over but was the precursor to the wedding we’re going to?’ I feel bad about the sarcasm but it’s already been quite the morning on account of my mother worrying and then the mix-up at the costume shop.

‘Oh … Oh shit, I’m at my mom’s.’

‘Excuse me?’

Wow. He did. He actually forgot.

‘Come on, Ashleigh, it’s not like you don’t know I come back to check on her at the weekends.’

‘I do know that. But we had plans. You told me you’d told her about the wedding.’ I don’t believe this. I reminded him last week. Should I have reminded him every day in between? What am I, his mother? Come to think of it, what kind of mother has he got that she didn’t remind him when he got there? Mine would have been all, ‘Why aren’t you at that wedding you said you were invited to? Why are you lying about going out? I’m worried about you. You need to leave the city and move back and be around your family.’

Now all the times Oz and my brother scoffed at the idea Zach went back to his family home on the weekend, has me wondering, which I hate. To distance myself from the thought I do an abrupt turn around and … whack, bounce off someone.

‘Sorry,’ I mutter, squeezing my eyes shut with mortification as a priest regains his balance and then looks at me with a frown as deep as the East River. I pull the bodice of my costume up higher and start walking again.

‘I guess it’s me who should be apologising,’ Zach says. ‘Ashleigh? You still there?’

‘Do you have a suit there? How long would it take for you to travel from your mom’s place to my folks for the wedding?’

‘No, I don’t have a suit here and obviously I’m not going to be able to make it to the wedding.’

Why is it obvious? Did he not understand all the times I portrayed the wedding as a bit of fun I was, in fact, deadly serious about him going with me?

‘We’ll get together when I’m back, yeah?’ he says. ‘Maybe catch that new movie?—’

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