Page 52 of Snowbound

“No, no, sweetie,” she says. “You listen to me now, okay?”

I clamp my mouth shut despite the fact that she asked me to speak, and she spends the next half hour explaining to me that she wants to get married in a country club with white horses and have the ceremony in the middle of a lake so she can walk on water like some sort of weird Christ figure. Nicholas doesn’t say much, and I guess he either agrees with her or is going along with her to make her happy, because she’s definitely not the kind of person who is easy to say no to.

When Ellen’s ideas finally run out, I slide a word in edgewise. “Well, these are all great ideas and so useful to me at this stage. Thank you.” She beams. “Of course, we want the big day to be all about you.”

“Oh, no,” says Nicholas, cutting me off. “That’s not important. What’s important is everything looks like a million dollars. If it’s not luxury, we don’t want it, right?”

“Right,” I say, trying not to let the already weak smile on my face waver. “Well, why don’t we talk about venue first? Getting the right place is so important for making a splash.”

As they start telling me about country clubs and mansion estates, I let my mind wander back to Ruth and John. This wedding couldn’t be further away from that. These two might like each other, and maybe they even love each other, but nothing about this wedding has to do with love. All of this is just to show off to their friends or business rivals.

No doubt they’ll invite every C-grade celebrity they have ever met to make themselves look relevant. And no doubt they’ll end up splashed on some magazine for people who don’t have anything better to do with their lives than read that sort of stuff.

For the first time in years, I put together a ceremony that was intimately about the couple and nothing else. Thinking about it now is making me ache to go back. To be around the kind of genuine love that Ellen and Nicholas will never have.

They’re too busy showing off to show each other how much they care.

“So,” I say in the next pause in the relentless monologue that’s been directed at me. “Fall is a great time to get married. There are so many seasonal color palettes we can work with.”

“Ugh,” huffs Ellen. “Orange and brown is gauche. And there’s no way of making yellow look attractive. No, we want greens and blues.”

“Gold and silver,” adds Nicholas. “And red for fortune. And purple for royalty.”

“We have to look like royalty,” agrees Ellen.

I take down some notes on my laptop. Purple and red and silver and green. I’m struggling to see how those colors fit together, but if I’m honest, that’s the least contradictory thing that they’ve said to me so far. This is going to be a challenge. And it’s one I will rise to.

Of course I will. As usual, my reputation is at stake.

But knowing that I will succeed doesn’t stop the nausea from grabbing me. Everything that they say is making me feel sick on the inside, and I can’t tell if it’s the lack of sleep or the anxiety over making all this work.

We hit another pause, and I see my opportunity. “Excuse me for a minute. I have to use the ladies’ room.”

Ellen looks at me as if to say,how dare you have a natural bodily function?But I need a moment alone to take a breath or else I am going to vomit all over this expensive carpet.

I step into the restroom, and I’m met with a huge, polished mirror showing me a reflection of myself. I look pale and unwell, and even when I try to smile at myself, it looks fake. Why is this so hard? It must be the sleeplessness.

I splash some cold water on my face and take some deep breaths, willing the sickness of my stomach to go away. It resists, but eventually I’ve taken enough breaths to make it fade, and I take a final shaky one to steel myself for going back out there. I know for a fact that people like this love the sound of their own voices, so it’s going to be more hours yet.

I can do this. This is my life. I can put Mullen Falls behind me. Why is it so hard to let that damn place go?

CHAPTER29

GABE

Two weeks pass in a blur. Phoebe is the first to comment on my mood, but to be fair, it’s not like I’ve been spending time with anyone else.

“You liked that girl, didn’t you?” she says one day out of the blue, so simply and to the point it gives me no time to think, no room to deny it.

All I say is, “I did.”

She nods. “Girls, huh? Don’t they just break your heart?”

I grimace. “This isn’t going to be another tedious story about your love life, is it?”

She throws up both hands, pretending to be offended. “When have I ever done that to you?”

I raise an eyebrow. For someone so young, she’s got an incredibly complicated dating and social life. It makes me glad for my own simplicity.

---