Page 93 of The One I Need
The tears have started falling from her eyes, and I don't blame her. I’d be crying too if I was carrying all of this for sixteen years.
“I know what you must be thinking. How could I stay with him? How did I still want to marry him?”
I shake my head. “No. I would never think that. I wasn’t in your shoes. I can’t imagine what those felt like. No one can judge a person in that situation unless they were there.”
She shrugs. “Honestly, I judge me. I don’t know why I stayed. Maybe because I thought this was what love was. Maybe because I was told and taught my entire life that marriage and families weren’t love based, only for the business side of things. I’m not sure. I only knew that despite everything, I was still ready to marry him.”
“God I hope the next ‘but’ of the story is coming.”
“It is. We had turned eighteen, just graduated, and it was the morning of the wedding. It was small. Jessie and Riley were my bridesmaids, and a few of Matt’s friends were standing up for him. I was getting ready in one of the rooms in the church and went to use the restroom. The one in the bridal suite wasn’t working, so I just used one in the hallway. That’s when I walked in on my almost husband having sex with my bridesmaid on the bathroom counter.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope,” she shakes her head. “Right there for me to see. Dress hiked up. Pants on the ground. Dick going in and out.”
That’s it. If I see him tomorrow, he’s dead. I will kill him, and I won’t apologize.
“What did you do?”
“I ran,” I say. “That was part of his dig today about me running away. I ran back to the room, tears flowing down my cheeks. At that moment, I realized everything I’d been ignoring. I didn’t know what gaslighting was back then, but that’s what he was doing. Every emotion and every denial and excuse I made for him started hitting me. I couldn’t even get out the words to my mom or Jessie about what I saw or what I was feeling. The only thing I could say was that I was done. I wasn’t marrying him.”
“Good. That’s what you should have said.”
Izzy pauses for a second to sit up in the bed, but doesn’t let go of my hand. Even if she tried, I wouldn’t let her.
“Jessie finally calmed me down and I told her what I saw. She knew a little of how he treated me, and she always tried to tell me it wasn’t right. But of course I didn’t believe her. She never wanted me to marry him, but she also knew why I was and understood the family obligation. But this was the last straw for her. My mother, however, didn’t agree to that.”
“I’m going to go on record saying that my mother-in-law is a cold-hearted bitch.”
This gets her to laugh a little through the tears. “That’s putting it lightly. She told me I shouldn’t overreact. That boys will be boys. And that if I knew what was good for me, I’d still walk down the aisle and marry Matt.”
“Excuse me? She wanted her daughter to marry someone who was cheating on her?”
“Indeed she did.” Izzy pauses for a second, and I can’t imagine what else she has to gear up to tell me. “When I told her that I wouldn’t, that I was sorry I was messing up the store deal, but I couldn’t be around him anymore, she told me that if that was the decision I was making, that I had to go and tell everyone. I cried, begging her not to make me, but she wouldn’t hear of it. So there I stood, in my wedding dress, in front of the entire town with gawking eyes, to tell them that I had called off the wedding. I wasn’t allowed to say why. I was told to say that I was ending things, it was my decision and not Matt’s, and that I apologized for ruining their day.”
“Motherfucker…Fuck, Izzy…is that why…”
Izzy nods. “I hate people looking at me in a crowd? Yeah. Every time I’m in a room of people, I immediately go back to being that eighteen-year-old girl again, having to tell the town that I called off my wedding. The worst part? I know I was in the right to do it. But because of what I was forced to say, and how I was forced to embarrass myself like that, I look back at that moment and I instantly freeze in anxiety. That somehow I was in the wrong.”
“But you weren’t, you know that right?”
“I do. But not according to my parents. Or Matt’s. If you ask them, I was—and still am—the selfish brat who didn’t know her place in the family.”
“I can’t believe they seriously wanted you to still marry him? Also, how long were they together? When did she get pregnant? What did they say when they found out she was pregnant? How is he getting off scot free in all this?”
“I’ll go in order: Yes, they wanted me to still marry him. They said it would be for the greater good of the families and the businesses. Found out later they had been together for about five months before the wedding. And when everyone found out about Riley being pregnant, I believe the company line was he was sowing his wild oats, but that he was doing the right thing by marrying her because he’s a good man.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I couldn’t make it up if I tried.”
“Wow,” I say, trying to wrap my head around all of this. Everything now makes so much sense. Why Izzy is hesitant to receive love, or to give it. Her fear of crowds. Why she thinks marriage is nothing short of hell. I don’t blame her at all. Not one single bit. “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say,” she says. “The day I canceled the wedding was the first day of my life. Somehow the light bulb came on that I was more than some girl who was going to be used and abused by the people in her life that were supposed to love her. That night I packed my stuff and Jessie drove me to the train station. I was in Los Angeles two days later.”
“Good for you,” I say. “I’m so damn proud of you.”
“I don’t know if proud is the right word. Yes, I got myself out of there. Yes, I got the hell out of a situation that no one should ever be in. I put myself through school and struggled before landing on my feet. But I let that dictate my life. The strength didn’t stay. Hell, the only other relationship I tried ended with him cheating on me as well. After that I just decided that it was easier to not try then deal with it at all.”
