Page 43 of Last Call Lindy Hop
“Did Kenzie tell you that I was engaged?” I finally asked.
“Yes, but that was about all. She said you were engaged and that the breakup was messy.”
I huffed a sarcastic laugh. “That… is quite the understatement.”
“You don’t have to tell me about it.”
I shook my head. “No, I do. It’s the only way to explain why it’s so bad.”
“Want me to hold you?” he offered.
“No…” I took a deep breath.
I closed my eyes. “His name is Connor…” I shuddered at speaking it, “and I met him in college.”
I sniffled and gathered my nerves. “It started off as a fling in our sophomore year, but it cooled and I thought we were done. But at the end of junior year he was back, proclaiming what a mistake it had been to let me go. At first I thought it was just going to be another temporary thing, but he stuck around and we were serious by graduation.
“Or at least I thought we were…” I whispered.
Eli reached over and took my hand, squeezing it in a way that reminded me he was supporting me.
“He got a job in his hometown after college, and well…” I took a deep breath. “My family is… kinda well off. We’re not super rich or anything, but… Let’s just say I don’t have to work if I don’t want to. So we decided that I’d move with him and I’d look for work once there.
“It wasn’t an easy transition. I grew up in a city slightly bigger than Mesa Roja, but he was from a much smaller city of only about twenty-thousand. It was hard to find a job, and when I did it wasn’t quite what I wanted. But he seemed happy, and that was enough.”
I paused, then stood and started pacing. “I should have seen the signs so much sooner: late nights at the office, needing to get drinks with coworkers to fit into the office culture, visiting friends and making excuses as to why I couldn’t join him. But I just dismissed it as him doing what was needed for work and reconnecting. I mean, we didn’t have to have the same friend group, and I wasn’t going to be that clingy boyfriend who couldn’t handle him being gone on his own.
“Meanwhile I was working, but also drawing money from my trust. We lived in a much nicer apartment than our salaries would allow, and over time it just became normal for me to shower him in nice gifts… because he always seemed happiest when I did.”
My hands started shaking as I remembered what a fool I’d been.
Another pause and deep breath. “I was so happy when he proposed. I thought everything was great, and that I’d live the dream. We’d get married, I’d eventually find a job I liked, and we’d have a good life. Then the wedding planning started. At first it was fine, but pretty quickly he started deferring to me. Once again, I just took it as sweet. I had more ideas about the wedding than he did, and he said he just wanted me to be happy with it. But soon enough, deferring to me meant that he started skipping appointments. Sudden work projects,” I made air quotes, “kept him from catering and cake tasting. He… trusted my judgment… when I met with venue coordinators for tables and decor. He tried to just hand me off to his mother to handle the invitations for his side, but I insisted that she wouldn’t know the friends he would want there. So he half did it, pawning me off to his mother for his family and him taking his friends. About the only thing he really did seem to care about was his bachelor party.”
“Lance…” Eli said softly.
I gave him a weak smile. “There were so many signs that I just ignored. But,” I sighed, “probably the worst was the argument over a prenup. My mom was rightfully insistent, but he claimed that he loved me and would never leave. My trust was safe, of course, but Mom wanted to make sure that I protected anything bought with that money. Connor was insistent about getting a house after we were married, and other big purchases that would have been considered marital property.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I could have bought a house at any time, but he kept saying that we should wait until after we were married, claiming two big life events would be too much stress. I see now that he was hoping to get half when he ended things.”
I stopped pacing, noticing how much I was shaking.
“Come here,” Eli said softly.
I shook my head. “No. I… I need to be strong for this.”
“Ok.”
I took a breath to steady myself. “Finally the big day arrived, and I thought everything was going to run smoothly. Our wedding planner was handling any last-minute concerns. All we had to do was get ready, do the thing, party, then off to a two-week honeymoon in Cancun. Then…”
My fingers curled into my palms as I remembered.
“Kenzie was my best woman. It was getting close to go-time, and we hadn’t heard from his side of the party in a while. So she decided to go to his suite and find out how much longer he needed. We had keys to each other’s suites so that people could come and go as needed, so when nobody responded to her knock she went on in…”
I sniffled and wiped a tear away. “She caught him, with his best man balls deep in his ass, pinned against a wall. And… she did the one thing that would prevent him from refuting it. They hadn’t noticed her, so she pulled out her phone and started recording.
“It was thirty seconds, that was all she took before she walked out again, but it was more than enough. Not only was it clear that Connor was into it, but that it had been going on for a while.”
I paused, grabbing one hand with the other in an attempt to make them stop shaking. “He clearly said that he hated that our honeymoon was for two weeks, because… I couldn’t fuck him like that, and that it meant that it was two weeks alone with ‘that whiny, nagging, rich boy.’”
