Page 128 of The Wedding Menu

He turns around, and the look in his eyes terrifies me. Not because it’s in any way menacing but because it’s empty. Just shallow and final and dark. “Goodbye, Amelie.”

I stare at the door but my feet are frozen on the spot, my body reaching an uncomfortably low temperature as my stomach clenches again and again, until I turn to the toilet just in time to vomit breakfast. Looks like I lost that fight. Tears roll down my cheeks as I grasp the cold porcelain, my throat burning and my head thumping with pain. Then there’s a knock at the door.

Oh my God.

Did he come back? Please let that be him.

“Ames?” Barb calls. “Can I come in? What’s going on?”

My shoulders slump as I rake the back of my hand over my mouth. Nausea still makes me feel like I’m on the deck of a boat, but the gagging has stopped, so I tentatively stand and flush.

Is marriage so important to you that you’d choose to be his unhappy wife over being my happy girlfriend?

His words echo in my mind over and over again in the same broken, distressed voice he used to pronounce them as my eyes find my reflection in the mirror. My skin is gray despite the makeup, and clumps of black mascara are gluing my eyelashes together. My lipstick is smudged and my hair is flattening out already. I’m gross and sickly, my cheekbones sticking out and my dress hardly fitting me right. The lack of sleep, the stress, the heartache—I can almost see the scars each has left on my pale skin over the past six months.

For a moment, in the silence of the bathroom apart from my ragged breathing, I forget about Ian and Frank. About everyone else too. I look at a reflection in the mirror I don’t recognize, and her eyes are asking me a single question.

Why are you doing this to me?

It’s maybe the biggest blow yet, how I’ve let myself down. At the moment, it feels unforgivable. But if there’s a path to forgiveness, I know what the first step is.

I have to call this wedding off.

I have to go after Ian and tell him the truth. That I have feelings for him, too, that I think I’ve always had them, ever since Barb’s wedding, when he sat down at my table and then danced with me. That I’ve tried to hold my feelings back, then tried to keep him out of my life so that at the very least my feelings for him would go away. But they haven’t, and it feels like they never will. Like I don’t want them to.

Just as Barb knocks again, a jolt of adrenaline pushes me to the door. Fumbling for the handle, I pull it open.

Barb looks me up and down in shock. “Ames, why did a guy just come out of this bathroom and throw this in the bin?”

Looking at the small black box she’s holding, I extend myhand. As she sets it on my palm, my heart wrenches painfully. It can’t possibly be anything but a ring, and the awareness of it almost floors me.

I made a mistake. Worse, I made the one mistake I’ll regret for the rest of my life.

I know it for a fact, and it’s not the awareness that if I had chosen him unconditionally, he would have done the same. He would have proposed. It’s realizing how close it all is to meaningless right now. I’ve wanted to get married for so long, I’ve dreamed of this day so much, and all I can think about right now are Ian’s words.

I’d much rather be his girlfriend than anyone else’s wife.

“Are you…” She swallows. “Ames, I—maybe you shouldn’t get married.”

“One step ahead of you.” I walk past her with the sharp corners of the black box digging into my hand. At this point I’ve already messed everything up irreversibly. The only thing I can do is explain it all to Frank, then call Ian and beg him to listen.

I step back out through the endless corridors of this horrible villa until I find Trevor and Martha talking by one of the many identical doors. “Hey,” I say, and as their eyes land on me, they both gasp. Right. I look like I just escaped a psych ward in a horror movie. “Where’s Frank’s room?”

They exchange a look, then Martha clears her throat. “It’s this one, but, Ames—”

I yank the door open and stride inside. I really don’t have time for her right now, but she’s someone I’ll deal with later. “Frank?” I call out, Martha following close behind me. “M, please, Frank and I need to talk in private.”

She presses her lips together, then walks to his desk. As she strides back to me, she holds out a paper, her eyes stuck to it as ifshe’s specifically avoiding my gaze. With my heart beating as if I’ve just run a whole marathon, I grab it, skimming the words written on it and knowing they won’t be good.

I’m sorry. I can’t.

Martha squeezes my arm when I look in her eyes for an explanation. “He…” She trails off. “Frank’s gone.”

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