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JESS

Technically, I can’t claim that I’ve been left at the altar. I haven’t made it that far. Yet.

While I wait in the dressing room, dubbed the “Bridal Suite” for today’s purposes in one of Los Angeles’s old Art Déco theaters, I tell myself Rexlan is stuck in traffic. That he’s having a wardrobe malfunction. It could be that he forgot to feed the dog. Not that he has one. Perhaps he was pet-sitting and failed to mention it to me.

Once, I suggested we get a puppy. From the other room, his mother shouted a resounding no because of the skinks—specifically the lance skin, a legless kind. They’re a type of lizard that looks like a snake. She has them in abundance. At first, I thought it was a bit eccentric. This is LA, after all, but it’s a bit odd how she’s built her life around lizards.

“Where are you, Rexlan?” I whisper.

In the last month or so, he’s neglected to tell me about several late-night meetings, work trips, and important appointments to further the reach of the Skink Society—his mother’s pet project turned six-figure online venture. Could he have forgotten our wedding day?

The guy is busy and has his assistant in a tizzy. Every time I’ve seen Cassleigh lately, her cheeks flame red like Rexlan has been making her work so hard she can scarcely catch her breath.

That’s how I feel now. My chest tightens because he has to know this is our big day. The one we’ve planned for. Well, the one his mother orchestrated, but still.

Where is he?

Standing behind a pair of wooden doors inlaid with etched glass while the guests eagerly await our appearance, I nervously bounce on my toes.

A grandfather clock ticks loudly, punishing me with worry as the seconds pass. A cold sweat prickles against the itchy crinoline inside my wedding gown—or that could be the special blue collie webbed lizard skin pouch filled with crystals that Sorsha Coogan, Rexlan’s mother, sewed inside so I’d have something old, new, borrowed, and blue—technically, the thread was the new thing.

If you ask me, her belief in the omnipotence of skinks is a big load of nonsense. But people buy it every day. I’ve spent the last three months packaging and mailing orders for her website, among other things.

This family wants me to be part of theirs, so how can I say no? After all, this is everything I’ve ever wanted.

Maybe except for the wedding cake. I would’ve gone with personal-size Bundts in a variety of flavors for everyone.

Also, I didn’t get a say about the guest list.

This wedding gown wasn’t my choice either.

According to Sorsha, it’s a trumpet fit, which I read does not complement my figure, but my momster- in-law to-be knows best. It’s more like a tube on the top, giving way to a wide skirt. In the back is a bustle and a long train. I look like a bloated, upside-down goose. I set out to be an actress but didn’t have this in mind.

I dab my forehead with a tissue as the women in my bridal party mutedly whisper among themselves.

“Do you have your phone?” asks Amy, one of the bridesmaids.

Pamberlie, Rexlan’s sister and the maid of honor, just moved back to Los Angeles from Phoenix a few days after Christmas last month. She waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t make a fuss. He’ll be here. Probably.”

He, being my fiancé, also said he’d be home from a business trip to Singapore on my birthday, but flight delays left him stranded. Not that I hold that against him. But it didn’t escape my notice that when unforeseen circumstances attempt to keep him from his important meetings, he finds a way. Or, rather, Cassleigh does.

Speaking of, I’m surprised she’s not here. Despite Sorsha insisting Cassleigh not join us, Rexlan placed her at a top table, claiming she’s the one who keeps him afloat.

I want to think that’s my role.

The MOG, the mother of the groom, waves her phone. “Rexlan is not answering my calls. He always picks up for me. You two looked like you argued last night.” The line between her eyebrows is already an inch deep.

I look around as if she could be speaking to anyone but me. My mouth opens and closes. “Argued? No.”

“There was tension during the rehearsal dinner,” she accuses.

“He wanted to leave early. Said he had a few things to finish up for the Skink Society.” I assumed it was because we’d be gone for ten days on our honeymoon.

“He’s turning into his father.”

I hope not. The man is on wife number six.

“Where’s Rex’s assistant? She always knows where he is,” Pamberlie says.

The wedding planner appears and pumps her hands in a slow-down motion. “Everyone relax. This happens all the time.”

“It does?” I read at least twenty-five hundred square feet worth of wedding magazines along with the equivalent in blog articles and it seems rare for a groom to be late.

“He probably has a good reason. A great one. No one would pass up their wedding day, especially to their one true love.” The wedding planner’s smile is one part consolation and one part pity. Or perhaps I’m too much in my head.

“I assumed he’d pick someone taller,” Pamberlie says, towering over me. She’s a former model with a slender build that is a perfect contrast to my curvy one.

An uneasy feeling winds its way through me like the slithering of a snake. Deep down, it was Sorsha who pushed us into this marriage because she wanted her son to quit playing video games, fooling around with some girl from high school, and grow up.

Apparently, I impressed her with my organizational skills, self-motivation, and how I was a maverick when it came to maintaining a website and online store for her, ahem, ‘Business.’

The truth is, everything I know about technology, I learned from video tutorials.

Another ten minutes pass. The wisps of hair that stylishly hang from my updo stick to my neck. I desperately need to reapply deodorant and have a sudden craving for a piece of chocolate.

Okay, that’s a lie. I want a vat of it. But that’s not going to help me now.

At the cake tasting, Sorsha shamed me for licking the frosting off my finger. Later, I overheard her telling the wedding planner that we were having a vanilla wedding. No chocolate allowed.

I suppose that’s fitting for me because, after everything that happened before I met Rexlan, I’d made a vanilla life for myself. It was simple, quiet, and some would say boring. But I’ve had enough excitement to last a lifetime.

Then Prince Rexlan came along. He’s not actually royalty, but he swept me off my feet … and maybe got cold feet. I pray that’s not the case.

“Do you think he has the time or day wrong?” says Rory, another one of the bridesmaids—all chosen from among Sorsha’s Skink Society—where we all help with customer service, packaging orders, and answering emails. Not to mention, I have a high rate of confidence it’s a lizard-worshipping cult.

I’m afraid when we return from the honeymoon, Sorsha is going to try to induct me into it.

“Typical Rexlan. He was late for graduation because he was hooking up with Amy in the library—probably the only time he set foot in there,” Pamberlie says.

Amy rolls her eyes but avoids looking at me. “That’s not true. We’d meet there to study biology all the time.” Her cheeks turn red.

Pamberlie huffs. “Where are all the groomsmen? Their one job was to get Rex here on time.”

The wedding planner interjects, “Actually, for a successful wedding, groomsmen have a variety of responsibilities, ranging from?—”

Sorsha shoots me the stink eye—skink eye?—as if the timeline going off the rails is my fault.

I could really use a family of my own right now, a hug even, someone to assure me that everything is going to be okay. I kind of thought the Coogans were my magic family goose. The uneasiness in my stomach that’s built up for the last few months suggests I’ve been living in a delusion. But it’s too late to go back now, right?

Several people talk at once, then abruptly go quiet when my fiancé’s voice filters through the room. Relief rushes through me. Rexlan is outside and probably has a reasonable explanation for his tardiness.

“Yay! It’s officially our wedding day. For a second there, I was afraid he wasn’t going to show up.” The shakiness in my voice ebbs with each word as he continues to talk.

His voice is coming from a cell phone. In the background of the video call are the sounds of laughter, talking, loud music, and … that can’t be right.

I frown and the flutters in my stomach nosedive into a stony pit filled with spikes and electric eels. Dramatic, but true.

Sorsha lifts her phone to eye level and barks, “Rexlan Levi Coogan, where are you?”

Only, he doesn’t answer and instead says, “Babe, I’m going to make you the happiest wife on the planet. Show me the rock, Mrs. Coogan. Show the world!”

I look around, confused, because everyone in this room has commented on the dainty emerald engagement ring Sorsha gave Rexlan for me to have. The others must be confused too because they murmur and whisper, but I can’t quite make out the distinct words over the fuzziness in my ears. I have a fleeting thought about my grandmother, who is Deaf.

We’re not blood relatives, but she adopted me when I was in high school. The fact that I didn’t tell her or my best friend Cara about this wedding makes me feel like I’m going to break out with a rash of shame.

“How can I be Mrs. Coogan, if we’re not yet married?” I glance at Sorsha. “Unless he means you.”

She lowers her phone, but not before I glimpse Rexlan, Cassleigh, and the unmistakable flash of a slot machine against the backdrop of Las Vegas.

“Let’s go back to the room and start our honeymoon,” Rexlan says from the phone.

A couple of the women gasp, Amy loudest of all.

Pamberlie’s eyes flash and her expression turns murderous.

Amy says, “Is he standing her up?”

Reality barrels my way like a meteor on a collision course with Earth, sucking all the air from the room. “Can I talk to him?”

“Obviously, he’s occupied at the moment, Jess,” Pamberlie hisses.

Unsteady, my body freezes over and my teeth start chattering. My pulse thunders. I look around for a place to sit down, but the bridal party surrounds me.

Rory asks, “Was that Cassleigh with Rexlan?”

Amy says, “Why are they in Vegas and not here?”

She must not have been at the top of her academic class.

The shiny, sparkly wedding day world splinters and shatters around me as my eyes brim with tears of embarrassment.

“Rexlan, my fiancé, just eloped with Cassleigh in Las Vegas.” I realize I’ve said this out loud in an eerily calm voice.

The wedding planner says, “We need to take action. Evasive or decisive, your call.”

I’m about to ask her to please make a brief but clear announcement to the guests when Sorsha interrupts. “This is beyond humiliating. I’ll never live this down.” I want to comfort her, but have several feet of satin, lace, and other fancy fabrics along with a mountain of what very much feels like animosity between us.

Then to me, she adds, “I always said you were flaky.”

Well then.

In the recounts of awful mothers of the bride or groom in the wedding articles I read, mom-zilla types would often deflect and place blame.

Turning my attention to the wedding planner, who has been the consummate professional, even when Sorsha requested nineteen change orders. I kept track because I’d sneak a foil-wrapped Dove chocolate into the wedding planner’s purse each time.

Sorsha’s accusatory gaze is trained on me. “You are such an embarrassment. I knew we shouldn’t have gone through with this. I never wanted my son to marry you, anyway.”

Ouch. I wince.

Pamberlie’s eyes narrow. “Mother, I distinctly recall you saying that Jess is better than Cassleigh because the day Rex brought her home after band practice in high school, she was grossed out by the skinks.”

Sorsha says, “I forbid it! Rexlan can not be with that little brat.”

“Too late,” Pamberlie says.

Not only did I just lose my fiancé, this means I’ve also lost my job. There’s no way I can run the Skink Society shop and website now.

Pamberlie continues, “My brother is such a loser. I can’t believe you didn’t see right through him. All the late nights, the trips, and when he dipped out of the elaborate three-month anniversary plans you made because he supposedly just had to go to a modern art gallery opening. Rex wouldn’t know art from his elbow.” She shakes her head as if royally disappointed in my na?veté.

But there’s a difference between wanting to deny reality and facing the aftermath if I confront it.

“Rexlan and Cassleigh sound lovely together,” Rory says with a little flourish at the end of the new Mrs. Coogan’s name like -leigh which rhymes with day . As in, this was supposed to be my wedding day.

“I thought it was Cass-lee,” Amy says, pronouncing the last part the way Rexlan’s assistant does.

“Does it matter?” Pamberlie asks.

“She’s your new sister-in-law!” Amy says with a cheer.

Everyone else has the decency to remain quiet.

The sadness that threatened to consume me turns hard. I’m not angry, more like resolved.

To leave.

Now.

I thank the bridal party and the wedding planner.

She asks, “What would you like me to tell the guests?”

“Please express my gratitude for their time and my regrets. You can let them know Rexlan got married today … to another woman. They can donate their gifts to a charity of their choice.”

Sorsha turns on her and says, “Not so fast. I pay, so you do what I say.”

The wedding planner goes still, but before she receives instruction, Sorsha says to me, “You ruined everything, Jess. I knew you were just trying to strike it big with our family’s empire.”

Eyes bulging, I shake my head.

Pamberlie crows a laugh. “That’s rich, coming from you, Mother, living off the child support for Rex and me and sour grapes.”

She hisses, “That’s Liz-Fizz, an all-natural lizard elixir, not grape juice .”

Through a crack in the door, I eye the cake, standing alone in an adjacent room and awaiting the reception. As a hobby baker, I asked if I could handle the cake. Of course, Sorsha said no. But still, cake is cake.

Biting the inside of my lip, I calculate how quickly I’ll be able to cross the floor in these shoes and make it to the door.

Ignoring her daughter, Sorsha sneers and to me, she says, “You’ll pay for this.”

Whatever fabric glue, stitching, and hair spray hold me together threatens to dissolve, but I won’t let these people see me cry. No one ever has.

Still in my gown and with my purse over my shoulder, I rush toward the wedding cake, pick it up, and blaze through the doors, gulping the fresh and balmy air when it suddenly starts to rain.