I stepped into my limousine and pressed the bottom of my wedding dress flat. The scent of coconut and lemongrass filled the interior of the cabin. I imagined if cream and sunshine had a scent, this would be it. Today, I needed aromatherapy to do what it was supposed to do—relax me.
“Congratulations on your wedding.” The driver offered me a genuine smile.
“Thank you. It’s a vow renewal ceremony.” I hunched my shoulders like an excited teenager. “Seven years.”
“That’s a lot to be proud of. He’s a lucky man.”
Drew and I were both lucky. That’s what I’d told myself just this morning, but still an uneasiness rose in my belly and formed a knot dead center. Something was bothering me, and I couldn’t put my finger on what.
A lingering shiver died in the heat of the warm vehicle. I dropped into the plush leather seat and pushed the niggling thought of worry from my mind.
Heaven.
I closed my eyes and moaned like I’d taken shoes off after waiting tables for twelve hours. This car was everything.
The door opened again. “I have your bag.” My assistant, Swella Avery, was gifted in assisting.
I opened my eyes and squinted against the sunlight gleaming over Swella’s shoulder. “As soon as I get back from my honeymoon, you are getting a huge bonus.”
Swella’s green eyes bugged like glassy volcanic rock. Her luminous, spiked red hair shot out like lava from a recent eruption. “Please let it be enough for the new Valentino jeans.”
I laughed. “Done. Now, don’t text me. Don’t call me. Don’t anything me. I need a few minutes of peace.”
“Peace is yours.” Swella poked her head in and inhaled demonstratively. “I didn’t overdo it with the spray, did I?” Not waiting for my answer, she snatched her head out. “We’d better get going.” She waggled her shoulders and reminded me, “It’s almost over.” With a shove of the door, she disappeared. I was sure she was just glad to get this day ticked off her to-do list. It was seven months in the making, and I’d been running her all over the city.
Guilt rushed in. I could have let her ride with me. That’s what she’d wanted. That’s what the whole “I have your bag” intrusion was about, but I didn’t owe her a piece of my space. Not today. I wanted quiet. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts.
The car rolled forward, moving effortlessly through my Park Slope neighborhood, past Prospect Park on the left. I watched the tops of bare trees fly by. A light coat of ice from the sprinkling of snow we’d had the day before decorated the limbs. I was hopeful they would have leaves soon. A month ago, the groundhog forecast an early spring, but he was unreliable. New York winters submitted to no authority, certainly not one steeped in superstition and regulated by a rodent.
My phone buzzed. Expecting it to be Drew, I warmed a little around my heart. He hadn’t texted or called me since early this morning. We weren’t in “new” love, but I expected a little excitement and romance.
The text was from my mother: Don’t be late.
“As if,” I whispered, deleting it. I was thirty-six years old, and I’d never been late to any meeting or event in my life.My mother’s lectures on timeliness were repetitive and exhausting, yet effective, so I was grateful for her consistency.
I swiped until I located my husband’s number and tapped to dial. After two rings, it went to voicemail. He’s busy.
That’s what I told myself, but a strange tension hovered in our home, one that I summarily dismissed as prerenewal stress. But try as I might to ignore it, my intuition kept nagging in a familiar female voice—my own—that something was wrong, or maybe it was that something was worse. Things had been off between Drew and me for a long time. But in forty-five minutes, we’d declare our love, celebrate it, and then fix whatever might be broken under the warm Hawaiian sun.
I raised the phone, twisted my face into that dumb duck-lip, and captured my image. Humming to lyrics playing in my mind, I typed the caption: I’m at the chapel and I’m going to get married.
Minutes later, with the help of the driver, I eased out of the limo and joined my part of the wedding party, which included my maid of honor / cousin / bestie, Leslie Parker, and my former supermodel friends, Alexis and Reese. All but Swella, who I’d treated to a black and crystal-beaded Carolina Herrera suit, were wearing form-fitting, off-the-shoulder, silk sage dresses under faux fur shawls that matched the fur wrap keeping me warm.
“Let’s get a pic,” Swella suggested, and the women I loved flanked me and posed with enthusiasm and bright smiles.
Waving us toward the building, Swella led our small party through the packed parking lot. The cars were all empty. Everyone was inside. It hadn’t snowed or rained as predicted.
I silenced the annoying little voice again. It was a liar. Today was going to be perfect.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the annoying little voice could no longer be ignored. This wasn’t a wedding, but I’d told Drew I didn’t want him to see me until the ceremony, so when he knocked on the door of my bridal suite and insisted I join him across the hall in the pastor’s study, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
The heavy door closed with a thud that echoed in the corridor behind us. I waited a beat and then another as Drew stood there in his luxurious Giorgio Armani tuxedo—the tuxedo I picked out for him.
Discomfort reddened his face. He looked away from me. When he returned his eyes, his expression was odd, so I steeled myself for what he had to say.
“I can’t go through with the ceremony.”
Drew’s brittle words floated above me. They wouldn’t land in my brain, but I registered fear. It slammed into my back. Splitting me in two: Casey ninety seconds ago and Casey now. Those were two different people. Both were residing . . . fighting . . . attempting to survive this hack job.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I said words that forced him to repeat himself.
“You heard me, Casey. I can’t go through with the ceremony.”
In my choice of two-and-a-half-inch heels, I had to look up at Drew. I usually wore higher heels, but I’d wanted him to tower over me a bit. His height would play into my viewers’ fantasies. A tall, dark, and handsome man never got old, so his looks were a part of the fairy tale I was delivering today. The one he was . . .
Canceling?
No!
The heat kicked on with a knock, sending a flood of warm air from the vent above. Drew’s earthy cedar cologne mixed with the damp scent reeking from the air vent, offering the odor of sweet, wet wood. It made me nauseous.
In this small pastor’s study, there wasn’t much space between us, but I stepped closer to him, laughed uncomfortably, and said, “Of course you can.”
My words were solid, but my footing was not. The plush, spongy carpet in this room made me bounce. Between the flooring and Drew’s statement, I was shook. We were hashtag relationship goals.
“No. I can’t, and there’s no point in you making me say it over and over again.”
Wishing and hoping I’d heard him wrong was over. His can’t whirled around in front of me like a swarm of gnats. This was all convoluted. This was all wrong. I sputtered, stating the obvious, “I’ve planned this for months.”
I was Casey B, a successful beauty influencer—makeup, hair, and fashion. This wasn’t an ordinary ceremony. It was a public one. As in nearly-a-million-views-just-this-week kind of public.
Drew and I had originally eloped. When I shared our sweet story in a video, it was comments from a few of my followers that sparked the idea to have a vow renewal ceremony so I could have an actual wedding with a dress and pictures and all the fanfare that came with weddings. This event was personal, but it was also a part of my business. We’d both lived, breathed, and eaten it for . . . “Seven months, Drew.”
He clenched his jaw, ticking his mouth slightly to the right. “Is that what you’re most upset about? Your time?”
I tried to tell myself I was shocked, but I wasn’t sure it was true. The voice in my head had been warning me for weeks. I cupped my hands together in front of my waist. “At what point did you decide . . .” I paused, taking a deep breath to push the nausea that crept up my throat back into my belly.
Drew sighed dramatically, bothered before meeting my eyes with cold, detached ones. “I’m not renewing our vows.” My heart skipped a few beats before he added, “I want a divorce.”
The room spun. If I had a crank in my belly, my stomach couldn’t churn more. Discomfort rose in my torso to my chest and spread from the center to my shoulder blades.
My eyes burned, but I fought crying. I couldn’t let tears ruin my makeup.
A rattling series of knocks on the old wooden door caused me to jump. Drew and I broke eye contact. Seconds later, Swella stuck her head around the doorjamb before easing her body through the small slit she’d allowed herself to have.
“Mr. Carter.” She smiled. Why she always called him that when he was simply Drew, I didn’t understand. She continued, “I guess it’s not a bad thing for the groom to see the bride at a vow renewal.” She giggled. At twenty-two, if you weren’t giggling, you were living life all wrong. But I had nothing to laugh about, so Swella had to go.
I returned my gaze to Drew. With my eyes, I asked the question weighing down my tongue: “Are you really going to do this?”
Drew’s lips thinned. His Adam’s apple rose and fell. A wordless tilt of his head was his answer.
He’s doing this.
“Swella”—I slid my eyes in her direction—“we need more time.”
Swella’s smile dropped. She was intuitive. Her job included anticipating my needs and reading my moods. She’d spent enough time in our home, heard enough arguments, survived enough his-and-her bouts of the silent treatment to know the energy in the room was off. She backed out. “The camera crew is on the clock.” I could hear her clicking heels fade as she disappeared down the hall.
The cameras.
The ceremony was being livestreamed on my platforms. The team I was working with for a documentary about social media influencers was gathering photos and video. So were various beauty magazines and a producer from Born TV network. The producer was hunting footage for a potential reality television series about my life as a former model turned influencer. This had to happen. I wouldn’t recover from the humiliation of a canceled ceremony.
I raised one hand to my pounding heart and pointed toward the door with the other. “Did you hear that, Drew? There are cameras out there.”
Drew stuck his hands in his pants pockets. He looked up at me with the saddest eyes I think I’d ever seen. “There are always cameras. That’s the problem.”
Dismissively, he turned his back. I grabbed him by the arm. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Drew did a half turn in my direction, his eyebrows knit together, and he pulled his elbow from my grasp.
I didn’t perspire easily, so when the long trickle of sweat traveled down my spine, I knew my subconscious was fully aware of what my conscious mind was fighting. The man standing before me had been checked out for months. But when exactly had he stopped appreciating what I did? When did the cameras become too much? We both knew his work as a civil rights attorney was more important than mine, but we also knew my work paid the bills. My business afforded him the luxury of following his passion. He couldn’t resent all that I’d built. Could he?
“We are not getting a divorce. Come on, Drew. Seven years . . .” My attempt at levity failed with the fear that caused my voice to crack. “We are renewing our vows.”
Deep grooves furrowed his forehead. He squared his shoulders. He didn’t answer me.
I continued, “Let’s say for the sake of argument, you want to separate while we figure some things out. You know this event is bigger than whatever is wrong with our marriage.” I raised a hand to my forehead. “Please, we can go to counseling. We can fix this, but not if you do this today. Not if you destroy me like this.”
“I thought if I got dressed, I could go through with it, but I can’t make myself stand at that altar and say, ‘I do.’ Not to you. Not again.” He paused for a moment and took a few steps back—strategically distancing himself from my pain. “I’m tired. I can’t live in front of the cameras anymore.”
I inhaled and exhaled before doing a slow count to five. Something in me thought I could change his mind. My husband was reasonable. He could be reasoned with. “Drew, I’ve been in this business since we got married. You encouraged me to do it.”
“I encouraged you because I didn’t know how toxic it would be. I didn’t sign up for life on social media.”
I raised a hand to my chest. “You signed up for me.”
“Not like this.” He had the nerve to be losing patience. I could hear it in his voice. “I told you that.”
I bit back the impulse to scream. My mind went back to the conversation we’d had a year ago. Drew expressed bother about the number of hours I worked. My response—I was still building, trending upward in my numbers past my competition. I’d had offers for a sunglass line and a makeup line. Per my mother, the contracts weren’t good, but it was just a matter of time before the right offer would happen.
We’d talked about my work, so this made no sense. I pushed his voice out of my head. I tried to pace in a tight little circle like I always did when I was stressed. I learned to move in a small space when I modeled because small spaces were all I had in the dressing rooms. But my train wouldn’t permit me to move freely. It was long and heavy like the anger rolling through me. “How could you tell me you want a divorce like this—on this day?”
Silence hung between us for a few moments. I had no idea what he was thinking. He wasn’t readable, but he had to realize I was right, and he was wrong—right? He had to know he couldn’t blame this all on me.
“You work constantly. And when you’re not on your phone, you’re putting on makeup or changing your clothes to get in front of the camera.” Drew took a few more steps away from me toward the window he likely wanted to escape through.
“So you couldn’t have interrupted me and said, ‘Hey, wife, I’m unhappy. I’m having second thoughts’?”
He responded as if he hadn’t even heard my question. Like he had no responsibility to ring the alarm. He turned and looked at me again. “When you’re not doing all that, you’re talking about it. Planning it. Staging it.” Drew pulled his tie loose. “This makes me a jerk. I know that.”
“There are more than two hundred people in the sanctuary,” I howled like a hurt animal. I had three million followers across my platforms. This event belonged to them just as much as it belonged to us. Hot tears burned my eyes. There was no coming back from this. I’d hate him forever.
Drew stepped to me. He placed his hands on my shoulders. “I thought if I just got here, I could go through with it. I thought I could look at you and say, ‘I do,’” he said, still defending his betrayal, “but I can’t.”
I opened my mouth to say one more please, but I knew in the millisecond before I moved my tongue not to bother. There was nothing in his eyes.
The heater buzzed and another whoosh of air carried his cologne to my nostrils. It faded quickly, just like his image as he turned and backed from the room, dragging every bit of who I was with him.
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