The Bride (The Bride #1)(9)

“Not happening.”

“Hear me out. It’s got a private bathroom, so we wouldn’t have to share. A TV. You could have your own space that’s separate from me. It makes sense, Jake. I can’t take it. It would be too weird and I don’t want to move all my stuff anyway. I like my room.”

I hated it when she made sense. “Okay.”

“I’ll start going through his stuff tomorrow.”

“School,” I instinctively said. It was Monday.

“One more day. I have what I need to catch up,” she said, pointing at the laptop. “I think… I need one more day. Then I can do it.”

“Okay. One more day.”

I took my beer and was about to leave her to her homework when I thought about what Janet said. What people might think about us living together.

I wanted to ask her if she had concerns, but I didn’t want to invite the ugliness of it inside. Of course it wouldn’t have occurred to her that people might talk. She was growing up, but she was still innocent. I wasn’t going to change that.

“Dinner in few hours?”

“Yep,” she said. “Lots of casseroles. We have casseroles for life or something.”

I laughed and thought it was the first time. The first time since Sam died. Ellie could always do that.

Yeah, I was doing the right thing.





Four





Ellie





I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t think I looked like a creepy teenage bride and I knew I wasn’t a creepy teenage bride, but still…

I didn’t look like me.

It was the same dress I wore to my dad’s funeral—weird, I know—because it was still my nicest dress. Blue velvet, capped sleeves, with a belted waist. I wore my hair up because I thought it made me look older.

You know, because I was getting married today.

MARRIED.

I should at least look like I knew what I was doing.

I kept going back to my mantra. It’s no big deal. It’s no big deal. It’s no big deal.

Who was I kidding? It was a big freaking deal. On a scale of one to ten, this was a full-on ten.

I was getting MARRIED.

I guess I always thought I would someday. Fall in love. Find my guy. Have kids. It was all out there as the most likely future.

Sure, sometimes I thought about leaving Montana and heading to New York and becoming some major advertising executive. I would work in this high rise building in a corner office. I would have people fetch me coffee and handle my dry cleaning. I would wear five-hundred-dollar shoes and thousand-dollar pant suits. And I would have someone blow out my hair every day because it always looked nice when Bella at the Hair Stop in town blew it out.

Only I knew that was never going to be my reality. My reality was cattle, horses, hay, chicken shit (literally chicken shit), and Montana.

So here I was, standing in front of a mirror in my blue velvet dress, leggings (because still January) and my hair up because I thought it made me look older.

Shoe choice was a no-brainer. Flats. Because guys did NOT date girls who were taller than them even if it was only because of shoes. It was a biological imperative.

Jake was pretty tall. I guess could have worn heels, but I didn’t have any.

I didn’t want to buy anything new for the wedding either, because then it might make it seem more than it was.

It was no big deal.

There was a soft knock on the door. “Ellie, you ready?”

It was Howard.

“Another minute?”

“Sure.”

Howard had been great. He’d written up the pre-nup. What was mine was mine, what was Jake’s was Jakes. It would make the divorce a lot cleaner. He’d gotten Judge Michaels to waive the parental consent on the marriage certificate. Howard and his secretary were going to be witnesses.

I wanted to keep it professional. No friends or anything. Besides, then I would have to chose between Karen or Chrissy, who were my two best friends. Either one would have been mad if I picked one over the other. If I had them both come, then it would have been a thing and Lisa might have felt left out.

No, it was best to make it business.

Janet definitely wasn’t coming.

Jake said she was cool with the situation now. That she understood he was doing what he had to do and was willing to wait for him.

What he had to do.

That’s what he’d said. What he had to do.

I didn’t like it. When he said that, it made me feel like this charity case. Like that football player from the movie with Sandra Bullock. You know the one where she won the Oscar and was all like I love my husband Jesse so much only to find out practically the next day he was banging a porn star behind her back.

I felt like the football player. I needed to be saved.

Only what if he didn’t need to be saved? What if I didn’t?

He was a big freaking dude. What if he found a way to get into football without the rich blond?

I wasn’t homeless. I wasn’t poor. I was sitting on land worth two million freaking dollars. What if I could have made it on my own for sixteen months?

I had it so much easier than that football guy did. Yet, still I needed to be saved.

Jake was going to do what he had to do.

Another gentle knock. “Ellie? We’re running a little late now.”