He Gave My Wedding to Her

I, Emma Bennett, was 30 minutes late to my wedding rehearsal. By the time I arrived, my fiancé, Wright Hugh, had already walked my best friend, Jenna Hart, down the aisle. Jenna should have been in a bridesmaid dress. Instead, she was wearing my wedding gown while Wright stood beneath the arch, smiling as he held out his hand to her. After the run-through, they debated when the music should start, then argued over who would say the vows first. The wedding planner laughed. "Come on, groom. No arguing now. At a wedding, the bride gets the final say." They exchanged a sheepish glance, then both looked down, cheeks flushed. I stood a short distance away and watched them decide every detail of my wedding. It was supposed to be my wedding to Wright, yet Jenna looked far more like the bride. I swallowed the ache in my throat and texted my boss. Emma: Ma'am, I've thought about the Valoria assignment you mentioned. I'll take it. After putting away my phone, I overheard a staff member say, "The bride and groom look perfect together. Two run-throughs and they're already this in sync." I followed his gaze. Wright was adjusting the ribbon in Jenna's hands. She tipped her face up and smiled at him. They did look perfect together. Painfully so. I said nothing. Jenna finally noticed me when she turned around. "Emma, you're here!" She let go of Wright's hand, gathered her skirt, and hurried toward me. "There you are. We waited 30 minutes, so we went through it once without you." Wright came over too. "I knew you'd be late. Good thing Jenna was here, or we wouldn't have gotten anything settled today." Before I could answer, the wedding coordinator began going over the schedule they had finalized. They had fixed every time slot and every step of the ceremony. Jenna had even changed my processional music. She said the original strings were too slow and the guests would lose interest, so Wright told the sound engineer to switch to her favorite song. Apparently, nothing at my own wedding had required the actual bride. Then the florist approached with two sample boards and asked which flowers we wanted for the bouquet. Wright pointed to the one on the left. "Roses. Don't wedding bouquets usually use roses?" Jenna picked up the other board. "Red roses are dated, and they clash with our color palette. White calla lilies look cleaner. They'll photograph beautifully." Wright studied them for two seconds, then shrugged. "Fine. We'll go with yours. You know more about this stuff than I do." The florist noted the white calla lilies and asked whether the centerpieces and arch should be changed to match. "Of course," Jenna said. "And don't overcrowd the arch. Give it some breathing room." Wright leaned closer to study her marks on the sample board. Within minutes, the two of them had settled the entire floral design. No one asked me. No one remembered that roses were my favorite flowers. When I was 8, I attended a neighbor's garden wedding. Red roses lined both sides of the aisle, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. I told Wright that when I got married, I wanted roses stretching from the venue entrance all the way to the vow arch. For my 16th birthday, he gave me a rose and pricked his finger on a thorn to get it. He only laughed and promised me an entire rose garden someday. He must have forgotten. He'd also forgotten that I'd nearly drowned once and still carried the fear with me, yet he kept taking me swimming because Jenna loved it. He'd forgotten that I wanted to study literature, not marketing, the degree he and Jenna had chosen for me. The three of us had grown up together. In school, they chose my classes. Once we were adults, they decided where we traveled. Now they had planned my wedding too. For years, I had been their shadow. Shadows had no voice. They simply kept their heads down and followed. But even shadows got tired. I slipped my arm free of Jenna's. The wedding was a week away. I managed to say something, but couldn't bring myself to tell them about my transfer to Valoria. A petty part of me wanted them to be the ones waiting for news for once. Soon, there would be an ocean between us. We would never have to see each other again.