Three Votes, I Walked Out

Chapter 2 Two Out of Three

I left the engagement party through the kitchen.

It was a coward's exit, and I knew it, but I could not stand in that ballroom for one more second while Linda twirled in my design and Nina congratulated herself on her "eye for detail." I walked past the catering staff, past the coat check, past the security guard at the service entrance, and I did not stop until I was on the sidewalk outside, breathing in the cold salt air from the harbor.

My phone buzzed.

Nina: Where are you? They're about to do speeches. Nina: Don't be dramatic. Linda's dress is a compliment. She loved your design so much she wanted to wear it. Linda: Did you leave? So weird. Everything okay?

I stared at the messages and felt something shift in my chest. Not sadness. Not anger. Something colder. Something that had been building for years and had finally settled into place.

Two out of three. That was the rule. Nina and Linda voted, and I obeyed. It had been that way since college. Since the bachelorette. Since the centerpieces. Since the guest list. Since the bridal suite. And now the dress was on Linda's body, and Cole had not called me to ask where I was, and I was standing on a sidewalk in the dark while the people who claimed to love me celebrated a wedding I was no longer sure I was going to have.

I called a ride and went home.

Cole came back at midnight. I was sitting at the kitchen table with the dress sketch on the table in front of me, the original one, the one he had seen on a napkin.

He stopped in the doorway. "Why did you leave?"

"Why did Linda wear my dress?"

He sighed. It was a long, patient sigh, the kind he used when I was being difficult. "It's not your dress. You didn't end up choosing it. You voted it out."

"I didn't vote it out. Nina and Linda voted it out. I never got a vote."

"Come on." He walked past me to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. "This is what you do. You get in your head about things and you make them into a problem. Linda liked the design. It's flattering. It's not a personal attack."

"It was my design."

"It was a dress." He twisted the cap off the water and took a drink. "There are going to be a million dresses. You can't get attached to every sketch."

I looked at him. He was standing in the kitchen of the apartment we had chosen together, in the building his father owned, wearing the watch his mother had given him for his birthday, and I realized I had not had a real conversation with him in months. Not one where he asked how my work was going. Not one where he listened to what I wanted. Not one where I was anything more than a checklist item in the Hollis family's campaign to marry him off to someone they could manage.

"The wedding is in three months," I said.

"I know."

"I designed a dress for it. You watched me draw it. You told me it would be perfect."

"It will be. For Linda's engagement party, maybe. Or some other event. It's not wasted." He capped the water and set it on the counter. "Look, I'm tired. Can we not do this tonight?"

"Can we not do what?"

"This." He gestured vaguely at the table, at the sketch, at me. "The spiraling. You always spiral."

I looked down at the sketch. The lines were clean and sure. I had drawn them when I still believed that Cole saw me, that he understood what I was building, that he was proud of me. But he had never asked to see my portfolio. He had never visited my studio. He had never once told anyone that his fiancée was a designer.

He had told everyone about Linda's new brand, though. Linda's skincare line. Linda's podcast. Linda's charity gala. Linda, Linda, Linda.

"Did you know she was going to wear it?" I asked.

"Who?"

"Linda. Did you know she was going to wear my dress to the party?"

He paused. It was a fraction of a second, but I saw it. He knew.

"She asked me if I thought you'd mind," he said. "I told her you wouldn't. It's a compliment."

"You told her I wouldn't mind."

"I told her you'd understand." He looked at me, and for the first time that night, he seemed almost nervous. "It's not a big deal. You're making it a big deal."

I stood up. I folded the sketch into quarters and put it in my pocket.

"I'm going to bed," I said.

"Fine."

I walked past him, down the hall, into the bedroom, and closed the door. I did not lock it, because I knew he would not follow me. He never did.

I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and opened my laptop and started searching.