The Wrong Mr.Right

The dress was perfect. Everyone had said so. Her mother, her maid of honour, even the woman at the boutique who had absolutely no reason to be kind about it. They had all pressed their hands to their mouths and whispered that it was beautiful, that she was beautiful, that Marcus was going to lose his mind when he saw her walking down that aisle. Aria Cole stood in front of the mirror in the bridal suite and stared at herself. Ivory tulle. Pearl buttons running the full length of her spine. A neckline that was elegant without trying too hard. Three years of a relationship, twelve months of planning, and this was what it had all been building toward. This room. This dress. This day. Her phone buzzed on the vanity table behind her. She almost did not pick it up. She was eleven minutes away from walking down the aisle. Whatever it was could wait. She picked it up anyway. The message was from Marcus. I am so sorry, Aria. I cannot do this. I love her. I have always loved her. Please do not hate me. She read it once. Then again. Then a third time, very slowly, as if the problem was with her understanding and not with the words themselves. Her. The word sat in the middle of that message like something with edges. Her. As in a specific person. As in someone Aria knew. And she did know, without Marcus having to say a name, because there was only one her in their world who had ever made Aria feel like she was standing slightly outside of something she could not name. Lena. Her best friend. The woman who had fastened every single one of these pearl buttons this morning, laughing and saying, "You look incredible. He is going to cry when he sees you." Aria set the phone down on the vanity. She sat very still. Outside the suite, she could hear the string quartet beginning to play, soft and sweet and completely unaware that the woman they were performing for was sitting in here watching her entire future quietly come apart. One hundred and forty guests were waiting on the other side of that door. Her father was ready to walk her down the aisle. The flowers had cost more than her first car. She sat with all of that for exactly two minutes. Then she stood up, picked up her small beaded clutch, and walked out of the room. She did not go toward the ceremony. She went the other way. The hotel was large enough that a woman in a wedding dress could move through a side corridor without anyone stopping her. Or maybe people did notice and simply did not know what to say. Either way, nobody called after her. Nobody asked where she was going. She found the bar the way people find things when they are not looking. A door that was slightly open. The smell of something dark and aged.The particular hush of a room that existed outside of the rest of the day. It was a dim, wood-panelled space that smelled of whiskey and leather. Almost empty at this hour. A bored bartender polishing glasses behind the counter and, at the far end, a man in a dark suit sitting alone with a drink he did not appear to be touching. Aria did not look at the man. She crossed the room, climbed onto a barstool with some difficulty because of the tulle, and set her clutch on the counter. "Whiskey," she said. "Neat. And please be generous with the pour." The bartender looked at her dress. Then at her face. His mouth opened. "Please do not," Aria said quietly. "Whatever you are about to say. I am asking you not to." He closed his mouth and poured the drink without another word. She appreciated that more than she could possibly express. She was halfway through her second glass when he spoke. "Rough afternoon?" His voice was low and unhurried. The kind of voice that belonged to someone who never needed to raise it to make a point. Aria did not look up from her glass. "That is one way to put it," she said. "Do you want me to leave you alone?" She considered it. There was something in the way he asked, direct and without assumption, that she found unexpectedly decent. She turned her head. He was watching her with dark, steady eyes that held the particular quality of someone who noticed everything and chose carefully what to do with it. He was dressed for a wedding, jacket well-fitted, tie loosened at the collar the way men do when they have decided the occasion no longer requires their full effort. He was, she observed with detachment, extremely good looking. The kind of face that was put together in a way that felt almost unfair. She looked back at her drink. "You can stay," she said. "As long as you do not ask me why I am sitting at a bar in a wedding dress." "I would not dream of it," he said. A silence settled between them. It was not uncomfortable. Outside, faintly, she could hear voices becoming louder in the corridor. Her name, she thought. Someone was saying her name. She turned her glass slowly between her palms and did not move. "Damien," he said, and she realized he had extended a hand. "Aria." He did not tell her it was a beautiful name. He just nodded once, like he was storing it somewhere, and went back to his own drink. She found she preferred that. The voices in the corridor faded. The search had moved elsewhere. Aria sat with the knowledge that she was going to have to walk back into her life eventually and figure out what it looked like now. New apartment. Untangled finances. A best friend who was no longer a best friend. One hundred and forty people she would have to face. She ordered a third drink. "What would you do," she said, not really to him, "if everything you had planned simply stopped being true?" Damien turned his glass between his palms. "It depends on what you had planned for." "A life," she said. "A whole life. Three years and a house we were supposed to close on next month and a honeymoon in Florence." She paused. "A future that belonged to someone who, as it turns out, did not exist." He was quiet for a moment. "The groom?" "Gone. With my best friend." She laughed, short and hollow. "I found out by text. Thirteen minutes before I was supposed to walk down the aisle." Damien was still for a long moment. Then he said, simply and without decoration, "That is a cruel thing to do to someone." Not I am sorry. Not you will be okay. Just the plain, honest truth of it. Something in Aria's chest cracked open, very slightly. "Yes," she said softly. "It is." It was Damien who asked for the fourth round. By then the corridor outside was quiet. Aria knew the calls stacking up on her silent phone were not going to stop. She knew that at some point, possibly very soon, she was going to have to be a person again and deal with all of it. She was not ready yet. "Can I ask you something?" she said. "You can try." "Why are you still here? You could have gone back to the reception or wherever people go when a wedding falls apart." Damien looked at her steadily. "Because I did not feel like pretending today either." The words settled between them with more weight than a stranger's words should carry. Aria studied his profile. The tension in his jaw. The way his thumb moved absently along the rim of his glass. Whatever his story was, it was close to the surface. "So what do we do now?" she asked. She had meant it generally. Rhetorically even. But Damien went still in a way that made her think he was actually turning the question over. Considering it from a specific angle she had not intended. When he looked at her again his expression was different. Careful and direct, like a man presenting a solution he had already examined from every side. "I have an idea," he said. "But I need you to hear me out before you tell me I have lost my mind." Aria blinked. "That is a concerning way to begin a sentence." "Probably." He set down his glass and turned to face her fully. "How would you feel about getting married today after all?" The bar went very quiet. Aria stared at him. "To me," he added. "Obviously." She kept staring. Damien Cross, a man whose last name she did not even know yet, looked back at her with an expression that was, impossibly, completely calm. Like a man who had said a reasonable thing and was simply waiting for it to land. Later, Aria would try to identify the exact moment she stopped thinking clearly. It might have been the whiskey. It might have been the dress, still on her body, growing heavier with everything the day had cost her. Or it might have been something in the way he said it. Not impulsively. Not like a joke. Like a man who had looked at a problem and found an answer and was now, very patiently, waiting to see if she was brave enough to take it. "Why?" she heard herself ask. "I have my reasons," he said. "You would have yours. The rest I will explain if you say yes." She should have laughed and walked away. She should have gone back to face her mother and the guests and the ruins of the afternoon. Instead she looked at this stranger and felt, beneath all the wreckage of the day, a small and stubborn thing rising. Not love. Not even hope exactly. Something quieter than both. The feeling of standing at the edge of something and understanding, with sudden and complete clarity, that falling might be better than going back. "Six months," she said. "That is my condition. Whatever this is, six months and a clean exit and no complications." Something moved across Damien's face, too fast to catch. "Six months," he agreed. Aria picked up her whiskey glass, finished it, and set it down on the bar with a quiet, final sound. "Then you had better tell me your last name," she said. For the first time since she had sat down, Damien smiled. It was slow and careful and just slightly devastating, like a light coming on in a room she had not known was dark. "Cross," he said. "Damien Cross." Aria nodded. Took a breath. Felt the whole afternoon shift beneath her feet. The wrong choice, said something quiet at the back of her mind. Maybe, something else answered. But at least it is mine.