He Kept Hiding. I Stopped Looking.

The third time the officiant said the groom was preparing a surprise, I took the microphone from him. The music was still playing. Some guests held up their phones. Others craned their necks toward the side door. An older woman near the stage beckoned to me. "Giselle Harcourt, come down here. Don't stand there making a spectacle of yourself." I didn't move. "That's all for today's ceremony. I'm sorry you came all this way for nothing." The apology was quiet, but the microphone carried it to every table. At last, the music stopped. Maxine Delaney came forward from the back row and took my hand. She had gone over the wedding schedule with me. She knew there was no surprise, and certainly no part where the bride stood onstage looking for the groom. The venue coordinator hurried after us and asked whether we were only pausing the ceremony. I asked her to serve the guests their meal and cancel the rest of the ceremony. She glanced at the aisle behind me, hesitant to agree. That was when Calvin Lockwood returned. He had been gone for 17 minutes. He noticed the empty stage before he looked at me. There was a little plaster dust on the shoulder of his suit. Vanessa Bancroft followed him, laughing with one hand on the doorframe. "Giselle, why didn't you come looking? We were hiding right..." "Vanessa." Calvin cut her off and strode over. He still remembered that standing too long in these shoes hurt my feet. He reached for the small of my back to help me sit down. I shifted away. His hand stopped in midair. "Has the ceremony been canceled?" The venue coordinator waited for his answer. He didn't look at her. He lowered his head toward me. "I thought we'd be 2 or 3 minutes at most. You're really upset. I'm sorry. Let's finish the wedding first." He was still slightly out of breath. The ring box was still in his hand. The first time I'd waited for him backstage at an event he was hosting, half the floor had lost power just before it ended. The staff urged him to go to the main hall, but he came back with an emergency light and searched for me door by door. When he found me, he pressed the light into my hands. "Next time you wait for me, find somewhere bright. I'll come looking for you." The person in charge scolded him afterward, and I felt terrible. He just cupped my cold fingertips in his hands and told me the power outage wasn't my fault. Now the backstage area was brightly lit. He had come back, too. But his greatest concern was getting the interrupted ceremony back on track. "Where were you when those people were laughing?" Calvin glanced toward the door. Vanessa stopped smiling and looked down, tugging at her bridesmaid dress. He turned back to me and softened his voice. "I didn't know it would turn out like this. Giselle, our older relatives are still out there. We can't keep them waiting." I handed the microphone to the coordinator. "Let them eat. They don't need to wait anymore." Calvin finally stepped into my path. "We've spent 6 months preparing for today. You're really going to cancel all of it over a little more than 10 minutes?" Maxine's grip tightened on my hand. I looked at the boutonniere I'd pinned to his lapel. Before we left home, I'd adjusted it twice. I'd even checked the tip of the pin and the stem to make sure nothing would poke him. The flower was still perfectly in place. "I didn't spend 6 months preparing to stand onstage and wait for you to finish playing with her." He pressed his lips together. After a moment, he opened the ring box. "Then I'll put it on here. If you don't want to go back out, we won't." My hand moved slightly at my side. We had chosen that ring together. He'd gotten my ring size wrong twice before finally buying the right size on the third try. He'd been so pleased with himself, promising he'd never get anything about me wrong again. Vanessa took half a step forward. "Calvin, nobody's found you yet. Doesn't this count as giving up?" He turned toward her on instinct. It lasted only an instant. I lowered the hand I'd begun to raise and asked Maxine to help me change. Behind me, his voice turned urgent for the first time. "Giselle, you have to give me a chance to make this right." I didn't turn around. "First, tell her there isn't a game today."