Unexpected Vow

Jessica

The organ music cuts out. Just stops. The silence that follows is louder than any note, a physical weight that presses down on my shoulders, on the delicate lace of my wedding gown. Every head in the pews swivels, a sea of confused faces looking from the organist back to us at the altar.

Mark’s hand, the one holding mine, is slick with sweat. His grip is suddenly too tight.

“Mark?” I whisper, my voice catching on his name. My smile feels frozen on my face, a brittle mask I’m afraid will crack. “What’s happening? Is everything okay?”

He won’t look at me. His eyes are fixed on the stained-glass window behind the minister, on the image of a saint I can’t name.

“Mark, talk to me,” I say, a little louder this time. A nervous cough ripples through the first row where my parents are sitting.

“I can’t do this, Jess.” His voice is a strangled rasp, meant for me but sharp enough to carry in the dead quiet of the church.

My heart gives a painful lurch. Nerves. It’s just nerves. Everyone gets them.

“Of course you can,” I whisper, squeezing his hand back, trying to pour all the love, all the ten years of us, into that one small gesture. “It’s me. We’re almost there.”

“No.” He finally turns to me, and the look in his eyes isn’t love or fear. It’s a hollow, gut-wrenching pity. “I mean I can’t marry you.”

The words don’t compute. They’re just sounds, meaningless syllables that my brain refuses to assemble into a sentence.

“What are you talking about?” I laugh, a tiny, terrified sound. “This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking.” He pulls his hand from mine. The absence of his touch is a cold shock. “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. I should have told you weeks ago, but I’m a coward.”

“Told me what?” I can feel the bouquet of white roses trembling in my other hand. The sweet, cloying scent of lilies fills my head, making me dizzy.

He swallows hard, his gaze flicking to someone in the second row. I follow his look and my blood turns to ice. Chloe. His junior associate. She’s staring right at him, a tiny, triumphant smile playing on her lips. She’s wearing a deep green dress, a color she knows I hate.

Everything clicks into place with the horrifying sound of a guillotine dropping.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” My voice is flat, dead. “It’s Chloe.”

“Jess, please,” he begs, his eyes wide with a pathetic kind of desperation.

“How long?” I demand. The guests are murmuring now, a low hum of confusion and scandal.

“A few months,” he admits, his voice cracking. “I love her, Jess. I didn’t want to, but I do. I can’t stand up here and make vows to you that I can’t keep. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Fair? He’s talking to me about what’s fair. In front of our friends, our families, my grandmother who flew three thousand miles to be here. The humiliation is a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs.

I look past him, past the minister whose mouth is hanging open, and see my father starting to rise from his seat, his face a thundercloud. I see my best friend Sarah, her hand clapped over her mouth in horror.

“So what now, Mark?” I ask, my voice dangerously calm. “You just walk away? Leave me standing here?”

“I have to,” he says, as if he’s the victim here. He takes a step back, away from me, toward the edge of the altar.

Then he does the most cowardly thing I’ve ever seen. He turns to our guests, his voice shaking but loud enough for everyone to hear.

“I’m sorry, everyone,” he announces, his words echoing in the cavernous space. “There… there will be no wedding today. This is all my fault. I’m deeply sorry for bringing you all here.”

A collective gasp sucks the air from the room. He doesn’t look at me again. He just turns and walks, nearly runs, down the long white aisle runner. He passes Chloe’s row, and without a moment’s hesitation, she stands and follows him.

They walk out of the church together.

I stand there, a statue in white lace. Alone at the altar. The silence is broken by a sob from my mother. The whispers erupt into a roar of hushed conversation. Every eye is on me, boring into me with a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity. I feel like an exhibit, the Jilted Bride, preserved in her moment of ultimate shame.

My father reaches my side. “Jessica, sweetheart, let’s go.”

His hand is gentle on my arm, but I flinch away. I can’t. I can’t face them. I can’t walk back down that aisle past hundreds of pitying stares.

“I need… I need a minute,” I choke out.

Ignoring his call, I turn and bolt, escaping through the small door behind the altar that leads to the gardens. I don’t care that the hem of my thousand-dollar dress is dragging through the dirt and mulch. I just run.

I push through the iron gate and out onto the street, a surreal vision in a cloud of tulle and satin. Cars slow down. People on the sidewalk stop and stare. A bride, running, with mascara-streaked tears carving paths down her cheeks.

I don’t know where I’m going. I just walk. The city is a blur of noise and color. The satin heels, the ones I spent weeks picking out, are already starting to pinch. Each step is a fresh wave of pain, both in my feet and in my heart. After ten blocks, I kick them off, leaving them on the pavement and continuing barefoot on the gritty sidewalk.

The dress feels like a costume, a cruel joke. Ten years. We met in high school. We went to college together. I helped him study for his law school exams. I put my own dreams of being an architect on hold to support his. For this. To be publicly discarded for a woman in a green dress.

My aimless wandering leads me downtown. The buildings get taller, more imposing. And then I see it. The City Courthouse. A huge, impersonal block of granite and marble, all sharp angles and cold efficiency. It’s the furthest thing from the romantic, flower-filled church I just fled. It feels right.

A place for endings, not beginnings.

I pull open the heavy bronze door and step inside. The air is cool and smells of floor wax and old paper. The fluorescent lights overhead hum, casting a sterile glow on the linoleum floors. No one here is celebrating. They’re paying fines, filing for divorce, settling disputes. It’s a place of contracts and consequences.

I find an empty wooden bench in a long, quiet hallway and sink onto it. The voluminous skirt of my dress pools around me like a deflated cloud. I tuck my bare, dirty feet underneath it and finally let my head fall into my hands, the sobs coming in ragged, silent waves.

How do I ever face anyone again?

“What do you mean she’s not coming?”

The voice is sharp, cutting through my haze of grief. It’s a man’s voice, low and controlled, but laced with a thread of pure, unadulterated fury.

I lift my head slightly, peering through the curtain of my fingers.

A man is pacing ten feet away, a phone pressed to his ear. He’s immaculate in a dark, tailored suit that probably costs more than my entire wedding. His hair is black, his jaw is sharp, and even from here I can see the frustration tightening the lines around his eyes.

“Leo, I don’t pay you to tell me things are impossible,” he snaps into the phone. “I pay you to make them possible. That was the entire point of your fee.”

He stops pacing and braces a hand against the wall, his back to me. His shoulders are rigid with tension.

“The contract is ironclad. You know that. My grandfather’s deadline is *today*. Not tomorrow. Today. The entire inheritance, the company, all of it hinges on this.” He listens for a moment, his jaw working. “I don’t care if she got cold feet. I don’t care if she ran off with a circus clown. Your job was to deliver a bride to this courthouse at two o’clock. It is now two fifteen.”

A bride. He’s missing a bride.

The irony is so bitter I almost laugh out loud.

“Find me another one,” he commands, his voice dropping to a deadly quiet. “I don’t care who. I don’t care how. Just find me a bride. Now.”

He ends the call with a vicious jab of his thumb and turns, pinching the bridge of his nose. He lets out a long, slow breath, clearly trying to rein in a temper that seems formidable.

That’s when he sees me.

His eyes, a startlingly clear gray, land on me, huddled on the bench in my ridiculous, ruined gown. They widen for a fraction of a second. He takes in the whole pathetic picture: the tear-stained face, the messy hair where my veil used to be, the pouf of white satin in a drab courthouse hallway.

His frustration doesn’t vanish, but it’s joined by something else. A flicker of disbelief. An assessment. He’s looking at me not as a person, but as a… a potential solution.

My heart is still a shattered mess in my chest, my future a complete blank. I have nothing. Nothing to lose. For the first time all day, a thought cuts through the pain. A wild, reckless, insane thought.

He needs a bride.

I am a bride.

The man in the perfect suit takes a step toward me, his expression unreadable.

Our eyes lock. In the sterile quiet of the courthouse, two separate disasters are about to collide.