“Ha! Yvvy must just be trying to scare me.” Jared suddenly snapped to his senses.
The rest of the staff in the projects department exchanged looks. They’d all known about Yvonne’s resignation. Why did Jared seem unaware?
“She’s just getting back at me for not giving her any attention lately. She’s still preparing for our wedding! I’ll find evidence that she’s lying and prove that she doesn’t want to end things with me,” he muttered, suppressing his rage.
He took the plant from Yvonne’s desk and drove out in the rain. When he got home, he found a letter from the wedding dress boutique amid a pile of unopened envelopes. He laughed. “I knew Yvvy was still preparing for our wedding!”
He didn’t open the letter. Instead, he followed the address and drove to the boutique to pick up Yvonne’s wedding dress.
Jared remembered going there with Yvonne once but didn’t remember the way there. He had to rely on the navigation system the whole way.
It was raining cats and dogs. Even with an umbrella, he still got wet. The inside of the boutique was designed to look like an actual wedding to make the patrons feel like they were at the scene when they tried on the wedding dresses.
Jared remembered the first time he was there. Yvonne had tried on a few wedding dresses for him to see, but he’d barely spared her a glance as he’d pored over his documents in the lounge.
The store clerks had gushed over her beauty, but his compliments had been scarce. He’d always known Yvonne was beautiful–he’d gotten used to it over the years and hadn’t felt particularly captivated. Besides, she was already his.
Yvonne had sat beside him and gone through the designs while saying, “I still think off–the–rack wedding dresses aren’t pretty enough, Jared. I want to get something custom–made; that’s going to take time. Still, we haven’t settled on a date, so there should be enough time for a custom–made dress. Even as a child, I
loved…”
Jared had answered a call from work at that point. Even now, as he recalled the scene with his eyes shut, he couldn’t remember what Yvonne had said then.
Marriage was supposed to be between the two of them, but it hadn’t ever occurred to him. He hadn’t initiated it or rejected Yvonne; he’d just been sure that she’d
wait for him.
Either way, as long as Yvonne’s wedding dress was ready and waiting, that would be enough to prove she still felt the same about him. That would mean she still wanted to marry him.
“Mr. Ford, what are you doing here?” Tina Hanson, the wedding dress boutique’s manager, stepped forward to greet Jared.
He snapped out of his reverie and held up the unopened letter from the boutique. “You guys sent this to us, right? Where is Yvonne’s wedding dress?”
A hint of confusion flashed across Tina’s face. “Does Ms. Jamison want to see it? This way, please.”
Jared sighed in relief at that. The wedding dress was still around, which meant Yvonne still wanted to marry him. He knew she’d been lying yesterday! She’d just said those things in a fit of anger!
He was surprised to find that the wedding dress was stored in a box and not hung up, though. He opened it but wasn’t greeted by the sight he expected. Instead, he saw a wedding dress that had been cut to pieces!
His eyes widened in shock. “What the hell? Why is Yvvy’s wedding dress like this? Did you guys ruin it?”
Tina sounded even more confused as she said, “Ms. Jamison called us a month ago to cancel the order for the wedding dress, Mr. Ford. She paid for it but didn’t ask us to mail it back. She told us we could deal with it as we saw fit.
“We were worried she would change her mind, so we sent that letter to inform her of the final date for her to change her decision. We didn’t receive any calls from her calling everything off before the stipulated date, so we cut the wedding dress.”
