Diary of a Single Wedding Planner (Tales Behind the Veils Book 1) (18 page)

Lillian moved the guests into the dinner room while I bustled Stephanie’s gown. Our DJ and emcee lined up the wedding party and verified the pronunciation of their names, and soon we were all standing outside the dinner room waiting for the announcements to begin. At least the chaos drove the men in my life from my mind momentarily.

As the DJ walked back to his microphone to start announcements, I asked the parents of the groom and parents of the bride if they knew where to find their tables. As I always do in case they haven’t seen the dinner room. I never want them walking into a dark room as everyone cheers and claps only to find they have no idea where to go. I whipped out my room diagram and verified the groom’s parents were seated at the London Table, and the bride’s parents were seated at Cancun.

As I looked into the darkness to point out their tables, I realized something was terribly wrong. London and Cancun should have both been immediately adjacent to the head table. Front and center of the room between the wedding party and the dance floor. Prominently placed as the hosts of the party and the parents of the event’s honored couple.

But the table that should have been London was already filled and clearly marked Boston. Where Cancun should have been was the New Orleans table, filled with those business associates who were so angry about the place cards.

Panic rose in my throat as the DJ greeted the guests and asked any lingerers to be seated for the announcement of the wedding party, my mouth going dry and nausea sweeping over me as I looked at the diagram in my hand and then back at the room in front of me. Not one single table in the right place.

The bride’s parents had been relocated to the back corner of the room, near the bar. The groom’s parents were a bit closer to the head table, but in the middle of the room and off to the side. The extended families were scattered throughout the room with no rhyme or reason.

As the groom’s parents were announced, his mother grabbed my arm and said, “Where? Where do we go? You didn’t tell us.”

My mind frantically searched for a solution but found none. My job depends on me being able to think on my feet, to come up with solutions where none seem possible, and at all costs, to figure out how to keep the guests, the parents, and the bride and groom from ever realizing there is a problem. I had failed on so many levels. There was no way to fix this.

My shaking hand pointed to the London Table on the left side of the room as the guests stood to their feet and welcomed the groom’s parents with thunderous applause. The groom’s mother had never seen the diagram, so she had no idea her table was incorrect.

But when I turned back to face the bride’s mother, we locked eyes and I had no doubt she knew. She pored over those lists of seating arrangement for months with her daughter. She knew where the groom’s parents should be, and she could clearly see her table—the one right in front of her daughter and new son-in-law—already filled. I pointed to the Cancun Table all the way across the back of the room as the DJ announced them as the hosts of the evening.

She glared at me with a shocked expression as her husband pulled her arm and escorted her across the room to the back corner. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I fought the urge to throw up. Lillian’s eyes followed the parents’ path across the room and looked at me in confusion.

“Where are they going? Why is their table there?”

We had no time to talk as the DJ announced the first wedding party couple into the room dancing and shouting. I couldn’t hear Lillian’s questions over the roar of the crowd, but I clearly heard the bride’s voice in my ear as she grabbed my arm.

“Tyler! It’s wrong! The tables are wrong! My parents are in the back, and Tanner’s parents are in the wrong place, too. It’s all wrong. What happened?”

She looked bewildered. She put so much time into carefully placing each guest in a specific location, laboring to put family members in close proximity and acquaintances from work or college near each other to encourage mingling. The hard work and creativity they put into the centerpieces had gone awry, and it was all my fault. When the DJ introduced Mr. & Mrs. Tanner Jordan, Stephanie’s face clouded over with tears, confusion, hurt and anger. Not the face of a beautiful bride ready to celebrate.

As soon as the doors closed behind them, I slid down the wall to the floor. My tears poured. This was a huge mistake. The entire room full of people already drank the water, ordered the wine, used the napkins, and settled in at their tables. No way to ask them to move to different seats at different tables. No way to drag the parents back to their rightful place in front of the head table or insult the guests at those prime tables by telling them they had displaced the parents and were meant to be put in the corner. It was done.

I had ruined their wedding.

People don’t get it. They say it’s “just a wedding.” They diminish the details as trivial. But to a bride, each little detail is a component of a larger picture. A larger experience. A dream she holds in her heart of a magical day and how it will look. How it will sound. How it will be remembered.

All the planning. All the dreaming. All the details now overshadowed by the room configuration and everyone’s emotions about it. Her parents were pissed. Understandably so. This was their only child. Their only wedding to host. And they were banished to the back corner of the room.

“What happened?” Lillian asked. My head snapped up as I remembered I still had to explain this to Lillian.

“I didn’t check the diagram. I am so sorry, Lillian.” I burst into tears again.

Lillian grabbed my arm by the elbow and lifted me gently to my feet. She leaned in close to my ear and whispered, “Take yourself to the restroom, splash your face, and dry your eyes. Meet me in the back hallway. Now go.”

I nodded and headed to the restroom, trying not to make eye contact with the various employees and random people staring at me. I splashed water on my face and dried it with a paper towel, picking off the little random spots of paper that stuck to the dark circles under my eyes and the puffiness of my cheeks. When I came out of the bathroom to face the music, Renee the florist stood just outside the bathroom door with two crying members of her floral team.

“I’m sorry, Tyler,” Renee said. “Evidently, we double-checked each sign against the box to make sure it matched the city name on the bottom of the box, but Addie failed to use the room diagram when she put them on the tables.

This made Addie cry harder, so I reached over and gave her a big hug.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I should have checked it. It’s my responsibility.”

“Well, we should have known,” Renee said. “It’s not like all the centerpieces were the same and it didn’t matter which table they were on. Any time there are custom centerpieces, they need to be set according to the diagram.”

She seemed to say that more to her team than to me, but I knew it was ultimately my fault.

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders to go wait for Lillian in the back hallway. Before I could get there, she came out of the dinner room toward me, motioning and gesturing for me to come to her. Quickly.

I sped up my stride, apologizing again before I even reached her. She brushed away my words with a sweep of her hand and a shake of her head. She took me by the hand and led me into the dinner room.

“Stephanie has requested to speak with you,” she said.

I almost turned and ran. I didn’t want to face Stephanie. She’d been so nice throughout the entire planning process. Now I had let her down and ruined her day. So imagine my surprise when instead of anger or venom, Stephanie and Tanner greeted me with smiles and enveloped me in a huge hug.

“Tyler! You poor thing!” Stephanie said. “Lillian told us you’ve been running around trying to fix the cake, the toasting glasses, and everything else. No wonder you didn’t have time to check the centerpieces. I’m so sorry you’ve had such a stressful day. Ours has been great, and that’s because of you and Lillian. I haven’t been stressed. I haven’t been worried. I’ve had a wonderful day. If these tables are the worst of it, then I’m happy. My dad’s boss moved everyone from their table, and Tanner’s mom asked their neighbors to move. It’s all good. We’re married. We’re all in the same room. Nothing else matters. Please don’t be upset.” Stephanie squeezed my hands in her own.

Tanner lifted his glass in the air. “Hey, I just got married! As long as the DJ’s playing music, the bar’s serving Heineken, and she’s by my side, everything’s okay!”

I didn’t know what to say. We work with some of the nastiest, rudest, most ungrateful people on the planet. I get yelled at and cursed at for things beyond my control all the time. Yet on this day, when I got distracted and just plain screwed up, they offered me forgiveness and kindness. I’m used to standing up straight and staying calm through the cursing. The graciousness totally threw me.

As I drove home thinking back on the night, I felt grateful I’d been offered forgiveness, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to forgive Dwayne. I wondered when and if he would call again. As if I haven’t wasted enough time wondering when that man would call. At the same time, I was very painfully aware Cabe had been a no-show all day. No text. No call.

December

Sunday, December 1st

The doorbell this morning interrupted what might have been my deepest, most serene state of sleep ever. I heard the chime coming from the end of a long, dark tunnel, but I had no desire to go and find out what caused it. I’m not sure how many times it rang before I finally came out of the fog enough to realize someone was at my door. I squinted at the clock. 9:07 am. The doorbell chimed again.

I stumbled to the door yawning and wondering who in the hell would be ringing my doorbell on a Sunday morning. I looked through the peephole and stepped back in shock. I would not have been more surprised if Abraham Lincoln had been standing there, hat in hand.

Lillian stood on the other side, looking at her watch in a most irritated fashion. My brain panicked thinking I’d missed a wedding or a meeting. I replayed our conversations of last night, but after the dinner got underway, she didn’t say much to me and sent me home early. I admit I was definitely not all there last night, but I think I would have remembered agreeing to meet her this morning. At my house no less. She had never even been here.

Realizing I had kept her waiting for quite a while, I flung open the door, hoping there were no dirty dishes in sight.

She had turned away, and I swear she almost looked disappointed when I opened it, as though she had been relieved to find me not home.

“Lillian?”

“Good morning, Tyler. I’m sorry I woke you. I forget the rest of the world does not awaken with the sunrise. I wanted to take you to breakfast,” she said.

Shocked again. This had never happened.

“Oh, okay. I need to get dressed,” I said. How funny that I never even stopped to question whether or not I wanted to go to breakfast or why she was asking. Lillian stood in my doorway telling me we were going to breakfast. All I needed to know.

“Would you like to come in while I get dressed?” I took a step back so she could enter. She hesitated for a moment and then cautiously stepped inside. I wondered with a mental smirk if she would turn up her nose at entering a “peasant’s domicile.”

“I’ll only be a minute. Have a seat.”

I stripped off my PJs and pulled a dress over my head in record time. In less than five minutes, I had my hair combed, teeth brushed, and a fresh coat of mascara on my eyes. They were swollen and puffy from crying last night and my abrupt wake-up this morning.

Lillian still stood just inside the door where I had left her. She seemed out of place.

“Ready?” she asked, turning to open the door as though she could not wait to leave.

“Where are we going?” I was still somewhat in a sleepy haze and a curious daze as to why I was leaving my house with Lillian.

“I don’t care. Wherever you’d like,” she answered.

We ended up at a small cafe a few blocks over, where we sat in awkward silence as we sipped our coffee and stared out the windows. Finally, she spoke.

“I’m worried about you,” she said. “You seem very distracted lately. Making mistakes that are quite uncharacteristic. What’s going on?”

I groaned inside—not audibly, of course—and wished I could crawl under the table.

“I am really sorry about last night,” I started to say, but she interrupted me before I could finish.

“I didn’t drive over to your apartment and bring you out of bed to chastise you for last night’s errors. I am worried about you. What’s going on?”

Lillian was definitely the last person on earth I would ever think of unloading all my troubles on, but before I knew what was happening, I had poured them out to her over blueberry pancakes. Dwayne and our marriage that didn’t happen, his that did happen but didn’t last. Cabe and our friendship, his marriage and divorce, and the kiss. My mother and my dead daddy. The life I thought I was gonna have and the life I am scared I may never have. All of it. Through it all, she ate her omelet and drank her coffee, occasionally nodding and sometimes slightly raising one eyebrow.

When I had given her every last detail of every last thing going on, she sat back and calmly folded her napkin.

“Tyler, what do you want to do with your life?”

Not what I expected her to say. “What?”

“Your life. Not Dwayne’s life, or Cabe’s life or your mother’s life. Your life. What do
you
want to do with
your
life?”

I realized I didn’t have an answer for her. I didn’t know. I think for most of high school and college, I had wanted to be whatever it took to be with Dwayne. Then after that ended, I wanted to be whatever it took to be far away from him and everything associated with him. I kind of floated along in recovery mode until Cabe left, and then all my focus and energy had shifted to getting over that. Since he got back, I’ve spent most of my time trying to help him be okay.

I didn’t really have a clear direction in mind for me. I enjoyed my job, but I hadn’t set any job goals and didn’t know what I wanted to do beyond this. I hadn’t finished college, and my original choice of degree—nursing—no longer interested me. I only chose that because Mama said I’d be able to get a job wherever Dwayne did and work around his hours.

“I don’t know,” I answered. I felt ashamed.

“Well, then you need to figure it out. This is your life, Tyler. No one else’s. The other people in your life are going to make decisions based on what they want in their life. Always. Even when it seems like they are interested in you, even when they genuinely do care about you, they are still going to make their decisions based on what works best for them. So you have to figure out what works for you. What will get you where you want to be. Then make sure any decision you make, no matter how small, will take you toward it.”

My eyes welled up with tears from the lack of sleep, the overwhelming emotions of the last two days, and the fact that the one person who intimidated me most in the world was sitting across my pancakes from me asking deep life questions I had no answers for.

“Figure out who you are, Tyler. Allow these young men to figure out who they are. You are not defined by them. You are defined by you and the decisions you make.” She paused as the server cleared her plate and refilled her coffee.

“I made the mistake once of choosing my life path based on what I thought a man wanted and what I thought I would have with him if I chose it. I learned the hard way the lesson I am trying to give you now. People will do what is best for them, even when it is not what is best for you. This Dwayne you thought you were to marry. Did he not make his choice without thought to you and your feelings?”

I nodded.

“And Cabe? He chose his path in life, to go to Seattle and marry this woman? Did he base that on what worked best for you?”

I absentmindedly nodded, then realized it was the incorrect response and quickly shook my head.

“They won’t. Because they are making their decisions based on what is best for them. Now, if you have a firm idea of where you are headed, what you want to achieve, and where you want to be, and then you find a man who fits in that plan and supports you in reaching it—well, then by all means, have at him. But make it a conscious choice, Tyler. Be sure he is what you want. He needs to fit in your future. Don’t just latch on to whoever is there, compromising your goals and yourself because you fancy accommodating him will be what is best. I did that. I can tell you it doesn’t work.”

“How did you meet your husband?” I asked.

“Remy?” She looked shocked, then raised both eyebrows and scrunched her face like she had to think about it in order to remember.

“We worked together. His father owned the hotel where I worked as an executive. I had the utmost respect for Remy’s father, and he for me. I think he feared what would happen when he died and Remy took over the business. In some ways, I provided an insurance policy to ensure his legacy would survive. And it has. Without me, it seems.”

She sipped her coffee and looked out the window. How odd that her answer seemed more about her father-in-law and less about her husband.

“Did you love him?” I asked.

“My dear, we are not here because I slid down walls in my business suit last night. Any love life of mine is ancient history and best not discussed lest the cobwebs overtake us both. Now, I have an assignment for you. I want you to come up with goals for your life. What do you want to achieve? Where do you want to be? In regards to travel, status, job, location, life? Write down some goals. Where you want to find yourself in three years, five years, ten. Where you want to be in a year. Then figure out the steps necessary to get you there. I will be more than happy to help you with that part if you wish, but you simply must have a destination before you can map out the trip.”

Lillian gathered her purse and left a generous tip under her saucer. I took one last bite of the pancakes and drained the rest of my coffee before following her out.

We drove back to my apartment in silence.

“How did you know where I live?” I asked as she pulled into the parking lot.

“I am your employer, dear. I do have your address, and technology-challenged though I may be, I can use my GPS.”

“Right. Got it.”

“Now, you have the afternoon off, I believe. So you have plenty of time to figure out who Tyler wants to be. Until you know that, leave these silly men to their own devices. When you have yourself all figured out, there’ll be plenty of time for them. You may be surprised what caliber of men you can attract when you know what you want.”

I thanked her for breakfast and got out of the car feeling drained. The whole situation with Cabe, the past dredged up in Dwayne’s call, and the disastrous wedding last night gave me a lot to process. Now to have Lillian show up on my doorstep with pep talks and life lessons proved too much. I considered taking her advice and writing out some goals, mostly out of fear she would ask for them tomorrow. But then I fell asleep.

I woke up around six, starving and needing a shower. My phone showed four missed calls. One from an unknown number, one from my mother and two from Cabe.

Guess who I called back?

“What’s up, Buttercup?” he said.

I worried he might launch into an apology or an awkward conversation about the drunken events Friday night. He didn’t. He rattled on about the football game he was watching for a few minutes before I blurted out, “Dwayne called.”

“What? Like, Dweeb Dwayne?”

“Yes, Dweeb Dwayne. He got divorced and thought he’d call to say hi.”

“Wow. No shit. When?”

“When did he get divorced or when did he call?” I asked.

“Both.”

“He got divorced like a month ago, I guess, and he called yesterday.”

“Okay. How’d that go?”

“Weird as all hell. He kept calling me darlin’ and he asked if I was married.”

“Really. How’d he get your number?”

“My mother gave it to him.”

Cabe snorted on the other end of the line and said, “Nice!”

“I know, right? Strange hearing his voice after all this time. Surreal. Suddenly talking to him and hearing him. Took me back.”

Cabe was silent.

“So yeah. That was my fun weekend highlight.” I winced a bit as I said it, hoping the comment didn’t lead into a conversation about our encounter on Friday night.

I certainly enjoyed kissing Cabe more than listening to Dwayne, but I didn’t think it quite appropriate to mention that. Nor did I think I should tell him about completely destroying someone’s wedding thanks to him and Dwayne screwing with my head. Or my boss showing up unannounced on a Sunday morning to tell me to drop all the men in my life and get a life of my own.

“Stellar,” Cabe said. “Sounds like good times. You okay?”

“Yeah. I am. Just shaken up, I guess. He asked if he could call again.”

“I hope you told him hell-to-the-no! What is he thinking?” Cabe said.

I rolled my eyes and bit my bottom lip, embarrassed to admit I’d said yes. Cabe read the answer in my silence.

“Oh no. Ty, you didn’t say he could call you again? Why? Why would you do that? You’ve finally gotten over the guy and stopped moping around about him. You don’t need him in your life. The dude dumped you. He left you for another woman. He doesn’t get to just show up when he’s done with her and pick back up where he left off.”

“Nobody said he’s picking back up where he left off, okay? I am well aware he dumped me, thank you very much. He caught me off guard. I didn’t know what to say,” I said.

“You just say screw you. It’s pretty simple.”

“Really? So if Monica called tonight and asked if she could call again sometime, you’d say screw you?”

More silence.

“I don’t know what I’d say,” Cabe finally said. “But I really hope I’d say no. I hope I’d tell her to kiss my ass and not give her the satisfaction of thinking I’ve been sitting here waiting for her to call.”

“I don’t think I gave him that impression, Cabe. I told him I was at work. He asked if he could call again. He probably just wants to catch up. He’s bummed about his divorce and wants to talk someone.”