Two minutes later—nothing.
Ten minutes later—still nothing.
Five hours later just as I was logging out to go home—Beck was still radio silent. What could be more important to him than this? I thought he desperately wanted to go to the wedding.
Three dots popped up, indicating he was online, not that I had the phone jammed in my hand or anything.
But then nothing.
I typed out “hello” and then deleted it. Then typed out another less polite message and deleted that one as well.
I knew if any sane person could see me now, they’d wonder what the hell was going on. Time to call in the only person I was completely sure was sane: Florence.
I shot past the lifts and took the stairs where I could get mobile coverage.
“Hey,” she answered.
“I need you to talk me off a cliff. Oh, and hello.”
I heard her take a deep breath and it made me copy her and fill my lungs.
“What’s going on.”
Florence understood how difficult this wedding was going to be for me. She’d understand a little freaking out. “Beck isn’t answering my messages.”
As I exited the building, by some miracle my bus was waiting for me at the stop. I climbed on and pressed the phone harder against my head, hoping I’d hear Florence over the traffic and announcements on the bus.
“At all? Or has he just not answered one text. Yet?”
“The one I sent him five hours ago hasn’t been answered. And before you ask, he’s seen it and it’s after lunch in New York.” I wasn’t being entirely unreasonable and expecting him to answer in the middle of the night or anything.
“You know what I’m going to say,” Florence replied.
I stared out of the window, watching the push and pull of the office workers trying to escape the area and the tourists pouring in. “That I should never have agreed to go to this wedding in the first place?” Well, that was completely certain. “It was a deal I couldn’t say—”
“You know that’s not what I was going to say. He’s in New York for a reason, not just to message you the entire time. He’ll reply. He knows he has to keep you happy and stop you from completely melting down.”
She was right. He was probably in a meeting. Or multiple meetings.
But didn’t he get a loo break?
“Karen is going to do her best to figure out if we’re an act. I can’t give her any chinks in our armor.”
“Yeah, she’s on a mission now. If I didn’t know better, I would say she’s more interested in you and Beck than she is about the wedding itself. She called me again last night and asked a ton of questions about when you two met and then when I’d met him.”
My heart pounded, sucking up blood from my toes and making them turn marble-cold. I’d half hoped Florence would tell me Karen had forgotten by now and that in Scotland she’d be far more focused on her wedding and her guests, but she’d done the opposite. “Maybe I should have gone to New York,” I replied. I could have phoned in sick, although knowing my luck, I would have bumped into someone from the office on the Heathrow Express.
“Who cares what Karen thinks, anyway,” Florence said. “She’s a witch. You don’t need someone like that to believe you.”
I thought Florence got it. “Karen can’t know that Beck and I aren’t a real couple. Gordy hasn’t said something, has he?” Was she trying to warm me up before she told me that Gordy had spilled the beans?
“Gordy doesn’t speak to Karen. And actually he hasn’t spoken to Matt much either. Between you and me, they’ve had a bit of a falling out. Gordy really doesn’t approve of what he’s done.”
Gordy was a sweet, kind man who might just deserve Florence.
My thoughts tumbled down into the I-can’t-believe-this-has-happened valley. I’d spent a lot of time in that place, ruminating and wondering what had gone on, when things had gone wrong, how long Matt and Karen had been together—I couldn’t go back there.
“Well, he’s done what he’s done. I’m trying to look to the future—otherwise I wouldn’t be going to this wedding.” The bus pulled up at my stop just three doors down from the flat I’d thought would become the place where Matt and I lived as newlyweds.