I yanked off my ring, which never fit properly anyway, and tucked it into Brayden’s jacket pocket.
“We’re done.”
“Hey, babe, we can fix this. I can fix this. I’ll treat you like a princess. We can make it a real-life fairytale.” He smiled at me, as if a smile could magically fix everything, as if it could erase discovering him in a closet with my best friend.
“Wait a minute, what about me?” Jenny pouted, which was not as effective as it might have been if her lipstick weren’t smeared everywhere besides her lips, as if a toddler had decided to play with her mother’s lipstick and gone to town.
“And didn’t you tell me that you weren’t even attracted to Naelle because she’s so fat?”
I gasped.
My dad crouched, gripped Brayden’s arm, opened the door, and tossed him outside. Brayden didn’t say anything, probably because he’d gotten a good look at my father’s face.
“Brayden! Wait!” Jenny ran out after him.
My dad closed the front door and locked it.
I loved how protective he was of me, but I said, “We still have a house full of guests, Dad.”
“Right.”
He unlocked the door.
“I don’t think that Brayden will come back tonight, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Thanks for punching him, Dad. I know that it’ll make things sticky for you.”
“If I had known that he would cheat on you, I never would have encouraged you to say yes. I know that it took you two weeks to decide to accept his proposal. But I just want you to be happy, baby girl.”
My jaw was on the floor. “But I’ve been told my whole life that I have to marry Brayden and give your company to our children. It was supposed to be the perfect corporate merger between his dad and you. We were getting married right after we graduated from college and inherited both of our trust funds.”
“Fuck that asshole,” my dad said. His Chicago accent came out stronger when he was completely furious. My dad was from the South Side, but he’d been a business executive in corporate America for a long time. “I thought he was a different man. I’ll dissolve our partnership.”
“You’d do that for me? You’d end your partnership with Mr. Wilcox?”
“I’d do that for both of us, kiddo. I don’t want to be in business with someone who wants to keep a side bitch. If he lies about one big thing in his life, he’s likely to lie about more things.”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
He gave me a hug.
“I can break the news to your mother.”
“Maybe after the end of the party?”
Both of us looked at the noisy party with live jazz and an open bar — a celebration that my parents had paid for in order to show how happy they were that I was on the right path.
I was supposed to be a 22-24-26. Married at 22. First kid at 24. Second one at 26.
And I might’ve gone through with it, too, if B
rayden hadn’t decided to cheat on me with my best friend.
“You can go upstairs, sweetheart. I know that it’s been a shock. Your mom and I will take care of things down here.”
“Thanks, Dad.”