"I know it was a dream. I just feel that the dream was trying to tell me something."
"It's telling you that the anniversary of Connor’s death is coming, and that you really need to forgive yourself for what happened. Call that therapist. Don't allow this to torture you the way you did for so long. I'm serious."
"Perhaps you're right."
"I know I am. You know what else I am?"
"What?"
"I'm hungry. Let’s go get something to eat." Asher chuckled as he crushed the empty water bottle in his hands and stood up.
We'ddevoured two grand slams at the small cafe, and then, with our stomachs full, we pulled out of the parking lot of the cafe and drove a couple of blocks before we came to a red light. Asher turned up a song that was playing on the radio, and I glanced around at the shoppers on the street. My heart accelerated and I had to do a double take when outside of the bridal shop on the corner I saw Cara and Bailey.
"Ho-leeee shit," Asher mumbled.
"What?" I asked, trying to pretend that he hadn't seen the same thing I just had.
"Is that...who I think it is?" Asher questioned, his voice lined with shock. "It is. It’s not a wonder why you’re all fucked up. Bailey's back in Sunnyville?"
There was no way I was going to be able to keep the fact that I saw her as well to myself. I closed my eyes and nodded. "Yeah, that was her."
"Did you know she was back in town?"
"Yeah. I ran into her last night at Hooligans." The look in her eyes flashed in my head as I thought back to last night. She'd barely said a word to me, yet that look had said so much!
"When did she get back?"
"I don't know. It was recent, because Cara asked her to be her maid of honor. I wasn't sure if she had been kidding or not when she told me she was coming back. Honestly, I thought she'd back out, but I guess I was wrong because she is living here again."
"And when you ran into her, how was she?" he questioned as he accelerated the car and proceeded through the light on the way back to my house.
"She looked at me the same way she did the day she walked out the door. Full of hate and blame."
Asher grew quiet. He had been there the day she closed the door on our relationship. We'd been doing nothing but fighting for weeks. I'd been spending more time at Asher’s than I had in my own home. When he had finally convinced me to return and work things out with her, I'd found that she had been spending the days I'd been gone packing up her stuff—the living room was full of boxes. When realization hit that she was going to leave me, a sense of panic came over me. I didn't want to loose her.
It was three in the morning as I stood in the living room begging her to stop packing and come to bed with me, that we'd see someone together and work through everything. That was when the truth finally fell from her lips. Her words had been forever carved into my memory.
"It's all your fault Connor died."
The second those words had fallen from her lips, I couldn't breathe. She had just confirmed everything that I felt in my own being as being true. In that moment, I wished it had been me who died on the pavement that night. She looked at me, tears in her eyes as she scrambled to take those words back. It no longer mattered because everything I'd had in me left to fight for her was now gone. I stopped begging her to come to bed with me and dropped my head in defeat. I said nothing more. I just turned and headed towards our bedroom, slamming the door behind me. I'd laid in bed that night and listened to her cry herself to sleep, my own tears falling down my face.
The next morning, Asher arrived just as Bailey was carrying the last box of her stuff out to her car. We'd started fighting the second I had walked out the bedroom door. There was nothing more that we could possibly have said. Instead, I watched from the front window as she hugged Asher tightly, then she wiped tears from her cheeks, kissed him good-bye, and climbed into the car without even as much as a wave to me and drove away.
"I don't know what to say, Jackson. Perhaps if you talk to her before the wedding and get things sorted out..."
"There won't be any talking. I know full well exactly where she stands on the subject of us. That is a path, my friend, that won't be revisited. All I need to do is concentrate on getting through this damn wedding."
7
Bailey - A week later
"Here is the dress,"Zoe called, flying out from the storage room in a huff, carrying the dress bag over to me. "Why don't you go into this change room, slip into it, and I will have one of the girls come in here and help you."
Zoe, the owner of Sunnyville Bridal, gave me an annoyed look as she hung the dress on the hook. I'd had to change my appointment from this afternoon to this morning because I'd had to work, and I could remember hearing the irritation in her voice as she had shuffled around her schedule to accommodate me.
"So everything is going to be done in this small change room?" I asked, staring at the tight space.
"Unfortunately, yes. I know there isn't much room, but as I told you on the phone, we have a full morning because the men of the party will be coming in to be fitted for their tuxes. Plus, I've had strict instructions from the bride that they are not to see anything in relation to the dresses," she said, letting out a loud huff.