Page 97 of How to Ruin Your Ex's Wedding
App is finally downloaded, payment secure, and I am pulling my scooter out of the rack and racing at full speed toward the Cascadian House.
Four twenty-six p.m.
I’m certain those little rascals for senior citizens move faster than these fucking scooters. I lean forward, hoping that will help the momentum.
Check the time. Four twenty-seven. Okay. Ten minutes ago, they hadn’t even started the ceremony. So, even if everything began the second G and I hung up, it shouldn’t be over yet.
I can do this. I have to be able to do this. There is no way I’ve gone through everything I have today just to have my plan fail. This is the moment in the movie when things fall magically into place, where the hero makes it in time and gets his girl.
I love Tabatha. We are meant to be together. The universe knows it. I will get there in time. She will agree with me. We will be together.
I swear the little scooter picks up speed just then.
Four thirty-one p.m.
I crash the scooter into the patch of grass in the middle of the circular drive of the Cascadian House and take off at a full sprint toward the front lobby, pausing only to ask the front desk which floor they are on.
“Eight,” she says cheerfully. “I think you’re a little late though.”
I skid to a stop. “What do you mean?” I ask, panting.
“It started at four o’clock,” she says.
I stopped for that? She doesn’t know.Jeez, Pax.
I sprint toward the elevator bay, then remember my experience with Tabs when it stalled on us. I look toward the elevator. Then the stairs. Back at the elevator.
Pick one.
Deciding, I hit the stairs running, taking them two at a time.
29
Tabatha
Liza finishes sewing the bottom of the gown. You can hardly tell the rip is there, even if you look for it. At close inspection, you can see some of the flower halves are off-center, but other than that, it’s perfect. And it only took her thirty minutes to do.
“Is Hunter upset?” I ask Liza as Crystal re-fluffs my train behind me, then gathers it again to walk down the hall to the ballroom.
“Upset?” She turns her mouth into her headset and brings her hand up to cover the other side. “Update, now!”
She holds her arm out to stop us at about twenty feet before the ballroom doors. “Uh-huh . . . Right . . . Where is it?”
I look at her questioningly. She doesn’t meet my eye.
“What’s wrong?” Crystal asks me, her voice low.
“I don’t know,” I whisper back.
Liza lowers her hand from the headset and looks down at the ground, her expression grim.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Let’s just give it a second,” she says. Then, after a minute, she continues, “Maybe we should sit down.” She gestures to another bench, this one directly across from the ballroom doors.
“Why? Won’t that wrinkle my dress?” I ask.
“Probably,” she says.
