Baby Im A Sinner

JESSA

It's my wedding day, and my fiancé is nowhere to be found.

"Jessa, sit down. We're gonna find him, okay?"

My mom is trying to guide me towards a chair in the corner of the room. I can't move, though. My muscles are stiff and unresponsive. My brain is a whirling hurricane of thoughts that don't make sense.

"I can't sit down," I whisper.

"We'll find him, honey," my mom says. "He's probably just... I bet he's getting some air. We'll find him. Sit down."

I shove her hands away and gesture at the white wedding dress I'm wearing. "I can't sit down, Mom. This dress is already about to bust at the seams if I take too big an inhale. It needs to be intact for the pictures."

The pictures that my fiancé, Dane, is over twenty minutes late for.

"Where is he?" I snap. "He was here earlier."

I turn and find myself staring at the photographer. She's looking at me with the kind of expression that people reserve for sick puppies.

"He'll be here soon," I tell her. "He's never been good with time. I'll just... I'll just go find him now."

I brush past everyone and stride out of my dressing room. My mother doesn't stop me. In fact, I can feel her relief as I walk away, even as she starts assigning various caterers and family friends to go check different corners of the venue.

But I know no one else will find Dane.

I know this because I'm going to find Dane.

And then I'm going to kill him.

My fiancé has never been the most serious man, but I always told myself that that is part of his charm. He is easygoing. He doesn't sweat the small stuff. Sometimes, he doesn't even sweat the big stuff.

But I never doubted that he would show up for me when it counted.

On our wedding day, for God's sake.

The yacht club is large enough and the dress restrictive enough that it takes me a full ten minutes to get to the second floor. From every window, the vastness of the ocean stares back at me.

Dane and I are supposed to be sailing out on that very ocean less than two hours from now, officially man and wife.

It's still going to happen, snaps a haughty voice in my head. Everything will go the way you've always dreamed it will.

Maybe it will, another, grimmer voice answers. Or maybe not.

I try door after door. Most of the rooms are empty. In one, I come across a cluster of older club members sipping whiskey and smoking cigars. They all give the panicked bride at their door a strange look.

I avoid their eyes and keep searching.

I reach the third and final floor of the pretentious club that Dane insisted we get married in. That's when I hear a laugh that makes me stop in my tracks.

Because I know that laugh.

All too well.

It's the laugh that accompanied me through college and my first job. A laugh that I have always associated with trust.

A trust that is now splintering away with each and every step I take.

I turn the corner and catch sight of the two of them through the narrow slit in the doorway. My fiancé and my maid of honor entangled together.

Dane is trying to pull his jacket back on, but she's pawing at him, pushing her breasts against his chest and pulling his attention from the open door.

"Salma, I'm late," he mutters. He sounds more amused than annoyed.

"I can't help it. You know I can't resist you in a suit," she says, her voice high-pitched and breathy. I've heard her sound like that hundreds of times before.

In bars and restaurants.

At the beginning of new relationships.

In the thick of burgeoning sexual chemistry.

I should crash through the door and break up whatever the hell is going on between them, but all I can think is, How many times has Salma seen Dane in a suit?

A dozen times? Maybe more? We've attended weddings together as a group. Salma invited us to her company's Christmas gala. My grandma's funeral.

Did they have sex each time? And if so, how the hell did I miss it?

Because standing here in my perfectly fitted white dress, I feel stupid. And I'm not a stupid person. I worked my whole life to avoid being associated with that word.

But somehow, it snuck up on me. While I was making plans for the future, picking out flowers, and choosing between the salmon or the veal.

"Kiss me again," Salma says in a loud whisper. A whisper that's begging to be heard, like she knows I'm marooned in this hallway, helpless and watching. "Better yet, fuck me again."

"I can't, Sal. She'll be waiting."

She. I flinch at the way he throws the word out, so casual and unconcerned. No regard for the woman behind the pronoun.

But I lose focus on him as I wait for Salma's response. Surely, this is all a sick joke. After all, it's Salma we're talking about, right?

The girl who held my hair back during the worst hangovers of my early twenties. The girl who encouraged me to be confident and fearless. The girl who sat up with me late at night and told me to pursue my dream of becoming a chef.

Is this that same girl? Or had I imagined her?

God, it's amazing how quickly a life can fall apart.