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I reached for the small decorative folder resting on the table beside me.
The marriage license was inside it. Both our names were printed across the top, with blank lines waiting for our signatures at the bottom.
We’d planned a little ceremony for the signing, but there was no going back to the schedule after what Theo had done to me.
I picked up the marriage licence.
Theo’s eyes went wide. “What are you doing?”
I picked up the marriage licence.
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I held the paper up so that the nearest guests could see it clearly.
“Good thing we hadn’t signed this yet,” I said quietly. “Because this wedding is over.”
Then I tore the license cleanly down the middle.
“What?” Theo shouted. “How dare you? After everything we’ve built together, you have the nerve to freak out over a joke?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer him. Two hundred outraged guests rose and started yelling at him all at once.
I tore the license cleanly down the middle.
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“You humiliated her!” someone shouted.
“That was disgusting,” another voice added.
“Who does that to their bride?”
Theo spun toward them.
“A joke doesn’t make your wife cry.” A woman stepped up to shake her finger at Theo.
“And now you don’t even have a wife,” someone else added.
Theo looked around the terrace like he was searching for an exit. His face had gone red. The easy charm, the warmth, all of it was gone.
“A joke doesn’t make your wife cry.”
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“You’re all overreacting!” he said.
My father stepped up beside me and draped a towel over my shoulders. Then he moved through the crowd until he was facing Theo.
“I welcomed you into our family,” Dad said. “And this is how you treat my daughter?”
Theo opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
“I think you should leave,” Dad said.
“Yeah, get him out of here,” someone cried.
“I think you should leave.”
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“Where’s security?” someone else yelled.
Theo raised his hands. “Wait, you can’t kick me out of my own wedding!”
Cally stepped through the crowd surrounding Theo. “There are 200 of us and one of you. I think we can kick you out easily.”
The guests yelled approvingly.
Dad gestured toward the venue staff standing near the garden wall, two uniformed guards who’d been watching the whole thing unfold.
The guards stepped forward.
“Wait, you can’t kick me out of my own wedding!”
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The crowd parted to let the guards through.
One of the guards gestured politely toward the garden gate. “Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
Theo looked at me one last time. “You’re really ending everything over this?”
“Absolutely. I don’t want to be married to a man who thinks it’s amusing to humiliate me, who thinks throwing me into a pool in an expensive, bulky gown is a joke.”
Theo’s jaw dropped. A guard placed a hand on his elbow, and he let himself be led away.
When the iron gate clicked shut behind him, the garden went quiet.
The crowd parted to let the guards through.
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I stood there in my soaked dress, feeling the cold creeping into me now that Theo was gone. I pulled the towel a little tighter around me.
Then Cally appeared at my side. “Come on, let’s get you dry and cleaned up.”
I nodded, and we started walking back toward the main building.
“If only I’d listened to that warning…”
“You had faith in the man you loved.” She put an arm around my shoulders. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
We started walking back toward the main building.
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“I guess not, but…” I paused to look back at the guests milling about the terrace, the pool, the twinkling lights.
“Hey.” Cally stepped in front of me. “The only person here who laughed at you was him. That should tell you a lot.”
I nodded. “At least I found out who he really was.”
“Now, we’re going to cry about this, wonder how we missed the signs, clean up the mess, and then, we move on, okay?” She placed her hands on my shoulders. “We leave Theo in the past, nothing more than a bad memory. That is the thing you’ll laugh about later.”
I smiled. “You know, I think you’re right.”
