I waited beside the window with my phone resting on the desk behind me.<\/p>\n
I had sent Carter a message asking for an honest conversation.<\/p>\n
Now I had to allow him the time to answer it.<\/p>\n
That was harder than I expected.<\/p>\n
Every few minutes, I found myself looking toward the desk.<\/p>\n
I would remind myself that I had already said what I needed to say.<\/p>\n
Then I would wonder whether I should have chosen different words.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I should have explained more.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I should have explained less.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the message had sounded colder than I intended.<\/p>\n
I caught myself doing it again.<\/p>\n
I was trying to manage Carter's reaction before he had even given one.<\/p>\n
I stopped and looked at the dress.<\/p>\n
It remained on its hanger, untouched.<\/p>\n
The fabric was smooth, and the sleeves fell exactly as they had when I first brought it home.<\/p>\n
I remembered standing in front of the mirror months earlier, imagining the day I would wear it.<\/p>\n
Back then, I had thought the hardest part of getting married would be choosing the right dress and making sure everything was ready.<\/p>\n
I had never imagined that I would spend the morning of my wedding wondering whether I should wear it at all.<\/p>\n
My phone vibrated.<\/p>\n
I turned so quickly that I nearly knocked the chair beside me.<\/p>\n
Carter's name appeared on the screen.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I could not bring myself to open the message.<\/p>\n
I wanted his response to be reassuring.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to understand.<\/p>\n
I also wanted to know what he truly thought, even if the answer disappointed me.<\/p>\n
I picked up the phone.<\/p>\n
His message was short.<\/p>\n
He said he was frustrated by the situation and did not understand why I was questioning our marriage on the morning of the wedding.<\/p>\n
He said we needed to talk.<\/p>\n
He did not ask how I was feeling.<\/p>\n
He did not mention the cut near my ear.<\/p>\n
He did not acknowledge that I had been frightened by waking up with my hair cut unevenly.<\/p>\n
I read the message twice.<\/p>\n
Then I set the phone down.<\/p>\n
I had to remind myself that one message could not explain everything Carter felt.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he was upset.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he was struggling to understand why I needed time.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he believed that continuing with the wedding would make the morning feel less terrible.<\/p>\n
I could not know.<\/p>\n
But I could recognize what the message had left unanswered.<\/p>\n
I had asked him to listen.<\/p>\n
He had told me that he was frustrated.<\/p>\n
Both things could be true.<\/p>\n
The problem was that I still did not know whether he could make room for my feelings alongside his own.<\/p>\n
I sat down at the desk.<\/p>\n
I did not want to turn the message into a verdict.<\/p>\n
I wanted to give the conversation a chance.<\/p>\n
So I replied that I was willing to talk, but I needed us to discuss more than the schedule.<\/p>\n
I asked him to meet me somewhere quiet where we could speak without other people interrupting.<\/p>\n
Then I waited.<\/p>\n
This time, I did not keep picking up the phone.<\/p>\n
I folded my hands and looked at the window.<\/p>\n
I thought about the advice Arthur had given me years earlier.<\/p>\n
He had warned me that some people might see an inheritance before they saw the person who received it.<\/p>\n
He had not told me to assume that every person who loved me was lying.<\/p>\n
He had asked me to learn the difference between someone who wanted to share a life with me and someone who wanted the advantages that came with it.<\/p>\n
I had always believed I would recognize the difference.<\/p>\n
I had thought dishonesty would announce itself through some obvious act.<\/p>\n
I had never considered how difficult it might be to separate genuine affection from the smaller things that made me uneasy.<\/p>\n
A person could say loving words and still struggle to listen.<\/p>\n
A person could be frustrated without being cruel.<\/p>\n
A person could care about a relationship and still behave badly when that relationship became inconvenient.<\/p>\n
The truth was rarely as simple as I wanted it to be.<\/p>\n
That did not mean I should stop paying attention.<\/p>\n
My phone vibrated again.<\/p>\n
Carter agreed to meet.<\/p>\n
I read his response and let out a breath I had not realized I was holding.<\/p>\n
We settled on a quiet place where we could talk privately.<\/p>\n
I did not ask him to apologize before we met.<\/p>\n
I did not tell him what he had to say.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hear his own words.<\/p>\n
Before leaving the desk, I looked at the note I had written earlier.<\/p>\n
Three questions.<\/p>\n
Did Carter love me?<\/p>\n
Did he respect me?<\/p>\n
Could I tell him the truth without being punished for it?<\/p>\n
I folded the paper and placed it in my bag.<\/p>\n
I was not bringing it to use against him.<\/p>\n
I was bringing it because I knew how easily I could lose sight of my own concerns when someone I loved became upset.<\/p>\n
I wanted to remember what mattered to me.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at the wedding dress one last time.<\/p>\n
I still had not decided what would happen to the ceremony.<\/p>\n
I still did not know whether Carter and I could find a way forward.<\/p>\n
But I was going to speak to him honestly.<\/p>\n
That was the only promise I could make with confidence.<\/p>\n
I picked up my phone and checked the time.<\/p>\n
The day was moving forward.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I was not measuring its progress by how close I was to walking down the aisle.<\/p>\n
I was measuring it by how close I was to understanding my own decision.<\/p>\n
I waited beside the window with my phone resting on the desk behind me. I had sent Carter a message asking for an honest conversation. Now I had to allow … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40326,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40306\/revisions\/40326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}