Priya's Sweet Fiancée

Her name was Priya Sharma — a different Priya than the assistant, a coincidence that made Marisol's stomach turn every time she wrote the name in the binder — and she arrived to the second walkthrough ten minutes early, visibly nervous, carrying a folder of her own fabric swatches like an offering.

"You're the Marisol Reyes," Priya said, delighted, shaking her hand with both of hers. "Daniel said you were good, but I didn't realize you were the Weddings by Marisol. I've followed your work for years. I actually used one of your color palettes from a wedding two years ago as inspiration for our whole—"

"I'm so glad," Marisol said, and meant it, and hated how much she meant it, because Priya Sharma was exactly what Daniel deserved: warm, a little scattered, clearly building an entire future around this man with the unguarded trust of someone who had never once left anybody standing at an altar.

"Daniel's told me almost nothing about his past relationships," Priya said, oblivious, flipping through swatches. "Which honestly, I respect — I don't need to know every detail, you know? I just need to know he's sure about me. And he is. I've never doubted that for a second."

Marisol looked across the room at Daniel, who was very studiously examining a seating chart he'd clearly already memorized, and understood that he had never told his fiancée the name of the woman who'd left him at the altar, and that Marisol Reyes — Weddings by Marisol, three hundred and eleven perfect events — was about to spend six weeks as the unnamed ghost in the room of her own worst mistake.

"He's a good man," Marisol said quietly, to Priya, meaning it more than any sentence she'd said in six years. "You should feel very sure."

"I do." Priya beamed. "I really, really do."

Later, after Priya left for a dress fitting and the ballroom emptied out, Daniel found Marisol alone at the sample table, staring at a swatch of pale blue silk without seeing it.

"You didn't tell her," Marisol said, not looking up.

"No."

"Why not?"

Daniel was quiet for a long moment. "Because the version of that story where I tell her everything is the version where I have to explain why I still can't walk into a church," he said finally. "And I haven't figured out how to tell that story without telling her I'm not sure I'm fully over it. And I don't want her to marry a man who isn't sure. She deserves better than that."

Marisol set down the swatch very carefully.

"Are you? Sure, I mean."

Daniel looked at her for a long moment, the ballroom quiet around them, six years and one green binder standing between the two people they used to be and the two people standing in this room now.

"I don't know, Mari," he said quietly. "That's the honest answer. I don't know yet. But I'm getting married in six weeks, and I think I owe it to both of us to find out before then."