Crazy for Love

“I’m sorry, hon. Try not to worry about her, okay?”

Chloe let her head fall back on the couch. “She didn’t know about this vacation, did she?”

“No. I didn’t say a word to her mother. How’s the trip, by the way?”

“Good,” Chloe answered. Then, with more honesty, “Great.”

“You sound much better. Try to have fun and give Jenn my love. I promise I’ll call if there’s anything else. If you don’t hear from me, everything’s fine, all right?”

“Got it, Mom. I love you.”

Chloe hung up and tried not to cry. Her poor parents. Retired and living in their small house with its tiny yard, and the press was still stalking them, just because she’d spent a week there before she’d found a place to live. A place that didn’t belong to Thomas’s mother. The press had trampled her father’s rosebushes and driven her mother to wear a head scarf and dark glasses every time she stepped outside.

Chloe slung her arm over her eyes and groaned. “Tell me again that I wasn’t a Bridezilla.”

“You know you weren’t.”

“I did cry at the dress shop,” Chloe whispered.

“They screwed up the hem, and you got overwhelmed. You weren’t a bitch.”

She took a deep breath, but the lump in her throat didn’t budge. “I must’ve been. I must’ve been a bitch to Thomas. I must’ve been an obsessed, type A ice queen with a scary attitude, or none of this makes any sense.”

Jenn’s arms wrapped around her waist and she snuggled her head into Chloe’s shoulder. “That’s not true. You’re sweet and kind. And maybe a little bit type A, but just a little. Don’t cry.”

But she was already crying. “My life was so normal.”

“I know.”

“What did I do?”

“Aw, Chloe, you didn’t do anything wrong. It was Thomas! He… He must have gotten cold feet.”

“When men get cold feet, they don’t jump out of a plane and hide out at a beach resort in Florida! I don’t know what I did!”

Jenn made soothing noises and rubbed her back until Chloe stopped sniffling. “Thomas was a mama’s boy. You knew that. He didn’t know how to stand up to his mom, and apparently he didn’t know how to stand up to you, either.”

“But I don’t even know why he wanted out.”

“Does it matter?”

Did it? Chloe took the tissue Jenn offered and wiped her tears. He’d wanted out. Badly enough to chew off his own foot to escape the trap. How was she supposed to excavate a logical, thoughtful reason from a mess like that? “Maybe it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I get so weepy.”

“I’m sorry about your cousin.”

“It wasn’t that. I think your vacation just worked a little too well. I kind of forgot all that craziness for a while. I let my guard down and it snuck up on me when I talked to my mom about Tiffany. And…and I’m kind of freaked out that I’ve been able to forget Thomas so easily. When I was making out with Max… How could I enjoy that so much if I was in love with Thomas just a month ago?”

“You don’t have to feel bad about that. You don’t owe him anything after what he did!”

Chloe crumpled the tissue in her hand. “No, but if I’m already getting over Thomas after a month…then we really shouldn’t have been getting married, right? Thomas was right.”

“Thomas wasn’t right about anything.”

“He—”

“Look, Chloe, I knew him, too. I’ve known him almost as long as you have, and I’ve spent time with him and…Thomas was nice and smart and handsome, but he was weak. And he was a liar.”

She took a deep breath. And then another. “Yes. He was a liar.”