You’ll Find Me in Manhattan. Jill Knapp

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Six – Olivia

      “So what did you think of that last venue we looked at?” Alex crossed over to me from the kitchen. He plopped down on the sofa and started to untie his suede John Varvatos shoes. We had spent the entire day looking at venues.

      I took a deep breath and started cracking my knuckles out of stress. We had just gotten off the train and walked all the way from the subway exit back to Alex’s apartment. We were both beat.

      The truth was, I loved the last place we looked at. The Mondrian Hotel down in SoHo offered a beautiful entryway with a garden-like atmosphere and French-style decorating all throughout the hotel. The downside? It was two hundred and fifty dollars a head for a Saturday wedding, and only a bit cheaper for a Friday night at two twenty five.

      What Alex didn’t know was that I had met my mother at the King Cole Bar the other day to talk about him. For the most part, I don’t give much weight to my mother’s opinions. But when she told me over a glass of wine that she “swore” she saw Alex out with another girl, I couldn’t ignore it.

      “I thought it was gorgeous,” I said through a sigh, my mother’s smug face popping into my mind. “Perfect in fact.”

      Alex straightened up on the couch and offered me a smile. “Then why do you look so sad, baby?”

      The reason I looked so sad was clear. After I told my mother that she was wrong, that she couldn’t have possibly seen something that was more than a friendly hello with a fellow classmate, she pulled out her phone and showed me a picture.

      I couldn’t see who the girl was, because she was facing the other way. From what I could tell she was wearing heels and had long, red hair. But what I could clearly see was Alex’s face. The two of them were embraced in a hug and, from what I could tell, it was around our school.

      “He’s cheating on you,” she had said, in between sips of her Bordeaux.

      I shook my head at her. “You’re wrong. I know there’s an explanation.”

      But deep down I didn’t know for sure that Alex wouldn’t cheat on me. I believed anyone was capable of doing anything. And my mother planting seeds of doubt in my mind only made me feel worse. Taking the phone out of her hand, I texted the picture to my phone and told her I had to leave.

      Now, with Alex still waiting for an answer as to why I looked so sad, I realized I wasn’t ready to talk to him about it yet.

      “Because this wedding is going to end up costing upwards of fifty grand by the time all is said and done.” I immediately craved a cigarette. I instinctively reached for my pack in my purse, and then bit my bottom lip in frustration when I remembered that I was trying to quit and hadn’t bought a new pack this morning. “And that’s not including what our honeymoon is going to cost. At this point we’d be lucky to afford a motel at the Jersey shore.”

      Alex let out a chuckle and wrapped his strong arms around me. As soon as his body pressed onto mine, I felt myself relax. The truth was, I wanted a big wedding. I wanted the white dress, the long aisle to float down, the candles, the flowers, the band, and, most of all, to celebrate it with everyone I cared about. But at the end of the day, I would gladly trade all of those novelties for a small ceremony at an upstate bed and breakfast if it meant I got to be with Alex. I felt a small wave of insecurity as I wondered if he felt the same way. If he would be happy with that.

      As long as that was still what he wanted.

      I turned to face him, feeling the warmth of his comforting smile. We’d come a long way in these past two years. First our relationship had started out as a secret that only he and I knew about. Then, last year, I essentially freaked out and felt like I didn’t know what I wanted. I was confused, but the truth was, deep in my heart of hearts, there’s only one guy I ever truly loved. And that was my husband-to-be. I pushed the thoughts of him hugging some СКАЧАТЬ