“Hello?” The perky, female voice said into Nicole’s ear.
For a split second, she thought she must have dialed the wrong number. But then she looked and realized it wasn’t the wrong number at all. “Hello, who is this?” Nicole asked.
“My name is Gia. And who might I ask is calling?”
Nicole felt a surge of new, fresh hatred coursing through her veins. “Gia, this is Nicole Masters, Red’s fiancé and I’d appreciate it if you’d put him on the phone immediately.”
Gia’s voice became positively chipper. “Oh, Nicole. Yeah, he’s in a meeting right now so I’m taking messages for him.”
“I understand he’s busy, but I need to talk to him.”
“He gave me strict instructions. Sorry.” She drew out the last syllable of the word sorry so that it sounded gleeful rather than apologetic.
Nicole could feel her blood pressure rising. “That’s good that you follow instructions,” she said in a measured tone. “Thanks so much for your help, Gia.”
“Your wel—“
Nicole hung up the phone. Her jaw was so tight that she thought she might grind her teeth to dust if she wasn’t careful. She couldn’t believe the nerve of that girl, nor could she fathom that Red was allowing her to handle his cell phone—something Nicole never even did!
This was too much. And now she was supposed to sit and wait like a good little girl for her man to come home and give her his excuses again, and again, and again.
No. She was really and truly sick of being kicked around today. Nicole walked upstairs with a purpose and grabbed the stack of papers that Red had printed out and left on the desk.
Next, she went to the office and began faxing them over, en mass, to Marcie.
Nicole called Marcie a few minutes later and left her a voicemail. “Hey Marcie, it’s Nicole. Looks like the wedding is going to be quite a bit bigger than originally anticipated. I’m faxing you Red’s guest list now and it’s quite extensive. I’ll be sending you a follow up email with my list attached.”
She got on her laptop and spent the rest of the afternoon adding every single friend and family member to her list.
Pointedly and with great self-righteousness and indignation, Nicole left Danielle off her guest list. Danielle would not be receiving a wedding invite. Nicole knew it was a loud an irrevocable message on the state of their friendship, but at that moment she didn’t particularly care.
Marcie called back soon after and said that she was sending it all over to the vendor who was handling the printing and mailing. It looked like there would be just over four hundred people invited to their wedding now. Of course, many of them wouldn’t be able to attend on such short notice. Marcie said that they should plan for something on along the lines of three hundred guests.
***
Red texted her once, around six o’clock and said that he loved her and that he’d be home in the next two hours.
She didn’t respond. It was too little too late, as far as she was concerned.
Instead, Nicole made herself dinner (steak and corn and potatoes), drank a glass of wine, and settled down on the couch with a book.
At just past eight thirty, Red came home. “Nicole?” he called, wandering through the house until he found her in the living room. He smiled warily. “Hey, didn’t you hear me calling you?”
She looked up from her book briefly. “I heard you.” She went back to reading.
“So, I brought home food from a great burger joint and I figured we could make it a working dinner. I’m ready to hammer out this guest list thing.”
“It’s already done,” she said, still not taking her eyes from her book.
“What do you mean, it’s already done?”
“I sent out the list to Marcie hours ago.”
“But how?”
“I just sent it.”
“Nicole.” His voice grew firm, insistent. “Nicole, look at me.”
She looked up at him, defiant. “Yes?”
“I want you to tell me just what’s going on right now. I see that you’re angry with me, and I understand why. But you need to communicate to me what’s going on.”
She put the book aside and sat up. “It’s really simple, Red. You kept pushing me aside over and over again, and you refused to help me. So I just did what I needed to do to get these invitations out. I used the list you’d printed and we went from there.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “How could you possibly do that? There were hundreds of names and addresses in that list and we’re only having fifty people in our wedding.”
“Not anymore. I decided to change that.”
Red’s expression changed, darkened. “You just made a unilateral decision?”
“Just like you do all the time. Leaving the house when something’s more important, even though you promised to be here for me and discuss our wedding. Putting your assistant on your cell phone so I can’t reach you. There’s lots of things you do that I don’t understand or like very much.”