Waiting on Forever

Chapter 1

Emerson Adams drive for perfection and the lack of commitment from another wedding planner to said vision had postponed--yet again--the date of said wedding. It had been three years since her engagement party, and her friends and family were still waiting for the save-the-dates.

Well, mostly his friends and family. Since moving to L.A. for college, she seldom visited her family, and in High School, she could count how many people she'd considered friends on one hand.

That fact hadn't changed much since then. Her best friend Norah was her maid of honor and the rest of their mutual friends were the rest of the bridal party. She was relaying the newest piece of information to her, already surveying a new list of potential wedding planners online. Norah was on deck through face-time for emotional support.

"Emmy, you have got to get it together, girl! At this rate I'll be married before you, no--my baby cousin Leticia will be married before and like, she barely did her first communion."

She sighed in frustration. She knew she was being picky and difficult, something that had been said before, and not always to her face--but her vision had to be idyllic. "I know...okay. But all the places she showed us for venues were a complete joke. Like...none of them were big enough for James' family, who just keeps on getting bigger, by the way. His cousin Lauren asked us if we could also have her daughter be a flower girl. I already have like five...and they didn't have the space to have both an outdoor ceremony and an indoor reception at the time we want to get married. Or a ramp for his uncle's wheelchair. Like half of Los Angeles has all the good venues booked years in advance. We should have gone with the Belmount back when it was available. I am mentally murdering myself. We could have been married last month."

We could have been married already...we are not getting any younger Em... James had said to her on the anniversary of their engagement. Emphasis on the younger part for his sake. Aside from the obvious age difference between the two of them, most of his friends were already married and had kids, and Em knew he longed to start a family with her soon. But she had to get through the wedding first.

He had hinted at the fact that they could elope the first year, when their first venue flooded and was out of commission for a year for repairs.

His family was something she had painstakingly tried to please on all accounts. Her family...was dysfunctional--if one were using kind words to describe it. When she was little, she had wanted to be part of the kind of family he belonged to. The kind that gave each other homemade gifts and was there for soccer games and school plays. The kind where the mom baked cookies for you after school and the dad went over your homework with you before bed.

She had grown up with the kind of family where the mom and dad traded passive aggressive insults when the Bourbon was running low. If they could both stand to be in the same room together at the time—their daughter being the only thing that tethered them to each other until they had finally divorced. And by no means had she been her grandparent's favorite either, being the legitimate child of a wedding they did not approve off.

All of that and more left her with a lot of stories about having the need to please others amongst other issues to unload unto both Norah and their shared therapists.

Norah brought her away from running deeper down memory lane. "Well, just so you know, for planning and stuff, you won't be able to do it yourself if you get that promotion at work. They work you like a horse already, I'm surprised you have time to even be engaged. It's about damn time you make some concessions."

She smiled at her friend knowingly. "Yeah, yeah. I hear you. I'll talk to you later, James is making lasagna. Grammy's recipe."

"Save me some!" Her friend managed to yell through the camera before Emerson closed her laptop.