Tragic and Wonder: An Un-Fairytale [On Hold]

Chapter 8- The Fifth Wheel

My summer was off to a rough start with Mrs. Gable's passing. The apartments and bookstore were passed on to Doug. He followed his grandmother's wish to let me rent the apartment for as long as I wanted at the original agreed upon price without raising the pricing. Mrs. Gable was certainly a huge blessing in my life, and I felt the void that was left after her passing for quite a while. It was hard to get over that, but slowly, I was finding little things that reminded me of her and that helped to fill the space she held in my heart.

The summer only continued to be rough after that. Amanda and Casper's wedding was happening in the fall and Amanda was constantly calling to talk wedding details with me. I did not mind helping her at all, but it was hard knowing that I was the maid of honor in the wedding that I had hoped for so long would be mine. I had to pull myself together, but it was going to be difficult.

I threw myself into what work I could, admittedly the summers were slower at both the coffee shop and bookstore, so I decided to take a couple of summer courses to help occupy my mind. The courses were basic courses that I needed for my degree. They were not difficult classes, but they did help take my mind off what was happening in a few more months. After Mrs. Gable's passing, Doug handled the bookstore mostly by himself, but he had me help on days or nights when he was unable to be there or the arrival of new shipments. I found out that he despised entering the details of the new books that were coming into the store, so naturally he passed that responsibility on to me.

Mr. Sullivan had James and I take every two days off on rotation. Usually, I would open in the mornings and James would close the café at night. It turns out, James was a night owl and had a difficult time getting up early in the morning. I was becoming more of a morning person the older I got, so I was not bothered with taking the morning shifts. On the days where one of us was off for the whole day, Jessie would work with Amy until Amy moved back to California. Once Amy moved back, Mr. Sullivan began looking for more help. He realized that we were a little understaffed and was trying to help ease some of the stress that James and I were under. While it did help with the work stress, it did not help the uneasy feeling that was creeping up on me as my best friends' wedding quickly approached.

The closer the wedding came, the more worried I became that I would manage to ruin the wedding in some way. The biggest concern I had was accidentally letting it slip to Amanda that Casper was the one that I had loved since our freshman year of high school. I knew Amanda had everything under control as far as venue, dresses, ceremony arrangement, reception, dinner, cake, literally everything that she could have a hand in, it was perfect. I felt that the only thing that could go wrong was me.

Finally, it was the week of the wedding. Amanda had asked Jane and I to be there on the Monday of the week leading up to her wedding. She managed to talk the owner of the venue of her wedding into letting her have the run of the place for the three days leading up to the Saturday of the wedding. Apparently, they did not usually do that, but they fell in love with Amanda, Casper, and their story, so they granted her that request. The wedding party was staying at a hotel that was close to the venue. Amanda had managed to get the three of us girls a suite. Amanda wanted us to relive memories of sleepovers and close times we shared, and while I was fighting hard to not be jealous, it was certainly fun to have girl time with them.

For the first two days of the week, we had final dress fittings, a spa day, girl time, and finish the centerpiece decorations for the reception. On Wednesday, we were supposed to head to the venue to look at setting up the outdoor portion, but it began to rain. The rain was supposed to be there earlier in the week. I was just praying it would be done before Thursday evening. Since the rain changed our plans, we managed to set up the inside decorations for the reception area. The rain settled down by the evening, but the mess it caused was making Amanda panic. Jane and I looked at all the weather reports we could possibly find to ease her nerves. They all had dry, sunny, and unusually warm temperatures for the remainder of the week. While it helped some, Amanda was worried that she would be rained out of her venue.