The Wedding Veil(7)

“Years ago?” I spat back at him. “We’ve been together for a decade, Hayes! You don’t look sixteen there.”

“Jules, you have to believe me,” he said, stepping closer, trying to take my hand, which I ripped away. “Seriously. It was ages ago. It was one mistake.”

My face felt hot, not from the activity but from the shame. I hadn’t just been humiliated. I’d been humiliated in front of all the women who meant the most to me. I wanted them to believe that I was going to have a perfect marriage and a happy life. If they couldn’t believe it, how could I?

“You don’t deserve her, and you never have,” Sarah hissed, which is when I realized she was still standing beside me.

“Could you please leave, Sarah?” Hayes asked. “This is a private matter.”

“Can I leave?” she asked sarcastically. “Um, no. I cannot leave. And once it’s in a group text it is no longer a private matter, you asshole. People we’ve never even met will be talking about this by nightfall.” I knew she was right. Videos like these spread like wildfire. And it seared through me because tomorrow was supposed to be the first day of the rest of our lives together.

Turning back to me, Hayes looked me straight in the eye. “Julesy, you are the love of my life. I can’t live without you, and I swear to you that video was from so many years ago that I couldn’t even tell you where it was from. I would never cheat on you. You’re going to be my wife. I’m going to treat you like gold.”

I wasn’t crying anymore, but he was.

“I don’t know who in the world would send a text like this, but they clearly don’t know a thing about us. Please don’t let something so stupid ruin our perfect day, Jules. You deserve this so much. We have dreamed of it for so long.” I looked into his eyes and was surprised to find that they looked the same to me as they always had. And that was what made Hayes and me work. To the outside world, he was the cool, handsome, put-together guy. But I was the one he showed all the real stuff to, the one who saw his scars.

It was Sarah who finally spoke. “We’ll consider what you’re saying,” she said as the rest of my bridesmaids started walking toward us. On the one hand, I didn’t really want to see anyone. On the other, Hayes deserved to face the firing squad.

“You can’t take her away from me,” Hayes cried. “She’s the love of my life.”

“The video could have been from one of the times you were broken up,” Ashley, one of my friends from college and ever the optimist, offered.

“What?!” Leah, the realist, practically spat. “Are you just going to stand there and pretend like we don’t all know Hayes is a cheater?”

“I’m not a cheater!” I could hear him trying to protest, but I couldn’t see him anymore from behind my friends, who had all gathered around me.

“This really concerns me, Jules,” Catherine said, as if that was helpful. Hayes finally broke through the circle, taking my hands, looking me in the eye. He showed me his phone.

“Do you see how low-quality this is? No one has a phone old enough to take such a sucky video. It’s clearly from a long time ago.”

There wasn’t a time stamp, and I couldn’t exactly place where it was. It could have been any bar in any city.

“Babe, this happened when we were broken up.” We had broken up kind of a lot. Once just a few months ago, in fact, when I’d heard a rumor about Hayes and a girl at work and called off our engagement. He had actually made her call me to disprove it, which had been pretty embarrassing for everyone. I hadn’t taken him back right away, but then… I faced a major hurdle, and Hayes was always my safe place. It seemed silly to not get back together.

“I can’t even remember which breakup it was. Everything from those awful times is just a blur. But it doesn’t matter now. I love you. We’re getting married.”

He was so beautiful when he was sad. But no. No. We’d been through this before, and I wouldn’t let him do this to me again. “We were getting married,” I choked, taking my engagement ring off and throwing it at him. He actually caught it. I did feel a little regretful then. When Hayes had slipped that ring on my finger, I’d felt like my fate had finally been sealed.

He cautiously took a step closer, still holding the ring. “Jules, I promise you, this didn’t happen when we were together. Plus, it was nothing. It was a onetime, stupid mistake. I felt awful about it after we got back together, and I never told you because it was so stupid that it didn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” I said sulkily.

“Haven’t you ever made a single mistake in your life?” He paused and smiled down at me. “No, of course you haven’t, because you’re Julia Baxter, perfection roaming the earth.”

He pulled me to him, and I let him, mostly because, okay, yes, there was that one time I made out with a guy at a party in college after Hayes and I had a huge fight. In my mind, I’d broken up with him. Even still… I had also made a mistake once. And it meant nothing to me. So maybe we were even.

I ignored the other voice in my head that told me this was a pattern. I had ignored it for years now. I ignored it because I never had proof. I ignored it because I loved him and his beautiful face and his starched shirts and how stunning we looked in pictures together and how he always said the right thing. I ignored it because the sixteen-year-old version of myself had vowed to take care of this hurt, sad boy, to put him back together, and even after a decade, I found it impossible to break that vow. In January, I ignored it because, maybe for the first time, I needed him to put me back together. I needed somewhere to turn, and Hayes was the easiest choice. No matter how many times we had tried to walk away from each other, we always found ourselves back together. And that was love, right?