I loved my mother, but it sure was hard to like her sometimes.

“Chloe?” I heard, and I realized the sighing was over.

“Yeah?”

“Is that how a young lady responds to a question from her mother?”

I straightened up automatically, tummy in, chest up and out, head balanced on a tiny cloud floating on top of my spine. Good posture is the calling card of good breeding, after all. “Mother, I’m sorry I was rude. I’m sure I’ll fit into my beautiful gown.”

She studied me carefully, her pretty face carefully composed, her pretty hair carefully composed, and finally nodded once. “Now go apologize to Terrance, dear, and please don’t eat another thing until your new husband offers you some wedding cake. This is going to be a beautiful day—I’m so happy for you.” As she turned to head outside, where the gardener was once again positively ruining her prize begonias, she called over her shoulder, “I’ll put a water pill on your bedside table, dear; let’s see what we can do about that puffiness around your ankles.”

It took everything I had not to kick something with my allegedly puffy ankles. If I could manage to lift my giant elephant legs off the floor. I relaxed my posture, licked a traitorous bit of sugar from the corner of my mouth, and headed in to see Terrance and the rest of the “help.”

“You know,” Terrance said, “I have seen it all. Mothers of the bride getting in screaming matches with the mothers of the groom. Grooms getting drunk at the reception and falling into the wedding cake. Once I even saw a father of the bride trying to make out with a groomsman.”

The glam squad was going full throttle. I had someone curling my hair, someone painting my nails, someone applying my makeup, and someone touching up my pedicure. In the background, happy music played and happy bridesmaids danced while sipping mimosas. The entire house was Happy Wedding Central, bursting with feminine giggles. Yet I, the one the frivolity was revolving around, was ready to burst into tears. Something that seemed to have escaped everyone’s attention. My bridesmaids had been my friends for years—friends I once had something in common with, but from whom I’d been feeling more and more distant in the last few months as I was marched toward this wedding cliff. As I looked around at their perfect faces, I realized I didn’t care a whit about any of them. No one was noticing my dark mood except my wedding planner.

“And I’ve seen my share of nervous brides and cold feet,” Terrance continued, leaning down in front of me, between two nail techs and a makeup artist. “So you wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Terrance was six feet six inches of fabulous stuffed into five feet two inches of tiny shoes. Which I was pretty sure were stacked. Caramel skin, tiny dreadlocks, and an enormous personality, he’d planned the weddings of every major socialite and debutante in Southern California for the last ten years. He alone had listened to what I wanted for my wedding, and even though I eventually gave in to what my mother wanted, he had fought for me all along. And seemed to see things that others didn’t—or chose not to. And now he saw that the tears that were building in my eyes were not, in fact, due to the false lashes recently applied, as I had tried to spin it.

Since I’d gotten out of bed this morning, a ball of awful had been kicking in my stomach. And it wasn’t nerves. I’d been in pageants since I was four years old and I knew how to deal with butterflies in my tummy. As each hour passed, that ball of awful was getting bigger and bigger, and it was starting to affect the rest of my body. There was a ringing in my ears. My fingers and toes felt buzzy. My tongue felt thick. And my eyes kept filling with tears. My pulse was racing, my hands were clammy, and words were thundering up my throat, literally begging to get out.

Scary words. Like no. And stop. And seriously stop this.

But it was just wedding nerves, right? The cold feet I’d been phantom feeling for a month or so? Not so phantom now. They were blocks of foot ice. But normal, right? It wasn’t like my entire body was turning in on itself for protection, trying to manifest real doubt into some kind of action . . . right?

“I just need a little quiet time, I think,” I managed to get out past the other words fighting to follow, fighting desperately for breath.

Choke. Breathe. Choke. Breathe. Please breathe. And . . . Crumple.

Terrance took one more look at me and told the glam squad to scram. Bridesmaids whooshed out in a wave of orange juice and champagne, my curls were quickly pinned to my head, and then I was all alone.

I put my head into my hands and just sobbed. As you do on your wedding day, right? Oh, so wrong. This felt wrong, all of this, just felt so very wrong. I was beyond nerves; I was into panic. Panic that needed space to move and give voice to what was raging inside.

My mother entered the room and asked, “Care to tell me why there are five bridesmaids, two nail technicians, and a makeup artist drinking mimosas on the patio right now?”

And as I sat there, surrounded by tufted crinoline and pretty, I finally threw up the words that had been cooking all day. “I don’t want to marry Charles.” Oh. Oh.

Have you ever had those moments when words just seem to hang in the air? I could literally hear them echoing back to me in the stark silence. I lifted my head to see peep-toe pumps, one of them now tapping furiously against the dark teak wooden floor. I saw tanned and toned legs, knees that were just beginning to wrinkle, an off-white linen afternoon skirt, a peach silk wraparound blouse, a ruby, an emerald, a diamond, Chanel lipstick (Rouge Coco Shine, thank you very much), and wide green eyes accented by more than a touch of irritation.

“Pardon me, young lady?” she asked, concern crossing her features for the first time.

Concern over how I was feeling? Or concern that I might unravel her perfect day? I know which horse I was betting on.

“I don’t want to marry Charles Preston Sappington.” Oh, that felt pretty good.

Sigh. “Chloe, do you mind telling me what’s going on?” she asked.

So I told her once more, with feeling: “I don’t want to marry Charles Preston Sappington! Not today. Not any day.” My body had an immediate reaction to saying those words out loud. My spine straightened as if a weight had been lifted, and my head was floating on a tiny string twelve inches above my body.

If I’d been in a factory, I’d have written it on a piece of cardboard and climbed on top of a table to wave it around Norma Rae style.

“Okay. I don’t know exactly what has gotten into you today, but I’m beginning to get a little peeved.”