He answered on the first ring.
“Hey,” he said softly. “You okay?”
That was when I almost cried. Not because I was okay. Because he still asked like the answer mattered.
“My mom called everyone,” I said.
There was a pause. Not confusion. Not shock. A pause with weight behind it.
“What did she say?”
“Enough that people are canceling. Leah said she told them the family agreed not to come. Rosie texted me that she hopes I get help. I don’t even know what that means.”
I stood up and paced to the window. The street outside my apartment was quiet, the kind of quiet neighborhoods have when everyone else’s life is moving normally. A porch light glowed across the parking lot. Somewhere downstairs, a dog barked once.
Daniel did not interrupt.
That was one of the things I loved about him. He did not rush to fill pain with noise.
Finally, he said, “Mena, I need you to trust me.”
I wiped my face before I realized I was crying.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I am standing at that altar tomorrow.”
“Daniel.”
“I am standing there,” he repeated. “If there are ninety-four people or nine people. I will be there. And I have everything we need.”
Everything we need.
I looked back at my dress.
“What are you talking about?”
“Try to sleep.”
I almost laughed again, but this one would have broken in the middle.
“My mother is emptying our wedding the night before it happens, and you’re telling me to sleep?”
“I’m telling you not to carry this by yourself tonight,” he said. “I’ve been carrying more of it than you know. Tomorrow, I promise, you won’t be alone.”
Something in his voice made me stop pacing.
It was not the voice of a man reassuring a panicked bride because he had no idea what else to say. It was the voice of a man who had been waiting for a door to open.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“What I should have told you about sooner,” he said. “But not tonight. Tonight, breathe. Drink some water. Call Jolene if you need her. I’ll see you at the altar.”
After we hung up, I sat on the floor beside my bed with one foot half-painted and the polish bottle still open on the towel. My phone kept lighting up. Cousins asking if the wedding was canceled. Relatives sending careful messages. One aunt writing, Your mother is only trying to protect you, honey. Another saying, We don’t want to make things worse by coming.
Make things worse.
As if showing up for me had become a risk.
At 12:08, Jolene called.
She did not ask if I was okay.
She said, “I’m coming over.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m already in my car.”
She arrived wearing sweatpants, her hair in a messy bun, carrying a gas station coffee and the expression of a woman preparing to fight a storm with her bare hands. Jolene had been my best friend since college, back when we were both broke enough to split one sandwich and call it “light lunch.” She knew Patricia. More importantly, she knew me before Patricia’s version of me could enter the room first.
She looked at the polish on the towel, the dress, my phone.
Then she took the polish brush from my hand.
“Other foot,” she said.
I blinked at her.
“What?”
“We are not letting your mother ruin your pedicure too.”
So I gave her my other foot and cried while she painted my nails with the steadiness of a surgeon.
At one point she looked up and said, “You know Daniel is going to be there, right?”
“I know.”
“And I’ll be there.”