Page 16 of The Marriage Blunder

One was her bridesmaid, a petite woman with hair so violently blonde it looked like a chemical accident. The other was the bachelor-party novelty, the man with the glittering sash and a body that suggested he had not just been hired for the night, but had been cast in the role a season early and was determined to make the most of it.

All three were very, very asleep. All three were, by every metric I could apply, extremely naked. The numerous empty champagne bottles and used condoms around the room set the scene clearly.

There was a moment of total silence.

Then Jude, with a calmness that bordered on the supernatural, took out his phone and snapped several, high-res photos of the scene from different angles.

I turned, met his eye, and he handed me the phone. No words were exchanged. We were already running the same playbook.

Carolyn woke first. She did not wake up like a normal human. She came to consciousness the way an alarm goes off, all at once and loud enough to be heard in multiple rooms.

She saw me. She saw Jude. She saw the phone in my hand. The scream that followed was not a sound I had been prepared for, not even in my worst-case scenario drills.

“Get out!” she shrieked, dragging a sheet over herself with the grace of a dying sea creature. The motion revealed more of her companions than she intended; neither stirred.

I made a mental note of the evidence. Naked skin, red marks, more used condoms.

Carolyn wept instantly, tears breaking like a fever. Mascara drew twin paths down her face, streaking her cheekbones in a way that would have played as melodramatic if it weren’t so obviously, ferociously real.

Her eyes widened as they landed on the matching rings on our fingers, the crying stopping instantly. “What is that?”

I lifted my hand, glancing at the ring on my finger before looking back at her. “What does it look like?”

I thought it was fairly obvious.

“How could you?” she asked. “How could you do this to me? My own brother—my own fiancé—”

I said nothing.

Jude stood half a step behind me, very still.

She pressed forward, clutching the sheet to her chest, and the volume doubled. “You are both disgusting. This is a betrayal. Do you even know what you’ve done?”

Jude pointed to the two people in bed with her, “You’re not in a position to lecture about betrayal.”

Carolyn turned on him, voice sharpened to a surgical point. “Stay out of this, Jude. I am talking to Kenneth.”

He blinked once, and shut his mouth. The effect was both immediate and strategic.

She sobbed again, hands fisted at her eyes, smearing what remained of her makeup into a mask of pure melodrama. “I gave up everything for you. For this. You don’t even know what you’re throwing away.”

I let her go. The key to any negotiation is to let your opponent run out of ammunition before you reload. Carolyn was a professional in this regard, but even pros have to breathe.

She inhaled, shuddered, and then dropped her hands. She looked at me with a kind of cold clarity that I recognized from the worst fights we’d ever had. “You’re going to regret this, Kenneth James. You’re going to come crawling back, and I won’t be here.”

I said, “I believe you.”

She blinked, caught off guard by the lack of argument.

“You can keep the ring.”

Her face went through a series of micro-expressions, each more operatic than the last. Finally, she settled on contempt. “You think that’s going to make it okay?”

“It’s not an apology. It’s compensation.”

The volume came back even louder this time. “Fuck you. Fuck both of you. You want to be together? Fine. You deserve each other. I hope you’re happy.”

Jude said, “I think we will be.”