Chapter 8 - The Monday Morning Gossip
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The weekend was a blur of frantic phone calls, crying fits, and eating takeout pizza on my living room floor in sweatpants. My bridesmaids were absolute warriors, handling all the vendor cancellations, sending out discrete messages to the guests, and physically blocking Daniel’s number on my phone.
The deposits were mostly recoverable thanks to the venue’s cancellation policy. The money I couldn’t get back, I simply wrote off as the cheapest lesson in self-preservation I had ever purchased.
But hiding in my house couldn't last forever. Monday morning arrived, cold and unrelenting.
I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, applying my makeup like war paint. I put on my sharpest navy-blue power suit, pinned my hair back, and drove to the corporate logistics office where I worked as operations director.
When I stepped off the elevator onto the executive floor, the entire bullpen went dead silent.
People abruptly stopped talking by the water cooler. Keyboards stopped clacking. I could feel the weight of fifty pairs of eyes staring at the back of my head. Word of the "runaway bride" had clearly spread through the corporate grapevine. Daniel’s cousin worked in accounting, so I knew the gossip was likely exaggerated and brutal.
I ignored them all. I kept my chin up, my posture perfect, and walked directly into my glass-walled office.
Before I could even log into my computer, my desk phone rang. It was the executive assistant for Mr. Sterling, the CEO of the company.
"Emma, Mr. Sterling would like to see you in his office. Immediately," she said.
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My stomach dropped. Walking out of my wedding was a personal triumph, but causing a public spectacle that became office gossip could easily cost me my hard-earned reputation. I grabbed my notepad, took a deep breath to steady my shaking hands, and walked down the hall to the CEO's corner office.
I knocked on the heavy oak door, preparing myself for a lecture on professional optics. I was ready to defend my job just like I had defended my life.
