THE GROOM

MANDY

The biggest booking of my career walked in at 11:58, as the bride-to-be of my ex-fiancé.

I was fixing a swan at the time.

The Halcyon’s caterers had folded twelve of them. For four people. There are two napkin folds you never use at a tasting, and the swan is the one that says you’ve given up and have no idea what you’re doing.

“Mandy,” Bisi hissed from the door. “They’re here.”

I looked up.

Tiwalade Ajayi-Williams came first. Small, bright, yellow sundress, half a croissant in one hand. She hugged me before I could offer mine.

“You’re Mandy, right?! Call me Tiwa. Sorry, I’m a hugger. Is this okay? This is okay.” She spotted the table. “Peonies! How did you know?”

“Your questionnaire. Page three. You underlined it twice.”

The peonies were mine. Backups, from the boot of my car, swapped in ten minutes earlier for a centrepiece of dyed peach carnations. I always carry backup peonies.

You only get betrayed by a florist once.

She beamed and turned to the door. “Babe, come and see. The planner remembered the peonies.”

I was still smiling when he walked in.

I kept smiling for about a second after. I’ve been told that’s a professional skill.

Navy suit. New watch. Same lazy, everything-belongs-to-me walk I used to mistake for confidence.

Daniel Cole.

My ex-fiancé. My ex-business partner. The man whose name was printed in gold foil on the folder under my arm.

Okorie & Cole Events.

The groom.

So. A florist, once. A fiancé, apparently, gets a bonus round.

“Daniel, this is Mandy, our planner,” Tiwa said. “Mandy, my fiancé.”

“Hello, Mandy,” he said, like we had once shared a lift at a conference.

Behind me, Bisi made a sound like someone stepping on a toy.

Three months ago, this man sent me eleven words. By text. At 2:14 a.m., two weeks before our own wedding. I know it was eleven because I counted. Many times. Counting is what I do when I can’t fix something.

‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. Please don’t look for me.’

I didn’t look for him. The bank did. When it couldn’t find the second name on our business loan, it came for the first.

Mine.

“Mr. Cole,” I heard myself say.

Tiwa blinked. “You know his surname already? You’re so thorough.”

“Shall we sit?”

We sat.

……………….

The Ajayi-Williams wedding was four hundred guests and a budget with so many zeros I’d had to sit on my office floor the first time I saw it. It was the only reason my lights were still on.

The only reason Dad’s next round of treatment in Ward C was paid for. Dad, who still asked every Sunday if “that boy” was coming to visit.

That boy was eating scallops across the peonies.

“Good choice,” he said, mouth full, smiling at me.

I wanted to stab him with the oyster fork. It was the right fork for it. Small. Sharp. Very precise.

Instead I talked about the timeline. String quartet. Highlife band after the first dance, so Tiwa’s grandmother could dance. My voice sounded like somebody calm. Somebody whose ex wasn’t licking pea purée off his thumb three feet away.

Halfway through the lamb, Tiwa’s phone buzzed.

“Ugh, the dress people. Two minutes. Don’t eat my dessert.” She kissed Daniel’s cheek. “And Lare’s coming, so behave.”

She ran out. Bisi remembered something urgent about the cake and fled too. I would fire her the moment I could afford to pay her.

Then it was just us and the stupid swans.

“You look tired,” Daniel said.

“Paying off your half of the loan is a full-time job.”

He didn’t flinch.

“Of all the planners in Lagos,” I said. “Of all of them.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Tiwa found you.” He shrugged. “Some christening in Ikoyi. She came home waving your card like she’d won a raffle. What was I supposed to say? Sorry, babe, I used to sleep with the planner?”

“Before or after?” I asked.

He reached for his water. “Before or after what?”

“The text. Did you meet her before you sent it, or after?”

He drank. He took his time about it. Daniel has always believed silence is something other people have to fill.

I didn’t fill it. I did the maths instead. Three months since he left and he was already planning to say I do and promise someone forever. The same promises that were supposed to be mine. No one meets someone, falls in love and proposes marriage in three months. Not even in Lagos. Not even with juju.

“Before,” I said. “Of course before.”

“Mandy.”

“The weekend you were in Enugu for your cousin’s introduction. Were you in Enugu?”

He looked at his new watch.

“The cake tasting. You left before the red velvet because a client called. Was she the client?” My voice stayed level. I was very proud of it. “We chose our date in my office and you kept checking your phone under the desk. I sat through my fitting in a dress I paid for, and you sent me a thumbs up from wherever you were. Was that her house?”

“Lower your voice.”

“It is lowered. This is what lowered sounds like when you’ve been lied to in four venues.”

Something crossed his face. Not guilt. Something tidier than guilt.

He leaned across the swans, close enough that I could smell his cologne. New, like the watch.

“Everything I did,” he said quietly, “I did for you.”

I laughed. It came out wrong.

“You’ll understand one day,” he said. “I promise you.”

“I understood at 2:14 a.m. I counted.”

He smiled and slid the contract out of my folder like he’d done it a hundred times, because he had. He flipped to the back.

“Section fourteen,” he read, slowly, like a bedtime story. “Should the Planner withdraw from services for any reason, the Planner shall pay the Client a cancellation f*e equal to fifty percent of the total contract value, payable within thirty days.”

He looked up. “Fifty percent, Mandy. You’d have to plan a lot of christenings.”

“It’s Amanda to you.”

But I knew that clause. I’d signed it at midnight, so happy I almost cried. Because who walks away from a wedding like this?

If I walked away, I owed money I didn’t have.

If I owed it, the business was gone.

If the business was gone, so was Dad’s treatment.

Daniel slid the contract back, gold foil up.

“So,” he said. “Let’s give my wife the best day of her life. Abi?”

Wife. Not even married yet, and he was already using the word like a weapon.

I didn’t want his money. I didn’t even want him back.

I wanted him to look at me and say sorry.

And then I wanted him to lose.

The door opened. I thought it was Tiwa.

It wasn’t.

Tall. Very still. Charcoal suit, no tie. The kind of man who didn’t raise his voice because people lowered theirs for him. He had his sister’s eyes, except hers were warm.

The brother. The CEO.

The red-pen man.

For six weeks he had sent every one of my invoices back. With notes. In red. ‘Why are there two charges for chair covers? What is a “styling f*e”? Explain the candles.’

I had explained the candles. Twice.

“You’re late,” Daniel said.

Mr. Ajayi-Williams didn’t answer. He didn’t sit. He leaned against the wall and looked at the exiled carnations, then at Daniel’s hand on my folder.

Then at me.

He didn’t say a word for the rest of the tasting. He didn’t need to.

……………….

I made it to the hallway with hands that only shook a little. The carpet was an ugly gold-and-burgundy swirl. I stared at it anyway. It was better than anything else I could look at.

“Miss Okorie.”

I turned.

He had followed me out. He stopped closer than he needed to.

“I know who he is,” he said quietly. “And I know who you are to him.”

For a second, just a second, I forgot how to stand.

“Mr. Ajayi-Williams, I can explain…”

“I’m not interested in an explanation.” He glanced back at the door. “You’re going to keep planning this wedding, Miss Okorie. Every booking. Every seat. Every napkin.”

I waited for the rest of it.

“And you’re going to help me make sure it never happens.”