The Love Letter

Chapter Two

"It must be some kind of prank. Maybe some of Greg's friends decided to joke with him. I don't know. But it can't be Megan who called to cancel the reservation. No, it must be somebody else, something else!" I thought while the elevator was moving downwards.

The pressure from all the nonsense was getting higher and higher and I felt dizzy. I shook my head to clear it, but to no avail.

Suddenly the walls around me seemed too close and slightly out of focus. Heat waves started rising inside me and it was getting hot in here, too hot.

I was short of air.

It must have been because of the scarf, I put it too tight around my neck and that's why I couldn't breathe now. But as I reached up to unwrap it, I found out I hadn't wrapped it in the first place. It just hung loosely on either side of my neck and yet... I was suffocating.

I yanked the scarf and stared at it angrily as if it was the reason for all of my problems, then clenched the delicate material in my fist utterly annoyed by everything, including myself. I shouldn't have put it on at all!

I only added it to my outfit this morning because it was a gift from Greg and he asked to go out to dinner tonight, and I knew he'd love to see me wearing it. In general, if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have put it on, I didn't need a scarf. The cold wasn't a problem for me for quite some time simply because I was already used to always feeling cold even in the hot summer months in Rathleigh. Yes, even when the temperature would reach the unbearable 34 degrees Celsius, I was still cold. Hence I didn't pay much attention to it anymore.

But anyway.

The elevator dinged to a stop on the ground floor, the doors opened, and I stepped out. Grateful to be outside of it and have ample space at last, I took a deep breath and savored it. The hot waves were slightly ebbing away, and I felt a bit better.

I headed to Kelly, the reception girl, and asked her to call me a cab because I was too distracted to drive to Greg's office myself.

"Right away, Rose!" She said with a friendly smile and started scrolling down her phone looking for the number.

I shifted my gaze to the street, the speeding cars in opposite directions and the people walking past the entrance to our office building, through the transparent doors of which everything was at a display, and they were a perfect distraction for my sight while my mind drifted away. Thinking and thinking and thinking about things that I shouldn't.

"If I had known that this wedding would cost me so much effort and nerves and time that I could devote to my work, I wouldn't have accepted Greg's proposal," I thought, fueling my irritation. "We could just live together and that's it. As most people do nowadays."

Great! This wedding planning had not only sucked all of my energy but it also had turned me into a sullen, constantly-angry woman who now hated weddings.

Now.

Yes, now!

It wasn't always like that. I sighed wearily. I wasn't always like that. No, not even a slightest. Before...

"Ha," I laughed gloomily to myself.

I used to look at weddings as a fairy tale came to life before.

Furthermore, I used to dream of growing up and marrying the one I loved on the shore of Lake Lustus which is near our hometown, surrounded by people we love, and with nature as our greater witness. I used to imagine this magical fragment of time, of our lives, when we would have our great fairy tale ending, marking our new begginning. Our unearthly happiness would've been pouring out of us as we shared our love with relatives and friends, with nature and the world, making our beloved place even more special than it already was.