Chapter 3

The light was piercing his brain, as was the person who was shaking him. He needed to kill them right now. No, he really needed to not go back to the Backwoods Bar and Grill and collect another bottle of Toby’s moonshine. It might make him forget for a little while, but the hangover the next day wasn’t worth it.

“Wakey, Wakey Wedding Planner Brother!”

He groaned. “Go away Annoyingly Cheerful Sister! There’s no reason to get up. Life is over.”

She shoved him hard. “You need to get up, go in the house, shower, and put on clean business-type clothes. You promised to meet Teressa and the wedding planner in half an hour.”

“Oh, I’m still dreaming. This is still part of that terrible nightmare where Teressa’s getting married, but not to me.”

Casey smacked him upside his head, and he sat up. “Oh God, it’s not a dream, is it?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, Sam, that’s not a dream. But you know it’s not too late. She hasn’t said I do. Her grandpa hasn’t pronounced them man and wife. Just tell her how you feel. Tell her you love her and she should be marrying you.”

He looked at his sister. She looked almost as upset as he felt. “I can’t do that, Casey. She chose him. Over and over again, she’s chosen him. Every memory since ninth grade has her and him together in it. I’m too late, always just a second too late.”

Casey sat beside him. “Well, you will be if you don’t tell her before Valentine’s Day. Until then, anything could happen. So go get cleaned up and tell her it’s your face that should be in her wedding photos, as the groom.”

He shook his head. “She’s getting what she wants. Don’t you get it, Casey? She’s always wanted to get married. I still remember everything about that first day we met her. Even then, at nine years old, she wanted to get married. I always thought someday she’d realize that it was me she wanted to marry, but it’s not. It’s never been me. So get it through your thick head.

She is finally getting her dream. I’m the one not getting his dream come true. She wants to get married, and she is. My problem is in my version of her dream, it was always me she was promising to love and cherish. But the truth is this; she wants to get married, but she doesn’t want to marry me.”

Sam rubbed his face. “God, I need a drink.”

“There’s coffee inside. I started a strong pot before coming to get you.”

“I don’t need coffee. I need another mason jar full of forget her for a while.”

“Sam, I love you, but that isn’t working for you, brother. Look around. You drank enough to poison an elephant last night. But you didn’t forget her. Instead, you passed out in the one place that’s full of memories of her. So getting drunk isn’t helping, it’s just going to screw up the rest of your life. I know you love her and want to be her groom. But if you don’t either man up and tell her or let her go and stop trying to drown her in moonshine, you’re going to ruin your other dream.”

She held out the contract letter. “Have you even called Lisa about all this? She’s your agent. Does she know you need a place in Clearwater or Denver? Do I need to show this letter to Mom and Dad and have them set you straight? Man up and let this go, since you won’t tell her how you feel.” She stood and headed for the door of the tree house. “Oh, and now you have twenty minutes before you’re supposed to be next door. Go shower! God, you stink, and not in that good clean baseball way. In that drunky, drunk way. If you show up at Teressa’s looking and smelling like you do now, she’s going to know something’s wrong. So get clean and when you leave after the meeting, go do something baseball-related after you call Lisa.”

She left and Sam stood and slowly made his way into the house and got cleaned up. He drank two cups of the sludge his sister called strong coffee. Then he got an oversized travel mug and poured the rest of the pot into it. He showed up at Teressa’s back door about a minute early. He could tell she knew something was off with him, but before she could ask, the doorbell rang and it was time to meet the wedding planner.

The woman came into the house, and instantly Sam knew this wasn’t going to work. If this was the best wedding planner in Phantom Horse, then it’s a wonder anyone got married. He’d always heard the term ‘resting bitch face’, but he’d met no one with it before. The permanent scowl on this woman made him wonder why anyone would hire her to help plan and organize their wedding. “Hello, I’m Cassandra Groves. I have an appointment with...” She flipped open a binder and ran her finger down to the ten a.m. spot on her old school day planner. “Teressa Fleming and Leroy Taggert.”

“I’m Teressa. Thank you for coming out, Cassandra.”

Cassandra gained another strike in Sam’s dislike of her when she just ran right over Teressa. “Then that makes you our lucky groom, Leroy. I must say, the two of you are going to make a wonderful-looking bride and groom. You’re just the cutest couple I’ve met in months. Now, time is short and we have a lot of work to do. Let’s get started. I have a list of available venues for February 14th, but I must say, having a wedding on Valentine’s Day may sound romantic, but it isn’t very cost-effective. Especially since it’s barely ten weeks away. Also, it will need to be an inside venue because the weather is so unpredictable in February. You don’t want to get all your guests and wedding party sick.”

Sam finally had all of her he could take. He could see the tears gathering in Teressa’s eyes and that was strike three for Cassandra. “Get Out! You’re fired!!”

That stopped Cassandra cold. “Excuse me? Did you just fire me? Young man, I’m the only option you have to maybe pull off any kind of wedding...”

Sam reached over and put his hand over her mouth. “My God, will you just shut up for one minute and listen? You work for Teressa. Well, you would have worked for Teressa. But you seem to think we can’t put together this wedding without you. We can.”

She opened her mouth and Sam said. “Lady, if you say another word, I swear I’ll pick you up and set you outside physically. I’ve made it crystal clear already; You. ARE. FIRED. So get out of here. We won’t be needing your services. If you’d come in and listened, you’d have known that Teressa has been planning this wedding for seven years. This would have been the easiest money you’d ever made. Now it’s not even going to be any money for you.”

“You can’t fire me! I was hired by Mister Fleming to plan his daughter’s wedding because you two have to have it on Valentine’s Day in just ten weeks.”

“So not only are you the rudest wedding planner in Phantom Horse, you obviously don’t listen. I can state very matter-of-factually that Mister Fleming didn’t hire you to ‘PLAN’ his daughter’s wedding. He hired you to help his daughter make her wedding plans a reality. You know how I know that’s what he told you? Because, THIS. WEDDING. HAS. BEEN. PLANNED. FOR. YEARS.” He picked up the three-ring scrapbook he’d been shown seven years earlier and pointed at it. “Everything Teressa wants for her wedding is right here. So we don’t need you. As for me not being able to fire you, that’s easy to fix. Watch, I’ll fix it right now!”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and punched the contact for the high school. The phone rang and then “Thank you for calling Phantom Horse High School. How can I help you today?”

Hey Andrea, it’s Sam Archer. I need to speak to Mister Fleming, it’s really important.

“Oh hey, Sam. I hear you’re helping Teressa with her wedding plans. I would have thought you wouldn’t want anything to do with her and Leroy’s wedding, given the fact...”

“Hey Andrea, you’re on speaker and I really need to talk to James right now.”

“Oh okay. Just know that if you need someone to help heal your broken heart, I’m more than willing to help you get over...”

Sam interrupted before she gave away his heart ache secret. “Andrea, I’m standing here with Teressa and the woman who James hired to help with wedding details. She’s upset Teressa and won’t leave, so I NEED TO TALK TO JAMES, RIGHT NOW!!”

“Right sorry! I’ll call you later. Let me put you through.”

Teressa was looking at him, and the wedding planner was fuming. “Sam, Andrea said you had some problems. That Teressa is upset. What’s going on?”

“James, I’m standing here with Cassandra Groves, who isn’t going to work as Teressa’s wedding planner. She came in like gangbusters and hasn’t let Teressa get a word in edge-wise. I told her she was fired, and that we didn’t need her help, but she stated she works for you and I can’t fire her.”

“She’s there now?”

“Yes, and you’re on speaker. Teressa’s here too.”

“Princess, are you alright?”

With those words, Teressa’s tears escaped. “Daddy she said I can’t have the wedding outside and that because it was so close, I might not get what I want.”

“Well, that answers that question, doesn’t it? Ms. Groves, I believe that when I contacted you I made it plain that what I needed from you was to ensure that Teressa’s plans happened. You assured me you could do that. I didn’t ask you to plan a wedding. So thank you for your time, but as you’ve already been informed, we won’t be needing your help after all.”

“Mr. Fleming, I can assure you, without my help, this wedding won’t happen at all in two years, let alone in ... Epp!”

The last was when Sam handed his phone to Teressa, walked over, picked the pompous windbag up by her arms, and started to the door with her. “Lady shut up! You heard it from the man who hired you now. So, I don’t get what makes you think you are the best. You had your three strikes and you’re out! But you wouldn’t step out of the batter’s box, so now I’m ejecting you from the field.”

He sat her at the door and opened it. Then he picked her back up, sat her on the porch, and shut the door in her face. Then he turned back to Teressa and heard her say. “I don’t know, Daddy. Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe she’s right and I can’t have my dream wedding so fast.”

As much as he wanted to tell her, it was a mistake and she should cancel the wedding; he didn’t. Sam came over, wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and took his phone. “Leave this to me, Mr. Fleming. I’ll make some calls and get us the help we need to make everything in her scrapbook happen.”

“Thank you, Sam. I don’t know what we’d do without you. You’re a great friend to my princess.”

“Nothing to thank me for, sir. All part of the Sam Archer neighborly service.”

He hung up and wrapped his other arm around Teressa. “Now don’t you doubt the wedding plan, scrapbook! Sweetheart, you’ve planned everything out and all we have to do is consult the book and make it happen. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll have a team of people to make your dreams come true. But first, come on, let’s go see Casey and draft her to help us.

As he helped Teressa on with her coat, he couldn’t help but remember the first time she’d shown him the wedding plan scrapbook. It was a few weeks after she and Leroy started dating and she’d been up in their house, his and Teressa’s that was, pasting Leroy’s head on the picture of the groom on the first page.

~~~~~

Seven years ago

Sam had just climbed up in their house. Nowadays he came here often to cry. It was the one place where no one could see how broken his heart was. He stopped when he saw Teressa. He didn’t even know she still came up here. It felt kind of like a violation for her to keep occupying ‘Their House’ when she wasn’t part of them anymore. But he couldn’t say that, because he’d promised her grandpa he’d share it with her. “Hey best friend in the world, what are you working on over there?”

She turned and beamed that beautiful smile at him. It used to warm him up inside. He thought it was proof she loved him as much as he loved her. But after her betrayal of becoming Leroy’s girlfriend, it was just like a quick twist of the knife they’d plunged into his heart. Before, he’d always thought it meant she loved him, too. Now he knew differently. If she’d loved him, she wouldn’t have become Leroy’s girlfriend. She sure wouldn’t have done it at Sam’s ballgame wearing his name and number like they were really a couple instead of neighbors playing pretend.

“This is my most secret possession, Sam. It’s my perfect wedding scrapbook. When I find something that I have to have for my wedding, I put it in here. It’s going to be the perfect wedding. Because I’ll have it all planned. See.”

She patted the futon their dads had hauled up here for them. Sam sat, and she flipped past the picture that had her and Leroy’s faces pasted over the heads of the bride and groom. On the next page was a picture of a woman who looked a lot like Teressa, if she was older in a very sleek wedding dress. “Wow, that dress is awesome. That woman looks a lot like you. Do you know who she is?”