That One Night by Becca Baldwin

Author:Becca Baldwin [Baldwin, Becca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. Nelson
Published: 2021-03-30T18:30:00+00:00

Six Months Later…

“Congratulations!” My brother’s shout rang in my ear. “I can’t tell you how happy I am for you, man!” A second later, Michael threw his arms around me, wrapping me in a lung-crushing hug. It was quite clear that my brother was drunk. In fact, he was on a fast track to be completely and totally wasted. He had to be. He wouldn’t be this ‘excited’ if he were sober.

“Thanks.” It was all I could say. As my brother let me go to congratulate my fiancée, I was left wondering how this all happened. I had no recollection of proposing. Vanessa, the woman who I was apparently marrying, said that I’d done it after a hard night of drinking and that she thought it was overly romantic. I’d been known to do rash things while intoxicated, but there was a slight problem. I couldn’t recall the last time that I’d drank so heavily that I could forget something like proposing to a woman who, if I am to be honest, I felt absolutely nothing for.

It wasn’t that Vanessa wasn’t attractive. She was. She was beautiful. And determined and a hard worker. She’d also shown devotion to me. Something that a lot of women had forgotten to show during my many years of casual dating. Yet, not even Vanessa could compare to Ariel. No one compared to Ariel. It wasn’t Vanessa’s fault that she could never measure up. That my heart would always belong to the one ‘that got away’. But that wasn’t fair to her, either, I admitted to myself. If I was going to see this through, I’d have to put those comparisons away, or at least tuck them away so that my soon-to-be-wife would never find them.

“Son,” said my father, interrupting my thoughts. “I can honestly say that I’m surprised.” He’d been carrying two whiskey neats and placed one in my hand.

“That makes two of us, Dad,” I replied, feeling like I was at the carnival and perpetually stuck on that spinning ride where the floor drops out.

“What do you mean?” Dad eyed me curiously, his concern creasing his brow and hardened his jaw.

“I mean, I don’t remember proposing.” I heaved out an exasperated breath and knocked back the entire contents of my drink. Without fail, my father flagged down a server and ordered two more.

“What do you mean you ‘don’t remember’?”

“Just that. Vanessa said that I proposed after I came home blind, stinking drunk one night. What bothers me is that I can’t remember the last time that I got that drunk. I swear it’s been years, but when I went back and looked at the house cameras, there it was. A clear-as-day shot of me getting down on one knee and her jumping up and down.”

“Hmmm,” my dad said after several quiet minutes of contemplation.

“What’s ‘hmmm’, Dad?”

“Nothing, son.”

“Apparently it is something or else you’d be congratulating me right now.”

I knew my father too well. He was a man of few words, but always knew what to say depending on the occasion.

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