Four Minutes of Audio Recorded at the Lakeview Hotel

“Just tell her you were stressed and you overreacted,” he said.

I picked up my phone and opened the text thread with Vanessa.

Her last message was a week old, a link to a floral arrangement she had insisted we use.

I stared at the blinking cursor on the blank line.

My thumb hovered over the keyboard.

I thought about the four-thousand-dollar deposit we had already paid to the Lakeview Hotel.

I thought about the catering already booked, the whole expensive machine of this wedding rolling forward with no brakes.