No one changes the world by obeying.

Andrew’s called me into his office for an emergency meeting with Gina and Katie, the wedding planner, who is practically in tears as we explain that we’re not having a wedding after all.

“You’re calling off the engagement?” she asks, as if we’re Mommy and Daddy and we’re explaining that we love her very much, but sometimes mommies and daddies don’t love each other anymore.

“No.”

“Then you are getting married!”

“Yes.”

“So you have to have a wedding.”

“No.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We’re eloping.”

“You don’t announce elopements! You just do them!” Gina’s pronouncement drips with contempt. “If you announce it, it’s not a surprise.”

“We. Don’t. Care,” I stress. “We’re going to wait until all the paparazzi craziness calms down, and then go run off and get married in private.”

“No ceremony and reception at Farmington for fifteen hundred?” Katie asks, looking at an app on her smartphone.

“No.”

She taps the screen.

“No three hundred doves to be released as you have your first kiss as man and wife?”

“No.”

Tap.

“No horse-drawn carriage and Austen-themed bridesmaids’ dresses?”

I give Gina a sharp look.

She shrugs. “We were going for consistency with Mr. McCormick’s unorthodox proposal.”

“This is what was going on behind the scenes while I was trying to get my mother to help me?”

Andrew and Gina share a look that says yes. “If Pam wasn’t going to participate, we decided that the experts should take over for an event this important. If it were a fifteen-hundred-person conference, we wouldn’t leave it to chance.”

“But it was my wedding.”

“You told Katie to do whatever she wanted,” Andrew reminds me. “And it was a wedding you didn’t want.”

Fair enough.

“But the video of James proposing to Pam and of you screaming at him is now up to three million views on YouTube! Someone connected you to the Chihuahua hawk rescue from last year, and a grainy video of you fighting with Jessica Coffin in a Turkish restaurant just makes you a viral star! We can’t waste all this perfect fame now.”

“Perfect fame,” I repeat.

“Yes! Social media celebrity is tenuous. Remember Chewbacca Mask Mom? Where is she now?”

Andrew looks at me and mouths, Chewbacca? Then he looks at his lap.

“See? You don’t know. No one knows. That’s because no one cares anymore. Her celebrity spiked and dropped. Yours is spiking.”

“I don’t care about the drop.”

She inhales sharply in horror.

“You want it all canceled?” Katie confirms, pleading with big, round eyes that beg me to say the opposite. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Every bit of the wedding?”

“Yes.”

“Even the after-wedding photo shoot? We have pyrotechnicians scheduled and everything for when you set the wedding dress on fire and run into the ocean to douse it.”

“That’s a thing?”

“Very trendy. Same with bungee-jumping pictures of the two of you kissing as you go down.”

“Already do that,” Andrew mutters.

I kick him.

“Does your father know you’re canceling everything?” Katie asks Andrew, one eye twitching. She’s terrified to ask, unsure who to be more afraid of – Andrew or James.

Too bad she doesn’t realize the answer is neither.

“James’ opinion doesn’t matter,” I snap, giving her a cold stare. It’s so hard, because I get it. I do. I’ve been Katie. I’ve been the one in charge of a massive, complex project that falls apart in your hands, like trying to hold snow in a heat wave.

But this is my life. My choice.

And I don’t have to justify it to anyone but Andrew.

Who stands, wraps his arm around my waist, and turns to Gina. “Cancel the next two hours of meetings.”

She nods, then touches Katie’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”

Katie begins to sniffle. Gina leads her out of Andrew’s office.

I’m close to cracking.

“You don’t have to have a wedding to meet anyone else’s expectations,” he assures me, rubbing my back gently.

“I know.”

“If nothing else, canceling it generates even more publicity.”

“Oh, the irony.” I try not to be bitter. I fail.

“It’s short term, though. The press will move on to the next big thing,” he reminds me, trying to be soothing.

“But they’ll always be hovering. Waiting.”

“Yes.” The finality in his tone, pulling no punches and being blunt about the truth, roots me in place. You hope when you fall in love that the new reality you carve out with the person you choose will match the inner joy that your imagination spins for you. All the dreams and projections, the what ifs and anticipations need to add up to some simple equation on the outside. Reality has to square with the internal wish.

“Like your father. They’re just there, always doing whatever they want to forward their own agenda.”

“I put a stop to Dad.” The gravity of his words makes a child run through me, from sole to eye socket, like an ice chip racing through my blood.

“I know.” The apology Andrew demanded from James hasn’t come. I don’t expect it. Frankly, I don’t want the interaction at all, but I know it’s important to Andrew.

I wish it were important to my future father-in-law, but I can’t control what he feels. Wouldn’t want to. If I did, it would make me more like him.

“And I can do damage control on the press, but I can’t stop all of them from covering us.”

Andrew invited me to share his world. The press is part of that, and while I can wish it away, I can’t control it. He’s a package deal, like it or not.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t try to fix what I can.

I take a deep breath and declare, “Then they’ll do it on my terms. Not theirs.”