Regret13 min read
I Bought a Wedding Dress for a Man Who Wouldn't Say Yes
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I unzipped the dress and held it to my chest.
"It still fits you," Estella said from the doorway, voice soft like always.
"I made it for me," I said. "I made it for him."
"You mean Dax," she answered. "You mean Dax Dodson."
"Yes." I let the word out like a small confession. "I made it when I was twenty. I thought he would stand at the altar."
Estella came closer and touched the lace. "You look at it like it is a promise."
"It was a promise," I said. "To myself."
"You should sell it," she said, not looking at me. "You said you would move on."
"I know," I said. I put the dress back in its bag and zipped it up. "I did move on. I left for London."
"Then why are you back?" Estella asked.
"Because I ran out of places to hide from him," I said. "And because I couldn't sell it."
"Or because you couldn't stop waiting," she said, smiling like a friend, like a sister.
"I waited nine years," I said. "I thought waiting was an act of faith, but it was just weight."
"I gave you my dress," Estella said suddenly. "Wear my dress at my wedding. Let the world see that you stand by me."
Her laugh was a small bright thing. "Besides," she added, "you are the one who designed this dress."
I pocketed the memory and nodded. "I will be at your wedding," I said.
That night I called Dax. I was small and stupid with wine.
"I have the dress," I told him. "I am ready. Come marry me."
There was silence on the line. Then his voice, low and steady.
"Isabel, are you drunk?"
"Am I not allowed to be clear then?" I said. "You are always so quick to correct me."
"I never told you to like me," he said. "I never asked for that."
"Do you know what you sound like?" I cried. "Do you know what you do when you act like you don't care?"
He hung up.
I sat on the floor and let the world blur into one long thin line of pain. I changed my avatar and left for London the next week. I sold the dress to someone who promised to cherish it. They paid three times its price. I thought that was proof the world agreed with me: let go, move on, start again.
Four years later Estella dragged me to a launch event for a bridal brand.
There he was.
Dax Dodson, across a room full of lights, as still as carved marble. He had not changed much. He had a scar on his left hand I remembered from nine years ago. He still smelled like quiet authority.
"Isabel." He smiled once, and my chest hitched like a missed step.
"Small uncle," I said on habit, though I had stopped calling him that long ago.
"Call me Dax," he said, as if he could erase a decade with one word.
"You never answer," I said. "Why did you avoid me four years ago?"
"I was busy," he said. "That is all."
"That is an answer you used to give me when I was a kid," I said. "Now it feels like a wall."
He looked at me a long time. "You grew up," he said. "You are not the same girl I remember."
"That is obvious."
He drove me home that night. The car smelled of cool cologne and leather and something faint like rain. He asked where I lived.
"You still live in the old place?" he asked.
"I moved out four years ago," I said.
"Where now?"
I told him, and he asked for directions like it was a small thing. He drove like someone who kept records in his head. He asked little questions that meant nothing. He gave nothing.
"Why did you throw away the letter?" I asked when the car stopped.
"I didn't throw away anything," he said. "I answered."
"You wrote?" My voice was too loud in the quiet car.
"I wrote," he said simply. "I wrote 'I am willing.'"
"Why didn't you say it?" I asked.
"I was afraid of what it would cost you," he said.
"I already paid for it," I told him. "I paid by leaving."
We left it at that.
I moved my things back into the studio, and the white dress sat in its bag in the corner like a quiet rumor. Estella and Luke—her chosen—kept me busy with fittings and orders. I worked late nights and refused Dax's messages for a while. He came and went like a storm: necessary, overwhelming, leaving after damage.
"I saw him with her," Estella said weeks later, watching my face like she could read weather.
"Who?" I asked.
"Marina Ahmed," she said. "The actress. The model who smiles at everything."
I had met Marina once at a shoot. She was all gloss and practiced closeness. She was also the one who liked to stand very near Dax in public.
"She is his fiancée," Estella said.
"She looks like a picture," I said. "Not like someone who lives."
"She has been at his side often," Estella said. "But Dax has been strange lately."
"Strange how?" I asked.
"Like he keeps his phone close and avoids the subject of marriage," Estella said. "Like he is tired of waiting for something and doesn't know how to name it."
I buried myself in work. I designed a line for a small magazine shoot. I built a life of routines—coffee at nine, sketching at noon, sewing at three, listening to Estella tell stories of a child named Noah. I tried liking other men. I tried kindness with myself. Nothing fit like the dress I had made for someone who would not say yes.
Then the wedding invites came. Estella's wedding day was June sixth. The city smelled like rain and summer.
"Isabel, you will be here," Estella said.
"Yes."
"Say yes to the photos," she said with a laugh. "Be the one who remembers me."
"Fine," I said.
On the morning, I was in the dressing room with my sketchbook open. My phone chimed with a number I had blocked. I did not pick up. I heard Dax's voice in a thousand words chopped into silence.
"Come," he said in a message. "Come alone."
I walked into the venue and the air changed. A hundred guests in silk and suits, laughter, clink of glasses, the hush of a thousand wheels of gossip residing in one big room. I felt small and loud.
"Isabel." Dax was by the entrance as if a stage was beneath him.
"Hello," I said.
"Sit with me," he said.
I sat.
"You made the dress?" he asked.
"It was mine at one point," I said.
He smiled like he had found a small proof that a thing existed. "You look good."
"Thank you," I said. "You look like you are keeping a secret."
He did not answer.
Then Marina arrived on his arm, all breathless laughter and painted teeth. She walked like she was married to the air around her, like she had already been paid to be loved.
"Something wrong?" she said sweetly when she saw me. Her voice had the practiced softness of a stage whisper turned real.
"Dax," she sang, like a chorus.
I kept my hands still.
"Isabel," she said with warm intent. "So nice to meet you properly at Estella's wedding."
"You are Marina," I said.
"Yes, we met briefly." She tilted her head in a pose that said, I know his taste. "Dax, remind me, is she the designer who made that vintage dress we saw last week?"
He nodded without saying much.
"How pretty," Marina said to me as if we were trading compliments.
"Thank you," I said.
The ceremony began. Estella walked like she was a story entering its main chapter. Luke stood at the altar with the steady smile of someone who had allowed himself to be chosen. I sat with hands folded, a quiet spectator of two lives making a vow.
After the speeches, Estella's maid of honor—a thoughtful friend named Chie Blankenship—took the mic.
"Before we leave for photos," Chie said, "I have one small request."
She held up a phone. "Estella asked me to play a small video."
The guests quieted. Phones came up. Cameras angled. I did not understand at first.
Chie's thumb tapped a screen. A voice filled the hall. It was Marina’s voice, recorded.
"Remember when you told me to get that photo retouched?" Marina said in the video, sitting in a dressing room—no lights, no staff—looking candid. "I told the public a lie. I told them Dax and I were a real thing. I said whatever he wanted me to say."
A second clip cut in. It was Marina on a private chat, typing numbers and food, planning shoots. Another clip: Marina on a small stage with a man who was not Dax, whispering, "He is a brand." Another clip: a screenshot of Marina's message—"He is a way to good press. Keep him in reach; do not let him feel loved by anyone real."
Faces in the room shifted.
"Who sent this?" someone whispered.
Estella's voice came through the small speakers, calm and collected. "I did."
"You?" I asked.
Estella nodded. "I wanted the truth out before vows were stolen."
The screen switched to a series of messages. There was a date stamped four months ago, a message from Marina to a publicist: "Make him buy the ring. He isn't mine but the ring gets pages."
Then, slow and clear, a clip that changed everything: Marina on a luxury set, laughing, the camera panning, Dax right beside her, looking away. Marina's laugh turned into a recorded whisper. "Keep him, keep him, he won't stay unless you make him feel necessary."
My throat closed.
The footage rolled on and on. It showed Marina in a designer showroom, replacing a tag on a ring box, hiding receipts, texting Dax from a burner account pretending to be a 'secret admirer' that she later exposed to get "emotional content." Each clip was sharper than the last.
"Chie," Estella said, "show the last file."
An assistant tapped another clip.
It was Marina in a crowded bar, shaking hands with a man who offered her an envelope. Marina put the envelope into her bag and typed, "To the right accounts—he will be ours this month."
A gasp moved through the crowd like wind over glass.
"Marina," someone said from the room. "Is that true?"
The room felt like everything hollowed.
Marina's face in the live room flared like a struck animal.
"No—these are edits," she said at once. "They are out of context. You can't show them."
"Marina," Dax said, and his voice stopped two hundred people. "Is that true?"
Marina looked at him and her smile cracked. "Dax, I—"
Estella stepped forward, voice clear. "I have more. I have your original receipts, Marina. I have payments to models to act like lovers. I have messages where you said you would make sure our family stayed distracted, that you would 'play the part' for Dax to the public. I have your photoshops, too."
She held up a stack of printed chats, photos and emails. "You wanted a ring. You wanted press. You wanted Dax to look settled. You didn't want Dax to be happy. You wanted him as a headline."
Marina's face went white. Her eyes darted to the guests. Phones were already dark boxes of light recording every moment.
"This is a set-up," Marina cried, voice rising. "This is slander."
"It is not slander when the originals are here," said Luke, and the tone of his voice was steady, like an anchor.
"Who gave you these?" Marina asked Estella, falling back on a practiced question.
"I asked an investigator," Estella said. "I asked someone who knew how to look. Because I knew something was wrong."
"Marina, what do you have to say?" Dax asked once more. He looked small in the doorway, like someone who had been defending a dam that cracked.
Marina's lipstick trembled. "I—" She grabbed a handkerchief, wiping her mouth. "They are edited. They are made to look like I'm saying things I did not say. He—he never promised me money. It was a business deal. He paid for my time as he pays for everything he hires."
"Isn't that called dishonesty when you hide it from everyone?" someone said.
"You set this up," Marina said now, moving toward Estella as if to strike. "You are ruining me."
"Stop." Estella did not shout. Her voice cut clean. "You are ruining yourself."
The guests had pulled their phones out. The videos streamed toward every corner of the internet in seconds. Cameras clicked. Someone shouted, "Record this!"
Marina's smile, meant to be a shield, slid down her cheeks. She began to tremble.
"No—no—" Marina said. "I can explain. I never meant—"
"You meant to use him," Estella said. "You meant to play him."
Marina's eyes switched frantically. She made one last push. "He's a man of business. He knew. He is a part of this."
"Is that true, Dax?" Estella asked.
Dax's face was still. He had always been careful with words. Now his voice was a flat, sharp thing. "I didn't know all of it. I knew the photos. I didn't know the messages."
An older woman near the back began to clap. The clap was slow and then faster. Others joined. The sound was not celebratory. It was a beat of correction.
Marina staggered. "You are monsters," she cried. "You will all pay for this."
A man rose from the crowd. He was a journalist who had covered the launch. He shoved his phone forward. "Marina, this conversation could be on record. Do you want to answer these charges in public?"
Marina's composure cracked. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I love Dax. I—"
"Love," Estella repeated like a question. "Is that what you call it when you airbrushed yourself onto a life that wasn't yours?"
Marina bowed her head. Her hands shook. She took a few steps back until she hit the table and overturned a glass. Champagne spilled in a slow arc. A young woman started recording and laughed. A man shouted, "Shame!"
Marina's face went raw. She dropped to her knees on the aisle runner, fingers digging into the fabric.
"Please—please," she begged. "I didn't mean for it to get this big. I—I thought I could keep it small. Please."
Her voice went up and then broke. People around her murmured, some disgusted, some excited. Someone took her phone and set it on the table, making sure cameras were on her. A few guests stood, leaning in like vultures to watch the fall of someone who had wanted to climb.
"You asked me to marry you," Dax said quietly, and his words landed like heavy snow. "Once, Marina. I thought it was real. I was wrong."
Marina looked up at him like a swimmer pleading at shore. "Dax, I—"
"Stop," he said. "Don't make me pity you."
She began to cry, full wide sobs. Her hands covered a face that had always been prepared for lights. Now she had no lights to hide behind.
"You lied to a family," a woman called. "You lied to a bride."
Someone else shouted, "Get off your knees, we don't need your drama."
She kept her head bowed. Her mascara ran. Her perfume no longer masked the rawness.
A group of guests started to crowd, whispering or laughing. Several took videos with their phones. A man snapped a picture and posted it with the caption: "When a fake tries to claim a life. #weddingexposed."
Marina pushed herself up, still on her knees. Her voice was small and raw. "Please—" she said again. "Forgive me. I can explain everything. I'll give you money. I'll leave. I'll—"
"Leave," Estella said. "Leave and don't come back."
Marina stood, knees shaking. She tried to speak again, but nobody listened. Hosts closed in, pulling her toward the side door. She turned back once. Her face had been stripped of paint; what remained was hurt and fear and a wild need.
"You will be on every feed tonight," someone said.
"I know," she said, voice barely audible. "I know."
They led her out. Cameras followed. People filmed as she pushed through a small crowd of outraged guests and photographers. A young man followed and shouted, "Don't you dare come back!"
The door closed.
The room felt different after. The air was clear and raw. People whispered into their phones. Estella sat down, hands white on her bouquet. Luke came up behind her and squeezed her shoulder.
"You did the right thing," Luke said softly.
I stayed where I was, held by the crowd and the place where Marina had knelt. Dax stood a few feet away, jaw set. I walked to him without thinking.
"You didn't know?" I asked.
He looked at me like a man who had been wronged and had been waking to it. "No," he said. "But I should have seen the signs."
"You made her a story," I said. "You let her be a headline."
"I didn't choose that for her," he said. "I didn't know what she would do."
"You could have said something," I said. "You could have stopped it."
He looked at his hands. "I wanted to give them a chance," he said. "I am not proud."
"People pay to live a lie," I said, quietly. "The ones who buy in are always stunned when the bill comes."
He looked up at me. His eyes were wet. "Isabel."
"What?" I said.
"I want to make it right," he said. "Tell me how."
I took a breath. "Don't buy sins and call them vows," I said.
He leaned forward, palm up. "Isabel, will you let me try to be honest? Will you let me try to be brave?"
I laughed—bitter and a little soft. "You ask me to walk into a life your family can watch," I said. "You ask me to risk being a headline again."
"I ask you to risk me," he said. "Not the company, not the name. Me."
"You hid a ring box in the car," I said. "You were going to propose. Why hide it then?"
"I was afraid," he said. "Afraid to make you wait any longer and afraid to make you wait for nothing."
"Are you asking me to forgive him?" Estella's voice floated from the stage, like a hand reaching down.
"I am asking you to forgive him the cowardice of fear," Dax said. "Not the choice to be silent when he should have been loud. Forgive him because he is trying now."
I thought of the dress in its bag. I thought of London and the company of strangers who had taught me new rhythms. I thought of Marina, kneeling, begging, public humiliation burning like acid in the air.
"Get on your knees," I said finally.
Dax stared. "What?"
"Get on your knees," I said.
He laughed, short and shocked. "Isabel, I'm not—"
"Get on your knees and tell the whole room what you failed to say before," I said. "Tell them you were scared. Tell them you loved me enough to try now. Say it in a way that cannot be edited out."
He hesitated, then slowly, like a man stepping into water he did not want, dropped onto one knee in the aisle.
"I was a coward," he said, voice raw. "I let fear make choices for me. I let inertia and duty and other people's plans push you away. I loved you and I was afraid of the cost. I am sorry."
The room sat speechless. A few phones stayed in pockets. Luke's hand was steady on Estella's shoulder.
"Isabel Bradford," he said, loud enough for everyone, "will you let me try? Will you let me show you the life I want honestly?"
I looked at him, at the man who had saved me from a fire and then slowly taught me how to be brave by being cowardly as he learned how to be honest. He had scars and a paused tenderness and a slow way of loving.
"No," I said at first. "Not like that."
He nodded. "I knew. I asked because I had to."
"Yes," I said after a breath. "Yes, if you mean it. But not today. Not because someone kneels at a wedding."
He tilted his head. "When then?"
"When you stop letting other people's stories decide my future," I said. "When you put my name in your life without hiding it in a receipt."
He placed his hand over mine across the aisle, the touch steady. "Then tomorrow I will begin."
We walked from the hall later that night like two people who had decided to inventory their habits. Marina's fall had been loud and terrible, but it had cleared the air. Guests whispered. Some called Dax brave, some cruel.
I did not marry him that night. We did not go home as a couple with the world watching. But he did not leave me alone in the rain.
Two months later, in a small ceremony for just family and a few friends, Dax and I stood where a lot of choosing happens quietly. Estella gave me her dress back and left it to my hands.
"Design me again," she told me. "Design the dress you would have worn if the world didn't shift."
On a small table sat a plain ring box with two letters inside: one he had written years ago and the one I had buried in a book. He had kept both.
"You once told me: I am willing," I said to Dax, voice soft.
"I am still willing," he said. "But now I want to be honest about the limits and the costs."
We said vows that were small and precise and boring to every headline. "I will tell the truth," he said. "I will speak when it matters. I will not hide what is mine."
"And I will forgive where it is earned," I answered. "But I will not be a story."
We married in sunlight and rain, a small crowd smiling and wiping tears. Marina's name trailed in feeds for weeks, her humiliation a lesson people talked about over coffee. She left the city, a burned-out star.
When I walked down the tiny aisle, Estella clapped loud and then quieted, and Dax smiled with all his weight behind the smile. I wore a dress I made again—simpler, sharper, with black thread along the hem like a memory.
At the reception, someone raised their glass. "To truth," the voice said. "To the people who finally say it."
"To saying it," I repeated, clinked glasses, and felt how speaking your own name can make a life true.
The End
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