The Party

This being the wedding day, I am posting the last of the three true love stories that I originally wrote for my friend on Tumblr.  If someone that I know reads my blog and is a character in the story wants to quibble over details, just let me remind that person that I got the story second and third hand because he tends to tell these things to other family members and then assumes he has also told them to mama. No matter, the details aren't what's important, anyway. 

This is a true story. It happened to two people I know.

She wasn’t supposed to be at the party. 

She was from Venezuela. She and her husband met in high school, attended college in the United States, married and had a baby. She thought she knew everything about him, but it turned out she didn’t. Now she was living in London and he was living in Scotland, and their divorce was almost final. She brought her little boy up to visit him and then they were going to spend three days seeing Loch Ness.

But there was a mix-up with his driver's license, so she went back to London. After all, there was that party.

He wasn’t supposed to be at the party.

He was from the United States. In 2008, he had taken a job with a start up company. The owners’ plan was to build the business up enough to be tempting enough for a larger company to buy, but then the recession of 2009 hit, so the owners had to run the company themselves. There was enough European business for the company to send him and his boss to live in London as their European branch. 

His cousin was getting married back home that weekend, and he was supposed to be there, but he couldn’t get the time off.

But there was that party. That was how they met.

A year later, she got a promotion and a transfer, back to Houston. Around the same time, his company told him that having him based in Europe was too expensive, and that when his visa ran out, they wanted him home, back in Austin. Since he mostly worked either from home or onsite, he asked if really needed to live in Austin. Could he maybe live in Houston, and just go to Austin the few times a year he was needed there?

So now they both live together in Houston. They are building a house and making wedding plans.

He says he wasn’t supposed to be at the party. She says she wasn’t supposed to be at the party.

I say they were.