Destination Wedding Read online

  “It’s terrific!”

  —Candace Bushnell, New York Times bestselling author of Sex and the City and Is There Still Sex in the City?

  “The timing of Jacqueline J. Holness’ story is perfect as the subject of ‘black women finding a suitable partner’ becomes the main topic of conversation when three or more of us gather. I discovered this to be true even among senior black women. I was a guest at a book club of professional women in New York recently where they went way off topic bemoaning the lack of mates for their daughters and nieces… Indeed, it is hard out there for a sister—which is why her book is important.”

  —Brenda Wilkinson, Georgia Writers Hall of Fame nominee and author of Ludell, Ludell and Willie and Ludell’s New York Time

  “Jacqueline J. Holness has penned a delightful read that puts a new spin on the age-old dilemma of the beautiful, successful, single black woman finding a mate! Did I say beautiful and successful? Set in the Black Mecca—The ATL—Destination Wedding will have you asking, ‘Why is this so hard?’ I found myself in the moment, rooting for these women—and thoroughly enjoyed their journeys to happily-ever-after.”

  —Monica Richardson, author of the Talbots of Harbour Island series

  “In need of a getaway? Destination Wedding is the read you need. Filled with characters that will remind you of your girlfriends and unexpected adventures, it’s the perfect vacation read.”

  —Chandra Sparks Splond, author and blogger

  “In Destination Wedding, Jacqueline J. Holness takes readers on page-turning twists and turns that hijack several friendships on the path to love. If you’re eager for an entertaining read that will leave you rooting for the characters as if they’re your friends, pick up your copy today.”

  —Stacy Hawkins Adams, multi-published author of Coming Home, Watercolored Pearls, The Someday List and more

  Destination

  Wedding

  JACQUELINE J. HOLNESS

  Destination Wedding

  ©2019, Jacqueline J. Holness. All Rights Reserved.

  Published by Soon Come Books, Fayetteville, Georgia

  978-1-7331123-1-4 (paperback)

  978-1-7331123-0-7 (eBook)

  This is a work of fiction. The events and persons are imagined. Any resemblance to actual events, or to persons, live or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper, broadcast, website, blog or other outlet.

  Cover design by theBookDesigners

  “Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory, for the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) Then the angel said to me, ‘Write: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’ And he added, ‘These are the true words of God.’”

  Revelation 19:7-9

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: December

  Chapter 2: January

  Chapter 3: February

  Chapter 4: March

  Chapter 5: April

  Chapter 6: May

  Chapter 7: June

  Chapter 8: July

  Chapter 9: August

  Chapter 10: September

  Chapter 11: October

  Chapter 12: November

  Chapter 13: December

  Chapter 14: January

  Chapter 15: February

  Chapter 16: March

  Chapter 17: April

  Chapter 18: May

  Chapter 19: June

  Chapter 20: July

  Chapter 21: August

  Chapter 22: September

  Chapter 23: October

  Chapter 24: November

  Chapter 25: December

  Chapter 26: January

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  IN DECEMBER 2009, AFTER nearly seven years of preparing myself to meet THE ONE through prayer, self-help books, counseling, online dating, seminars, and on and on, I finally lost hope that he was even out there at all. I felt like Charlotte on my favorite single-girl television show of all time, Sex and the City, when she whined to her friends Carrie, Miranda, and Samantha, “I’ve been dating since I was fifteen. I’m exhausted. Where is he?” before dropping her head, face first, onto the table in front of her. A relationship that I had dreamed of having years earlier finally happened—only to dissolve like a dream too good to be true within a couple of months. I was devastated and despondent. After swearing off my small library of self-help books on relationships that I had lovingly acquired over that nearly seven-year period and declaring that not a single dollar would be spent on another one, I concluded that God’s plan for my life did not include marriage and I would have to be okay with that.

  It didn’t help that I came to this conclusion during the Christmas season. Jesus is the reason for the season, but there is also another reason that Christmas romance books, movies, and music are popular year after year. Of all the Christmas gifts a single girl can get, an engagement ring tops the list for many, if not most! Something about the chill in the air creates the perfect setting for cozying up to someone new or old. And if you find yourself with no one to kiss under the mistletoe, there are a plethora of songs you can pull out from Christmas romance playlists to comfort yourself, from Wham!’s Last Christmas to Prince’s Another Lonely Christmas to Luther Vandross’s Every Year, Every Christmas.

  But I was a single girl soldier at thirty-six years old. This wasn’t the first time I was uncoupled at Christmas, and it likely wouldn’t be the last—or so I thought (more on that later). I went on with celebrating the reason for the season, attending church, buying gifts for family and friends, decorating my home and more.

  And then I saw an ABC News Nightline piece just before I nodded off for the night. It was December 22, just days before Christmas. I had nearly survived the season, although feelings of sadness and loss threatened to unravel my “Christmas cheer” that I put on like a coat when leaving my townhouse. But this piece—featured on one of the bedrock news organizations in the country, no less—packaged all of my fears and presented it to me like a gift that that I couldn’t give back. “Single, Black, Female and—Plenty of Company” by reporter Linsey Davis was delivered through the television into my bedroom, the one place where I allowed my emotions to unfurl themselves without cover. Davis reported that 42 percent of black women have never been married, which amounted to double the amount of white women who found themselves in that dire predicament. And if that statistic by its lonesome wasn’t startling enough, she pointed out that the number wasn’t likely to improve, because of the overall black-male-to-black-female ratio at the outset. Additionally, many black men were unavailable or undesirable for marriage because they lacked a high school diploma or a job or were incarcerated, she said.

  Then to illustrate all of this, Davis had to go and interview successful black women in Atlanta! Now, why did she have to do that? It was a death blow. My father never funded a dowry for me as far as I know, but I was just about ready to call him at nearly midnight (when the report aired) and tell him that any money that he had even thought about putting away for my wedding should be reallocated to his retirement, because he wasn’t marrying me off anytime soon, if at all. AB
C News had just reported that black women, specifically those in Atlanta, were on the fast track to spinsterhood.

  But then, after the shock and sadness wore off, I was angry—angry that a reputable news organization saw fit to invade the lives of black women and lay bare our seemingly loveless existence. The notion of the “strong black woman” was always problematic, and now there was another misnomer that black women had to contend with: the “single black woman.” One of my favorite novelists, Zora Neale Hurston, was onto something when she wrote that the black woman “is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see,” in her 1937 masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God.

  (And let me just insert this here in case some of you think I’m elevating being married above being single: There are worse things than being single. Being married to a creep is one of them. Also, being single does not equate to unhappiness. However, if you really want to be married, there is nothing wrong with that, either.)

  Lest you think I’m being overly dramatic, there were many other think pieces, media conversations, books, and more about black women and our singleness that were publicized around the same time. In September 2009, NPR.org ran a story titled “Black Women: Successful and Still Unmarried.” The Washington Post published a “Profile of Helena Andrews, Author of a Book About Successful but Lonely Young Black Women,” in December 2009. “The Black Damsel in Dating Distress” was published in The Atlantic in March 2010. In June 2010, Psychology Today published “High-Achieving Black Women and Marriage: Not Choosing or Not Chosen?” And to follow up on the success of the ABC News Nightline piece in December, ABC News Nightline held a “Nightline Face-Off: Why Can’t a Successful Black Woman Find a Man?” debate in Atlanta in April 2010. Critiquing the lives of single black women had become a commodity, babay!

  I, as a single black woman at the time, felt bombarded, and I wanted to detonate some bombs in retaliation. As a writer, however, my words were and are my best line of defense. I wrote many blog posts about how all of this felt, and somewhere in the midst of all of that writing, God gave me the idea for a novel. Since I was primarily a nonfiction reader at the time, I just thought about these fictional single black women who decided to not let statistics define their worth as women or as marriage partners.

  Even as the idea was slowly taking shape within my imagination, a real-life suitor showed up! We went on our first date on Valentine’s Day weekend in 2010! Two years later, in December 2012, he proposed! I don’t think it was a coincidence that this man (now my husband) proposed to me during the same month that I had declared myself destined for spinsterhood two years prior.

  But even as I commenced with wedding planning in 2013, these fictional single black women stayed on my mind. After they kept pestering me, I finally decided to bring them to life while I was still single, so that all of the angst that I felt was still fresh in my heart and I could spill it onto paper. I planned my wedding and wrote the first draft of Destination Wedding simultaneously. Just as there were many twists and turns during my journey as a single black woman, there were many twists and turns in writing and now publishing my very first novel, Destination Wedding!

  While it was ten years ago this very month that I saw that ABC News Nightline piece, I know that single black women who want to find love and get married still have it hard out here. In May 2017, just as I was finishing this manuscript, I read an article titled “Black, Single, and Waiting: For 15 years, The Bachelor Franchise Has Made a Caricature of Blackness. Could This Season Finally Be Different?” on Slate.com, in which the author referenced the ABC News Nightline piece from 2009. In the January 2018 People.com article “To Rome for Love: Host Diann Valentine on Why Black Women Are Going to Italy to Meet Eligible Men,” Valentine referenced single black women outnumbering single black men as a reason for single black women to travel to another continent for love. And even as I write this, I read a funny yet heartbreaking piece, “Going on Dating Apps as a Black Woman Can Feel Like Searching for the Bare Minimum,” which was published on Hellogiggles.com in February 2019. The author referenced dating app OkCupid’s 2014 study in which it was reported that black women were at the bottom when it comes to non-black men’s choices, and that black men had no racial preference at all when choosing women.

  Despite all of this, I think finding love, no matter what race or gender, is undeniably tricky at best and downright hard at worst. But as a black woman, I wrote this book for black women generally and single black women specifically. One of my friends said this to me not long after she got married: “In my heart, I will always be a single woman.” I didn’t quite understand what she meant, as I was a single woman at the time. But now, as a married woman, I understand what she meant. I was single for quite a while, having gotten married at thirty-nine years old. The lessons of self-love, autonomy, and purposeful living are ones that I could not have acquired as a married woman. I came to my marriage as a whole person because of all of the time I spent as a single woman. I’m not saying that people who marry at younger ages aren’t whole, prior to marrying. I’m simply saying that my singlehood, prolonged as it seemed and painful as it was at times, prepared me for marriage. And I don’t regret one second of that preparation, because it led me to where I am today, happily (sometimes, at least ) married to THE ONE God had in mind for me all along.

  So if anything from this long introduction appeals to you, read my love letter to single black women everywhere but especially to single black women in Atlanta. While this is a work of fiction, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that many of the lessons I learned along the way aren’t folded into the stories of Jarena, Mimi, Senalda, and Whitney. Hopefully, you won’t have to learn them in real life like I did. But even if you have nothing to learn, Destination Wedding is a fun read, if I say so myself!

  Prologue

  ALL THEY COULD DO was stare. Although the restaurant was mostly illuminated by flickering lanterns, they could still decipher that Mimi was making out with one of Wendell’s friends near the bathrooms, a dark and almost-secluded part of El Restaurante De La Playa. They groped each other as if they were lathering invisible soap on their bodies, which was apropos since it seemed only the shower of a fire hose could quench their heat. It didn’t help that Mimi wore a tan sundress only a few shades darker than her skin tone or that Chauncy was nearly the same shade. They weren’t naked yet, but the melding of their similar complexions suggested that was next. Their mouths smacked and limbs flailed so much that they fell against a cobblestone wall before disappearing into the men’s bathroom.

  Had this been a year ago, maybe they wouldn’t have been so surprised. A year ago, Mimi wasn’t married. And yet there she was—kissing a friend of the groom.

  They were in Puerto Rico for Senalda and Wendell’s wedding. About seventy-five people journeyed from throughout the U.S. and beyond to the tropical island where Senalda and her fiancé would say their vows on the beach at sunset just as she had always envisioned. Jarena and Whitney whispered to each other although loud salsa music probably drowned out what they were saying anyway.

  “Should we tell Senalda that her matron of honor is locking lips and God knows what else one with one of Wendell’s friends?” Jarena asked, trying her best not to make eye contact with anyone outside of the two of them who had witnessed Mimi’s make-out session in the open-air beach restaurant. The palm-tree encircled restaurant was the site for the rehearsal dinner that just ended, as well as for the wedding reception the next day.

  “I just hope that none of the parents or older people saw her,” snarled Whitney. She picked up her glass from the table and sipped on sangria. “I mean, her behavior is beyond out of order. We may as well as be at a ghetto wedding, the way Mimi is acting.”

  Jarena lifted her glass of non-alcoholic sangria and shook it, causing the fruit at the bottom to rise before eventually descending again like flakes in a snow globe. How are we going to tell Senalda that her recently married matron of honor is cheating on her husband during her rehearsal dinner
without starting a fight?

  “One of us has to tell her,” Whitney declared, jolting Jarena out of her contemplation. “I nominate you. Since you worked in public relations, you can come up with a PC way to tell Mimi she is making an ass of herself. I mean, I hate to be so crude, but there is no nicer way for me to say it.”

  “Can you believe I can’t come up with anything?” Jarena said, shaking her head. “I’m just praying we see Senalda before Senalda sees Mimi.”

  “Why are you guys huddled up?” Senalda walked up to her friends at their table from behind, placing each arm around each of them. The plank wood floor hadn’t warned them of her arrival.

  “Nothing,” Whitney said, maneuvering her neck upward and flashing a smile to her before sipping her drink. “Would you like a drink? I can get one for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jarena said, peering down at her arroz con pollo as she lifted her fork to eat.

  “Senalda, I’m just going to be real with you,” Whitney said as she moved Senalda’s arm from her shoulder and rested her hand on the bride-to-be’s hand. “Jarena and I saw Mimi kissing Chauncy a few minutes ago near the bathrooms. We hope none of the older people saw what happened.”

  “What?” Senalda screeched as her eyes grew large. In spite of her small frame, Senalda was not to be toyed with. Maybe it was the Bronx in her. Maybe it was because she was in senior management at her company. Whatever it was, she did not hesitate to check anyone anywhere.

  “I saw her flirting with Wendell’s best man last night! This is going to stop right now,” Senalda growled in the punchy edge of her Bronx accent that was pronounced when she was angry. She rushed toward the bathrooms.

  Whitney and Jarena abandoned their table, running behind their friend. With her long legs, Jarena headed her off, putting her hands on Senalda’s shoulders. “Wait,” Jarena blurted, looking down at her before lowering her voice and slowing the pace of her words like she was talking to a cranky child who needed to be soothed. “You’re about to get married tomorrow. Just think about it for a minute. This is not the time for confrontation. You need to be calm and serene tonight.”