This is my entry for Challenge 10, "I always cry at weddings", at rentfichallenge. It's a livejournal community. Check it out, it's awesome.
Disclaimer: you all know it's Mr. Larson's
AlisonThe wedding would transcend perfection. Its sheer luminescence would slip into picturesque. In ten or fifteen years they would look over the album, show it to their children, coo and melt and make love. In a decade and a half they would be characterized by socks in bed, hidden laughter and a faint sense of wine.
At least, that was the idea. Alison's idea. The images flittered through her mind as she arranged the ceremony. Over and over in her mind she rehearsed every detail. They would marry in the park – the white endura-plastic folding chairs here and the priest-and-happy-couple arrangement here in front of the sycamores. Then here the tables and her father would want to make a toast and probably Benny's best man – one of his friends – and he would kissed her and she would cry, and she would pull him away to the weeping willow by the merry-go-round and get grass stains on her beautiful white dress. But that was right. A wedding dress should only be worn once.
The night before the wedding, Alison barely slept. At three a.m. she gave up trying. Through a dark house she shuffled, muffling footsteps in thick carpeting. The light clicked softly and whirred as she brushed her teeth, spat, and rinsed her mouth. The light clicked softly off, there was a shuffling, and Alison was in her bedroom once more.
She sat on the bed. The mattress bounced her. She undid her braid and shook out her hair. And that was what she did for the next hour. She brushed her hair. And she brushed it again and again, until it shone, until strands rose, separated and burned with static.
When her mother woke her at seven, Alison was clutching her hairbrush. Her last night as a single woman. Mrs. Grey immediately jumped to the wrong conclusions. She fetched a spare brush and said nothing.
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