I never had a threesome.
I never had an orgy.
I never slept with anyone from Sweden. Or Norway.
I never slept with a Scandinavian full stop.
I never slept with anyone with tattoos or multi-colored hair or non-facial piercings.
I never slept with anyone with an older woman.
I never slept with a married woman, and no, last night doesn't count because she was married to me.
Yesterday, I married Bella, the girl of my dreams. Fantastic. I am married. Superb. I am a husband. Brilliant. I'll never sleep with another woman so long as we both shall live.
"Hello, husband. I think I'm going to be sick." These were the first words she said when she woke. Bella. My beautiful wife.
"Morning Mrs Cullen."
Despite the hangover, she starts trampolining around the four-poster singing "I've go-ot married yes-t'day morning" to the tune of 'I'm getting married in the morning,' which doesn't fit. She sings like someone being stabbed in the shower: all commitment, no tonal control. This is not because she's singing and fighting back the urge to vomit. This is how she normally sings. It is one of her many endearing qualities.
"Mrs Cullen. I like that. So much better than Miss Swan."
"This is why you married me? For my last name?"
"Yes, that's it. Couldn't go another year as a Swan."
"Well, now you're a Cullen. Any second thoughts?"
"Yes. I wish I hadn't drunk so much."
"No, about being, well, married."
Until this morning, I've never had any second thoughts – well, not officially. Not so as to cause alarm. But from the moment I asked the woman I love to marry me, I've been expecting her to look dazed for a minute or two, blink a few times as if risen suddenly from a twelve month coma, then look at me, look at the engagement ring and start screaming, "Marry you?! Are you mad?" She could, I'm sure even if I'm being objective, have had the pick of the field. A girl who looks even more beautiful in jeans and a T-shirt than make-up and a cocktail dress, an effortlessly captivating head-turner, the sort of girl, honestly, you'd be quite pleased to go on a date with. And I've got her to agree to spend the rest of her life with me. It's ridiculous.
"No, Edward. No second thoughts. Even if you did knock the minister out on our wedding day."
If you'd ask Emmett, the world's most pessimistic usher, he'll tell you the wedding was a disaster. This is because he sees a friend getting married in the same way everyone else might see a friend being sent to prison. For life. He hasn't enjoyed his decade of matrimonial bliss.
If you ask me, the wedding had gone pretty well. Compared to what I'd imagined. It had taken several glasses of whisky the night before to convince the minister I was not the infidel even though I only went to church once a year. After that he'd been an absolute angel, until he'd fallen down the steps of his own church and gone head-first into a pew. I and a large part of the congregation had thought for several seconds that he had actually killed himself, but a cup and a half of holy water brought him back from the brink. When he regained consciousness, he claimed I had pushed him. I don't think I did... I may have brushed past him as I helped Bella and her dress turn, ready for the you-may-kiss-the-bride-and-get-out-of-here bit. Nothing he could do by then: we were already married.
And, despite Emmett's grave warnings beforehand and rolling eyes during, everything else went okay.
My tailored suit had, miraculously, fitted. The Volvo (89,452 miles) had started. And Bella, despite her 'best friend' Jake and his ridiculous equine chauffeur service, had got to the church on time.
I had been forbidden to look her in the eye 'emotionally' or 'with significance' at any stage during the service for fear of opening her floodgates. 'I don't want to do a Jessica,' she had explained quite reasonably. Who could forget Jessica's wedding? It had taken hours, maybe days for her to sob, squeak and warble her way through the vows. By the time she reached 'till... sob... death... sob, sob, sob... do us... sniff... part', we all thought she was going to illustrate the point by collapsing on the spot. RIP Jessica who died at her wedding from dehydration.
Despite the threats, I had felt an overwhelming urge to burst into tears myself the moment Bella rounded the corner and began to walk. Quite hard not to, what with your friends and family going 'ooohh' and 'ahhh', and seeing the dress for the first time. An amazing Sixties number, not at all like the explosion in a meringue factory you get normally. Then there's the mysterious veil and the accompanying wedding march and your mother already blubbering away in her purple hat. Is this really not too much for any man to cope with? Did whoever invented weddings not add all this stuff to make it absolutely inevitable that the poor guy waiting up at the altar would weep deep tears of joy/run a thousand miles/pass out on the spot?
Bella did what she always does when she's trying not to cry: she laughed, hysterically. She walked the entire length of the church laughing and blinking back tears, her dress and variable bridesmaids flowing behind her. Only in the last few feet did her eyes meet mine. She smiled; I smiled back with as little significance as I could muster – a sort of thin-lipped, cold eyed, non-bothered smirk, the kind you'd throw a kid on a bike when he calls you an expletive. She burst into tears anyway.
Still I passed the four tests...
The Four Tests of a Bridegroom
The vows. Don't shout them, don't whimper them, don't faint during them. Easy.
The speech. Thank everyone – but mainly in-laws, look happy, declare love for new wife and make bridesmaids cry. Had to follow Bella's father, who did ten minutes on the traumas of her breech birth and made two members of the audience physically sick. Did fine, though, compared to Jasper. I'd chosen him as a best man over Emmett because he worked in the diplomatic corps and doesn't everyone in the diplomatic corps have tact? No, nerves destroyed his judgement and he never recovered from his opener ('What's the difference between a groom and a cucumber?'). His attempt to regain momentum involved raising all three topics he'd specifically been told not to (my scatological college tragedy, the vastly differing weights of the bridesmaids and my open-air fling with a floozy). It wasn't pretty.
The dance. Two lessons hadn't been enough to master the foxtrot. Bella's toe crushed in the first verse of 'Fly Me to the Moon' and an elephantine triple-trampling in the second. I considered stopping in the third to summon a paramedic or podiatric specialist but she blinked away the tears, squeezed my shoulder very, very hard and whispered, 'Keep going.' I did, we finished with a twirl, great aunts sighed, friends said how beautiful we looked and I decided to take that at face value.
The consummation. Bridesmaids always ask the bride if you did or you didn't. If you didn't, they tell their boyfriends and husbands. Who tell all their friends. Who all snigger. So, despite fatigue and room spin and a frankly terrifying corset, we did.
Now it's Sunday and we can relax for the first time in six months.
Lunch was fun. No ribbons or corsages or speeches or Windsor knots or place mats or chauffeurs or confetti or wish-they-hadn't-come extended family. Just thirty of us at a pizza place in Port Angeles going over the post-nuptial-mortem.
The Post-Mortem
One case of infatuation. Jasper and a waitress – in a cloakroom, though, not a cupboard. He loves her, she loves him. He's moving to Sydney when her work visa runs out next Thursday. Already started Googling for flats on Manly Beach this morning. It won't happen.
One Hospital admission. Not the minister. He made a miraculous recovery. It was Emmett, emboldened by 'It's Raining Men', who needed medical attention after he stage-dived into an adoring crowd. There was no adoring crowd. There wasn't even a crowd. Witnesses say he scored a perfect belly flop, and in so doing broke his nose and his fifth metatarsal, and severely bruised his right testicle. Why not his left? Because it doesn't hang as low as the right one. I wish I hadn't asked.
One run in with the law. My father showing a love-sick Jasper how to down a bottle of red wine, on the way back to the hotel at 2a.m. "Evening, folks, everything all right?" "Yes, officer." "On our way home are we, folks?" "Yes, officer." "A long way, is it?" "Just over there, officer." "Best be on our way then, hadn't we, folks?" "Yes, officer." "Will you be taking the traffic cone with you?" "No, sir."
One storming out. Surprise, surprise, Whats-her-face who is the girlfriend of Jake who is the best friend of my wife who clearly isn't always a good judge of character. Why did Whats-her-face storm out? Official reason from Jake, while sadly not choking on his goat's-cheese pizza (amazing, he can even manage to find a pretentious flavour of pizza): "She wanted marriage, but it felt too soon. You can't rush such an important decision can you? Marriage should be for life, not for a month or two. I'm so upset that she couldn't give me more time." Misty-eyed nods from the bridal group, eye-rolling from me, Jasper and Emmett. He's confusing marriage with rescue dogs, and the girls lap it up.
Real reason: she'd had to find her own way to the church and reception because Jake, after much begging, had been given the job of chauffeuring. He'd been told 'nothing flash' then turned up with a white coach and three horses, none of which he could properly control. He had worn tailored tails and a waist coat strikingly similar to mine. He'd spent the whole service muttering gloomy imprecations, especially during the vows, which meant the minister, sensing possibilities, had repeated the "Can anyone see any lawful impediment?" question... twice.
Even before our first dance had finished, he'd tapped me on the shoulder, then refused to give Bella to anyone else for the next three dances. And, once prised away, he'd marched up onto the stage handed out sheet music to the band, declared how much he loved his best-friend-in-the-world Bella, spat out how delighted he was she'd found the perfect man, then sang Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You.' If I hadn't been so busy vomiting, I would have stormed out too.
Home late to our Seattle apartment. More lugging over the threshold on Bella's insistence, accompanied by what I took to be slightly sarcastic clapping from one of the idiots from the upstairs flat. Honeymoon tomorrow. Tired, so tired.