Chapter 2
The next morning was the morning that we went dress shopping.
Eli's mom Mary and my Aunt Carmen and Aunt Rosa were coming, along with my cousin Selena. Alicia was up early and woke me up with her excitement as well. I knew that she was excited that she could share this experience with these people, but I also knew that she had hoped mom would also be here for it too.
But my aunts, Mary, Selena and me would have to do.
Aunt Rose and Aunt Carmen were from our mothers side of the family. Mom's little sisters to be exact. They both had a lot of spunk in them and reminded me a ton of my mother and how she used to be and they didn't live to far away from us so we saw them daily. I knew that they were excited that Alicia and Eli were finally getting married but even though they were excited Mary was the first to arrive at our house.
Mary was a short woman, barely five feet high with an extremely tiny body and pale face with sharp cheek bones, pale skin and gray eyes that Eli had been lucky to inherit. The first time I had met her her blond hair had been long, reaching her waist but these last few years it had been cut short into a short bob and was only graying slightly. Other than the gray hair she had a few wrinkles on her face but she still looked pretty good for a woman of fifty-three.
Alicia saw her coming first, probably because she was sitting on the couch staring at the window waiting for them to arrive, but we both went out to see her at the same time. The last time we had seen Mary had been over a week ago due to how busy we had been and both me and Alicia ran straight into her arms as she smiled warmly and held them open for a hug.
When we pulled back I saw that she was looking at us with joyful eyes that were filled with tears.I could see how proud she was of both me and Alicia, how she thought of us as her daughters and how happy she was that Alicia would finally marry her son making us all offically apart of her family, and her apart of ours.
No words were said as her and Alicia headed inside, both of their eyes filled with tears as I wiped my watery eyes as well and waited outside for my aunts and cousin to arrive.
They got here barely five minutes later and I saw that both of my aunts were smiling like idiots but why woudn't they be, Alicia was finally getting married to 'that sweet boy' as they liked to call Eli. It was a little funny how my aunts could make Eli, and a lot of other boys, blush by what they said and how they acted but then again, they and the rest of my family weren't known to be shy about what they said and did, not like I usually was.
My aunts were way younger than my mom though, in fact they had been born years and years after but that was probably because my grandma had only had my mom when she was fifteen. My Aunt Carmen was only twenty eight years old, the youngest of the three, making her not even two years older than Eli and barely four years older than Alicia.
Many people would find that a little awkward but not in my family, we were pretty much all used to being weird and loud and crazy so this was nothing. Naturally, being the youngest made Aunt Carmen the most fun out of most of my aunts even though most of them were pretty awesome. Aunt Carmen's long coco colored brown hair was pulled into an elastic messily so strands kept falling in her face.
She wore an old pair of ripped up jeans and a v-neck t-shirt that hugged her curves. Her three inch high heels made her frame of five six seven taller and I laughed a little when she swayed her hips dramatically. Aunt Carmen was still single and I knew that she wanted to stay that way, it still didn't stop her from dressing nice and acting a certain way to get guys.
She had her arm looped through Aunt Rosa's and other than the height difference, Aunt Carmen's sea blue eyes and lighter skin tone you wouldn't really able to tell that Carmen's dad wasn't the same dad that my mother and Rosa had. Nobody really thought much of them not having the same dad, they were sisters no matter what.
My Aunt Rosa was originally the middle child but took over as the oldest when my mother died but when you really thought about and looked at Aunt Rosa, even though she was thirty eight with three kids, a loving husband who she had been with for more than twenty years, the stress of losing her sister-Aunt Rosa still looked hot.
Her long black hair was pulled up into a bun and like Carmen's, she had wisps falling into her face. Her dark skin was pretty much the darkest tone out of everybody's in our Mexican family and she had dark brown eyes just like my mothers that always seemed to glow and even after having three kids her body was in great shape and her V-neck shirt and jeans seemed to hug every inch of her body.
But one thing that was noticable about her was that she was short. A couple inches shorter than me but just barely taller than Mary.
Behind my loving aunts was Aunt Rosa's and Uncle David's oldest daughter and my favorite cousin Selena who was just like a second sister to me since both me and and her were especially close, me being only three months older than her. She wore a Sea World t-shirt that we had gotten back last July when me, her and Aunt Carmen had decided to head to Florida. She also wore some ripped jeans.
Selena's black hair hung freely down her back in waves, ending at her waist, while her brown eyes and tanned skin, only slightly lighter than her mothers, glowed as she grinned at me. "Where is the bride to be?" Aunt Rosa asked as they stopped in front of me. "Inside with the soon to be mother-in-law." I told them and Aunt Carmen grinned. Despite the pretty huge age gap my aunts and Mary got along great.
"She's lucky that Mary isn't like the mother-in-law from the movie Monster in Law" Aunt Carmen said and her and Aunt Rosa laughed while me and Selena glanced at each other amused.
When Sonya had told her that her and Eli were getting married Aunt Carmen had gone out and rented all sorts of comedy movies about people getting married and all that one of the movies being monster-in-law where the guys mom was crazy and tried to scare the guys fiance away so they didn't get married.
Soon enough Aunt Carmen and Aunt Rose went inside to let Mary and Alicia know that they were here and ready to go any time while me and Selena stayed outside to wait for them. Selena caught my eye and smirked at me then. "Wedding dress shopping huh-" Her smirk grew into a smile that showed she couldn't wait to see how it would go. "-this should be interesting."
The woman that was working at the wedding dress boutique looked to be in her mid-twenties and was blond, perky and made a slightly disgusted face when she glanced at us and saw our slightly darker skin. Right then I knew that this most likely wouldn't go well, especially not from the looks I saw on my sisters and Aunt Carmen and Selena's faces.
I wasn't happy about the look she had given us either and I saw that Mary and Aunt Rosa weren't either but I knew that we wouldn't really do to much about it. The other three people in with us though, certainly would. That made us all pretty worried. After plastering a fake smile on her face she came up to us, her eyes judging silently.
"I'm sorry but our restroom is only available to paying costumers but you can try the gas station down the street." She told me us before dismissing us, turning to Mary and asking. "Hi, how can I help you today." I felt my mouth drop open slightly at how rude she had actually just been and felt my usually nice and shy personality being pushed aside by my anger that I usually never felt very often. Then I looked to my side and saw Aunt Rosa and Mary looking offended and slightly angry to, Alicia- who was on cloud 9 earlier-starting to look pissed and Selena and Aunt Carmen looking down right outraged, both grinding their teeth and clenching their fists.
"Actually we're here to buy a wedding dress." I told her through clenched teeth, speaking before anybody else could. The blond woman glanced from Mary to me but did a double take and let out a huge gasp, her eyes widening and disgust coming to her features again, this time not leaving her face.
I was used to it by now, that didn't mean that the looks and whispers still didn't hurt when people reacted to my scars and the first couple years I had just burst into tears whenever someone looked at me like that but over the past years things had gotten somewhat better, or maybe I had gotten better at hiding my hurt and pain. Probably the latter.
But no matter what walls I had built up to hide the pain her next comment got a reacton out of me. "What in earth happened to your face to make it so ugly." She said and I let out a startled gasp at her hurtful words, looking down at the floor and letting my hair fall over my face to cover it as I squeezed my eyes shut, holding back my tears.
I wouldn't let her make me cry.
Selena's fist clenched and I knew what she was about to do but no matter how much the blond deserved getting one of Selena's punches to her face I couldn't let my cousin do it. I put my hand around her fist. "Don't." I said and after a moment I felt her fist unclench and her hand wrap around mine in silent support not to let the woman get to me.
Selena spoke up then. "Her face is none of your bussiness. Besides there is nothing wrong with it, actually I think she's perfect and pretty and amazing, way prettier than yours and like she said we are looking for a wedding dress, the thing you get married in, but of course you wouldn't know what that is seeing as you haven't been married yet, but you know, maybe there is still a chance that some blind and stupid guy will actually want to marry a bitch like you."
The woman looked away from my face and all of us in general and hid her hand (that indeed had no wedding band or engagement ring on it) behind her back and I saw through my hair that her face turn a cherry red. I smiled in thanks at Selena, my eyes still teary, and she gave me a small grin back, her eyes holding a fierce protectiveness over me, her cousin, her sister.
After the sales lady left us trying to hide her growing embarrassment and I had assured them that I was fine, though I wasn't sure if they believed me, or if I even beleived myself, Alicia had headed straight for the wedding dresses.
It was about three and a half hours later, after trying on more dresses than I could have counted, that Alicia let out a long sigh. "Come on nena, keep trying, you'll find the right one." Aunt Rosa told her smiling in a way that clearly said 'you should be more patient'. Alicia nodded and headed back to look at other dresses with my aunts and Mary while Selena plopped down beside me on the dark red sofa.
"Are you sure that you're alright." She asked, clearly asking if I was truly okay with what the lady had said to me and acted like when she saw my face. I looked down and shrugged letting out a small sigh, barely audible. Still, Selena caught it and watched with worried eyes. I shrugged a little. "I'm okay I guess. I just think that I should get used to it or be used to it by now and yet here I am letting her get to me, I feel like such a baby."
"You're not a baby Lucy." Selena told me seriously. "In fact you are one of the strongest people I know and I meant what I said back then. You are beautiful Luce, scars or no scars you are and will always be beautiful inside and out and you are bound to end up with a great guy someday who will look past what's on the outside and see what's on the inside. He'll see your amazing heart and soul. The one that makes me proud to be your cousin."
I felt the tears come again, but I knew that I shouldn't have been surprised. It had never been hard to make me cry, I didn't like to be able to cry because of a lot of little things little things but it still happened. Wiping my eyes I thought of how amazing Selena was and had always been to me. Going to school, especially high school, with everybody knowing about my parents death and seeing the scars that marred my features, making everybody stay away from me had been hard, but Selena had always been there for me.
Even though Selena could have been Miss. Popular she chose not to be friends with anybody who wouldn't except me and stuck with me through it all, just the two of us, plus my other cousins had always been there to, but always Selena, no matter what and now we would graduate, making both of us afraid as to whether or not the unseperatable duo would go to the same college or if our roads would seperate, though we could never really seperate forever, we were family.
But even if we were family I still didn't fully believe Selena that there would be a guy willing to look past the ugliness of her face and at the person I really was on the inside. It was just so unlikely.
"You're not my cousin, you're my sister Sal, and you have a heart of gold to. I know you don't always think so but you are one of the people that I love the most in the world and have been there for me through everything. I know that you'll get an amazing guy to, but I also know that you'll probably break a few hearts and have a ton of fun before that really happens."
"God, don't make me cry Luce." Selena told me and I did see that her eyes were starting to water just a little bit, something that didn't happen very often with Selena.I spoke up again then telling her what I was thinking about before. "But Sal, before you start any hopes of me finding a nice guy I don't know if it'll happen any time soon. " Even if I wanted it too I added in my head.
"Fine, so I guess you, me and Aunt Carmen are gonna be in the singles club for quite a while. We would have so much fun if you wouldn't be going to La Push this summer. The three of us would go to clubs, get down and dirty dancing, have everyone stare at us, making the guys drool, wait on us hand and foot" She gasped dramatically, fanning herself like she was hot."cada chicas sueñan, I'm getting excited just thinking about it."
We both let out a fit of giggles before I managed to choke out. "Okay first of all we're only eighteen, not twenty-one so no clubs, second of all-" my voice cut off from all my laughter. "-seriously!."
"Please Lucy, you and I both know that Aunt Carmen would take care of the fake I.D.'s and we would have so much fun." I shook my head but I knew that she was right, we would have fun and Aunt Carmen really would get us fake I.D's. She had told us herself that when she was eighteen she got one made so we should have one to.
Yup, that was what our Aunt Carmen was like. Going to buy her nieces fake I.D.'s and most likely help us plan, then throw, huge parties. She was definitely the cool Aunt, the one that was likely to party along with us instead of yell at us for throwing a party in the first place, that's one of the reasons that me, my cousins, and my sister loved her so much, it was almost impossible not to love her.
"I would like to stay Sal, but when my grandma called after all these years of not talking I just knew I had to go, I want to figure out why she hasn't spoken to us in all these years." Selena sighed, but I knew that she understood that I had to go. One of my grandma's, from my dad's side who lived alone in La Push, who had been in my life growing up had cut all contact with us after my dad's death.
We hadn't heard from her or seen her in years, even when we tried to contact her ourselves, but finally, a few months ago she had called and asked me to go to La Push and stay with her for the summer. I was wary but I wouldn't say no. I couldn't say no, I wanted to know why she hadn't even so much as thought to talk to us all these years.
"Maybe you'll get a hot boyfriend and do the whole summer romance thing huh." Selena said after a few moments of silence. She looked at me like she really believed it would happen, even though I was almost a hundred percent positive that it wouldn't. "I don't really think so Selena, besides even if it did I wouldn't want to go through the whole saying goodbye thing, filled with tears and heartbreak, ninguna manera, but like I said, I don' think it'll happen in a reservation filled with less people living there than there are in our whole school."
Plus, I was the last person likely to have a summer romance. No boy that I had met had ever thought about dating me. The shy, orphaned girl with scars. The one who tried to hide away from most people, the one with the once painfully plain but now ugly face. I had never had a boyfriend in my life.
I might have had a chance at a boyfriend if I was just a little more outgoing like the rest of my family, or maybe if I didn't have the past that everybody knew about, maybe if I didn't have my scars. Because I knew that I wasn't ugly without them, just plain, usually blending in to the crowd going unnoticed just like I liked it, but with the scars, I stood out like a sore thumb.
"Well, we'll visit for sure, it's not that far, especially if Aunt Carmen drives." We both chuckled a little at the last part. Aunt Carmen drove like a mad woman. It was at that moment when we heard a gasp from a little ways away. Both me and Selena looked up, and my eyes widened right away when I saw the dress that my sister was wearing.
It wasn't anything to fancy, yet it wasn't a very simple dress either. I had no words that would do it any justice. It was floor-length, the skirt ruffled just a bit, trailing behind my sister just slightly as she were small, crystal-like beads around the waistline, under the bust, with neckline that dipped slightly in the front, barely showing my sisters cleavege. The small straps were also covered in beads.
It was perfect.
"It's amazing dear." Mary said smiling, while Aunt Rosa nodded enthusiastically, completely agreeing with her. "es hermoso, sus padres estarían orgullosos." Aunt Carmen breathed out, her face in awe. Selena smiled wickedly. "Eli's gonna drop dead when he see's you in that, damn, it makes you look kinda sexy too."
I met my sisters eyes in the mirror and smiled showing her on my face without having to say anything that it was the dress for her. Her eyes filled with tears. "This is the dress." She said.
When Alicia changed out of the wedding dress and into her regular clothes she somehow managed to pick out the bridesmaid dresses in less that five minutes.
"And she couldn't have picked out her wedding dress that fast." Selena mumbled to herself.
Me and Selena were going to be Alicia's only bridesmaids so it was easy enough to find the the dresses Alicia had picked out in mine and Selena's size.
They were simple dresses to, airy and light, made of a soft material that was the colour of the sky, they were floor length and flowed around me as as I walked to look in the mirror. The only thing that made me slightly uncomfortable was how low the necklines were, making the scars on my collarbone and neck show completely. I wouldn't say anything though. These were the dresses Alicia wanted and I would not complain, they were lovely.
I looked at myself in the mirror and sighed. I had the natural latina curves than ran in my family, along with the slightly darker mexican skin tone. I was also considerablly short, standing at five foot three, but I had grown used to my shortness by now. My hazel eyes, the exact same as my mothers were, looked almost like a brown, but somehow not as brown as my sister were.
My lashes were long and think, something else that I had inherited from my mother, something that I love, the same as my lips, which were full but slightly scarred, then I had the thing that I loved most about how I looked, my hair. It was long and brown, so dark that it could almost be considered black. It flowed down my back to my waist in waves and I usually left it down so it would cover my face.
It turned when I heard the bell signaling that the front door was opening ring and saw Eli come in through the front door, looking around, obviously for us. he finally spotted us and started making his way over before the sales lady who had first greeted us when we came through the door stopped him. I saw her bat her eyelashes and pucker her lips at him, twirling her hair around her finger, making my mouth fall open. She was flirting with him.
Looking to my left I saw that Aunt Carmen and Selena were laughing, but when I saw my sisters face it was obvious that she was pissed, I admired at how good she did at hiding it though. I wouldn't say that I was surprised that my sister could control her anger though, woman of all ages flirted with Eli all the time, and though Eli tried not to encourage them without being to rude, all while looking apoligetically at my sister the flirting was unavoidable, especailly due to Eli's looks.
He was attractive, that wasn't a secret, standing at almost six feet tall with shaggy light brown hair that usually fell messily into his smokey gray eyes that I knew my sister loved. The same eyes that made many woman swoon when turned on them, though I had never seen Eli look at another woman the way he does with my sister.
Eli said a few words to the sales woman and strode towards us, well, towards my sister to be specific, and took her in his arms, giving her a long and lingering kiss. I felt only a small bit of satisfaction as the sales woman watched with her mouth hanging open. "You know you're lucky that you didn't come in when Alicia was wearing her wedding dress cause if you would have I would have killed you myself for ruining the effect of seeing her walk down the isle." Selena drawled out slowly.
Eli laughed. "You look nice." He told her, cleary trying to change the subject of what she really would have done if he had seen Alicia in her dress before the actual wedding. Selena grinned at him.
"Kiss ass."
sorry if the spanish isn't perfect. I tried my best looking up translations online. Anyway here is what the phrases are supposed to mean:
(Selena) - cada chicas sueñan, - Every girls dream
(Aunt Carmen) -es, hermoso sus padres estarían orgullosos - you're/it's beautiful, your parents would be proud.
(Lucy) - ninguna manera - no way
Please Review, I love to hear what everyone thinks and I take in whatever constructive critism you might have.
Wolflover101canadian
