The Wedding

BPV

I stood in the mirror and examined my wedding dress. It was beautiful by any standard, a startling shade of white with tiny silver beads in fascinating patterns that I couldn't fully make sense of. It was strapless and lower in the back than I'd hoped. I should have known better than to let anyone else pick the dress. It was closely cut.

"I can see everything," Maria commented.

"I know," I replied, "The only thing that makes me think Charles can get the garter out is the fact that the bottom half of this tube is mostly lace."

"I didn't figure you for the veil type," she brought over my fake bouquet.

"The rest of the world doesn't know that," I took the flowers and looked back at the mirror. "How long?" I asked.

"About ten minutes," she glanced quickly at the watch and then shook her head.

"Ask," I sighed. The people who think I'm inquisitive have not met Maria.

"Where are your friends?" she asked. I didn't respond. What exactly could I say? She didn't really want to know where they were, probably just wanted to be sure I didn't have any. I turned to look at her when she didn't continue. "Your maid of honour and only bridesmaid is an actual maid."

"You're not a maid. You don't cook-"

"I serve."

"You lay the table once a day and you have help," I corrected, "You don't clean." I moved on to my next point.

"Picking up the clothes you throw all over the closet that's the size of my apartment should qualify as cleaning," she said.

"You don't even do the groceries," I rolled my eyes. "I do that myself."

"So you're essentially paying me to be your friend," she surmised.

Well not exactly. "Are you claiming to be my friend?" I asked. She laughed and shook her head.

"You have a big ass," she tilted her head to the side. I waited for the rest of the sarcasm. "For a skinny white girl." She slid into a more comfortable topic. "That dress is really tight."

"You don't need to tell me that," I pointed out, "I can barely breathe."

"And yet you have not wiped the smile off your face all day," she mumbled.

"It's supposed to be the happiest day of my life," I replied facing the mirror again.

"It's also supposed to be fake," she pointed out.

"Are you going to make me regret telling you that?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered frankly, "Because if you didn't then I wouldn't know that the key word in that sentence is supposed."

"Excuse me," I said to my image in the mirror.

"You never spend more than thirty seconds in front of the mirror yet you stood there all morning and looked at yourself in a wedding dress with a smile on your face the entire time," she observed. I wasn't ready to respond so she carried on. "He's the only person you don't look at out of the corner of your eye."

"He is not," I replied.

"Under sixteens don't count," she said as soon as I'd finished my sentence. "You're different when he's in the room," she shrugged.

"I think I'm the first woman to be contradicted when she claimed she wasn't marrying for love," I thought out loud.

"I never said anything about love," she leaned against the wall looking smug.

"Then what the fuck were you talking about?" I asked. Making an assumption like that and being wrong irritated me and made me sound defensive. Not the best way to get myself to be believed.

"You have faith in him," she said after a moment of concentration.

"Faith?" it wasn't something I was sure I even understood.

"You trust me, to a certain extent," she said as if this was meant to explain everything.

"There's a difference?" I sat in the chair and faced her.

"The rest of us have to earn it and I'm sure the process will ever really be complete," she explained.

"He earned it," I assured her. She waited for me to continue. "I met him two years ago. I was in more trouble than you could possibly imagine and he helped me in a way I'm sure no one else would. He didn't expect anything in return. I disappeared for almost two years after that. When I came back he welcomed me back without so much as a demand for an explanation. He's the best man I know."

She walked over and dabbed the corner of my eye. "And you said you didn't need waterproof mascara," she smiled.

"I've never said that out loud before," I explained, "It's a little overwhelming."

"And you didn't even mention the part where he's living like a monk," she laughed.

"He's not," I said as I caught the last tear.

"What makes you so sure?" she looked sceptical.

"The least you could do is google him. Charles is a wonderful man but he's a man nonetheless. And more importantly he's… Charles," I raised my hands. She looked at me blankly. "Besides the fact that he already has a mistress, the man get's more head than most brands of shampoo."

A gasp came from the door, "We're coming," I waved him off. We got our flowers and headed for the chapel entrance.

"I don't think you're right," she whispered.

"You should check out his mistress. Tall blond in the little red number," I whispered back. "I'm not the one who invited her," I said when her eyes widened. They narrowed rather fast. "When I said Charles was a wonderful man I didn't mean he wasn't a bastard." I directed her with my head and she walked down the isle. Wagner's march started after I'd been waiting for what felt like ages and I made my way down a very long isle. I estimated that there were four hundred guests.

Charles was in a suit that was somewhere in the spectrum between grey and silver with just the right amount of gloss. Women would fall all over themselves for him in a boiling suit. Getting married in that suit made it that much more unfair. His black hair carelessly styled. His bronze complexion was even. Looking at him made me forget that I was walking down the isle by myself. We joined hands and we repeated after the minister. We didn't make a fanfare of the wedding but the words seemed fitting. Then he kissed me. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me slowly till I was so lost in him that I didn't know we weren't one person.

The silence after the applause brought me back to the reality. We looked at each other for a second before we turned to face the people. In that second something told me that he'd been where I had been. Then another told me that wasn't a place I'd ever planned on going back to, especially not now.

The reception felt like a lie after all that. The best man's made-up funny story, the half truth about how we met suddenly seemed like a whole lie. Throwing a bouquet to a bunch of strangers didn't help. We didn't even look at each other as we danced. The strategically naïve words of our children made it the reception more real. They easily passed for ten but thirteen wasn't pushing it that much. They remained with Aaron most of the time. For a straight man of forty years he expressed very little interest in women.

The removal of garter made me tingle all over. If I didn't know better I'd think he was doing it on purpose. He slowly slid his hands up my thigh, past the very thing he was supposed to remove then curled his index fingers deliberately until he caught it. I closed my eyes and concentrated on not shivering as his hands made their way down my leg. He kept his other fingers straight but his grip on my thigh tightened as it descended. I shuddered involuntarily. I couldn't meet his eyes when he looked up at me. He worked faster and got it off without further incident.

"What happened?" Maria asked when I was finally able to dodge my guests.

"I honestly have no idea," I answered without thinking. She smiled smugly. I didn't ask.

"You know you can't avoid it, right?" she said when she realised I would say nothing further. "Don't look at me like you don't know what I'm talking about. There's something there and it won't go away no matter how much you refuse to make eye contact with each other."

I sighed and went to find Charles. This elephant would move into the house if we weren't careful.

CPV

"What was that?" Aaron ambushed me. He was impossible to avoid.

"I got a little caught up," I answered.

"You think?" he raised one brow, along with his voice. "Get rid of that," he pointed subtly below my waistline.

"What?" I asked more out of surprise than anything else.

"You never put your hands in your pockets, especially not in a tux," he replied. I was being a little obvious and having anyone else notice would be awkward to say the least. I wandered aimlessly until I found myself alone in some room.

"How old is she? Twelve?" Kindle asked me from the door.

"Twenty four," I answered without getting up or turning around.

"Are you sure?" she closed the door, "She looked like she felt violated when you felt her up." She walked over. I couldn't deny either. I'd essentially felt her up and she did look a little uncomfortable.

"Are you being a bitch because we haven't spoken in two months or because I had my hand up her thigh?" I asked, again without looking at her. She came around and stood in front of me. The dress was short and the heels were high.

"Not communicating with me for that long because you had a new toy was childish," she dropped her purse, "I've seen you feel up more women than any one man should get to in a lifetime, let alone thirty six years but you know that. Right now I just have an itch to scratch," she hiked up her dress and pulled down a black lace thong. Where would I be without Kindle? Wait, I know the answer to that. Isolated from my own wedding by a persistent erection and creeping out my wife. I pulled my pants down and she straddled me.

BPV

I opened the door and froze. Maria and I were making mountains out of molehills. Charles was fucking his now official mistress in most of the suit he'd worn to our wedding five minutes ago. I closed the door before I remembered that I wasn't a mouse anymore. I opened it again and slammed it behind me. I watched them fumble around with their clothes. It wasn't much of a show. Not much had been taken off.

"Isabella," Charles started.

"Shut up," I stopped him, "You can fuck her whenever you like but when you choose to do it at our reception and leave me four hundred people I do not know, I take it personally. Don't apologise," I said when he opened his mouth, "It'll just piss me off. Let's go," I said as turned the knob, "I can't exactly leave without you." They shared a look I couldn't decipher. "Kindle," I addressed her, "If it's my party, you go through me. I will not be fucked with." She looked at me like I was a child who had just reprimanded an adult. Understandable.

"Isabella," he grabbed my arm when we were out of the room. "I didn't mean for you to-"

"I'm not hurt or angry. I'm not even surprised but I'll need you to keep it in your pants when we're out in public, especially when the kids are in the building," I said before pulling my arm out of his hand, "I think Aaron should take the kids home. They don't need to see this." I opened my hand and he handed me his phone. I sent a vague text to Aaron and we went to get rice thrown at us.

"It won't happen again," he said in the car. I didn't contradict him. It would be useless because he didn't know he was lying. Charles didn't get his reputation from nowhere. I just had to remember that from now on.