5. Bridezilla

Andrew was sitting at the bar in Flux having a few drinks. OK, that was a lie. He was hiding out from his darling fiance Samantha in Flux and getting hammered. Something had happened to his beautiful, wonderful girlfriend in the weeks since he'd popped the question. Something scary. She'd gone from being the sweet-natured girl he'd fallen utterly in love with three years ago to a crazed harridan. Andrew had heard of such things but rather foolishly, it had turned out, believed that such things happened to other people, not him.

Samantha had become Bridezilla - she had become obsessed with personally planning out the wedding down to the smallest detail. And God help anybody who screwed up. Before fleeing to Flux, Andrew had spent a full twenty minutes trying to convince the shaken caterer not to quit. Apparently the caterer had done something to upset Sammi - something about putting fruit in the wedding cake, God forbid - and she'd ripped him up one way and down the other. In full view of the poor guy's staff. It had taken all of Andrew's not inconsiderable persuasive skills to convince the caterer to put down the filleting knife and not commit hari-kari all over the floor.

And the florist? Samantha had specifically requested a certain, extremely rare and expensive species of flower that grew for only two months of the year in a remote world smack in the middle of the Attican Traverse. The florist had pointed out, quite diplomatically, Andrew had thought, the difficulties in procuring the flowers given the current...difficulties facing the Systems Alliance in that sector of space. Samantha had not been amused. The tirade of abuse that spilled from her mouth would have shocked a career navy man. Andrew was mortified, horrified and petrified - all at the same time. Some of the things she'd said he suspected she'd made up on the spot.

After enduring two minutes of the rantings of such a deranged woman - which was one minute fifty seconds longer than he should have, the florist removed an extremely nasty looking shotgun from beneath the counter, racked the slide and threatened to gun them both down if they didn't get out of his store right now. Andrew hadn't known who to be more afraid of - his fiance or the man with riot gun.

In the end, he'd dragged a still-cursing Samantha out the door, the florist covering them with the shotgun until they were out of sight. Now, a somewhat shaken Andrew sat belly up to the bar in Flux, sipping at his drink after slamming back the first two. Melody, the bartender unfortunate enough to be on duty at the time, eyed the harried-looking young man warily. Her shift was due to finish in just under an hour and she wanted him out of here before then. Melody really didn't want to be around when Samantha made her inevitable appearance and started tearing strips off the guy. You gotta wonder why he put up with her, Melody thought to herself. It had to be the sex. No man with any self respect would put up with that if he wasn't being taken to heaven and back every night.

She supposed that Andrew hoped Samantha would settle down once they were actually married but still.

"You know, you should really stand up for yourself," Melody said, breaking the morose silence that Andrew cloaked himself with.

Andrew's bloodshot eyes, surrounded by bruised-looking flesh snapped up to look at her. "Are you nuts? The mood she's been in lately, she'd likely butcher me."
"And yet, here you are, wanting to marry the girl," Melody said and wiped down the bar top.

"She wasn't always like this, you know," Andrew said into his reflection in the polished surface of the bar.

"Actually I do," Melody conceded. "This is why I don't believe in marriage. Marriage changes the dynamics of a relationship. You poor bastards are proof of that much." Melody smiled to herself. Dynamics, that was good.

"You don't know her like I do," Andrew tried to defend his fiance.

"And I thank God every night that I don't, believe me." Melody said and moved to serve another patron. Was that Commander Shepard and her crew over there? Nah, couldn't be. Melody was tossing up whether or not she should go over and say hi when the comm unit on the backbar bleeped. She turned and saw Samantha's small image glaring out from the screen, murder in her green eyes.

"Flux, how can I help?" Melody answered, deliberately moving to block the lens of the holocamera.

"Is my darling Andrew there, by chance?" Samantha's British accent, a holdover from her upbringing on Earth only ever resurfaced when she was excited or really pissed off about something. The accent surfaced now. Melody looked over her shoulder at Andrew who was frantically mouthing NO! at her. She smirked and turned back to the holocamera.

"Why yes!" Another glance revealed Andrew's head in his hands. He might even have been crying softly, the poor bastard. "I'll send him right home, shall I?"
"Please do," Samantha said icily then clicked off.

"What did you do that for?" Andrew demanded.

"Look, sweetie," Melody said and leaned over the bar to look Andrew right in the eyes. "This is not the best way to begin your marriage. If she's treating you like this now, imagine what she'll be like in ten years. Or twenty. Or.."
"I know! But you don't know how it is with her. She's...fragile right now," Andrew said.

"Fragile, right," Melody rolled her eyes. "Why do you keep defending her? She's grinding you into the ground and terrorising everybody in the wedding industry to boot. She shoulda joined the Marines. That killer instinct of hers, she'd have made a great hunter-killer agent." Andrew pushed himself away from the bar and turned to leave. "You're right," he said, his voice taking on a new kind of confidence that hadn't been there in weeks. "I have to go to her and sort things out."

"And I'll be right here, dispensing drinks!" Melody said sunnily.