by Sam Mariano
I shake my head. “No, Bri, that’s not what this is. He doesn’t really want to marry me. He’s only marrying me because I’m pregnant, and that’s not—I can’t—that’s not a good enough reason. I trapped him. He didn’t want this, he didn’t want to be with me. I made him.”
With a sympathetic smile, Bri reaches forward and squeezes my shoulder. “Honey, nobody makes Brant do anything. He wants to marry you.”
Miserably, I sink back into the chair I was sitting in a moment ago. “He doesn’t. He doesn’t even like me anymore, but I can’t explain why. I’m sorry, Bri, I just can’t talk to you about this.”
I feel her eyes on me for several quiet moments, then she says, “All right. I’ll get someone you can talk to about anything.”
I feel so awful, I can’t even look at her. I want to bury my face in my hands and hide from the world, but they spent so much time making my makeup perfect that I don’t.
Feeling wretched and small, like an errant child sitting outside the principal’s office, I murmur quietly, “Thank you.”
26
Brant
Standing up here in front of all these people, beneath the natural green canopy of trees and the decidedly less natural wooden arch swathed with some kind of soft pink material is just about the last thing in the world I wanna be doing.
The guests are all in their seats, talking amongst themselves, snapping pictures, clearing their throats. I don’t even know where all these people came from, to be honest. Bri helped Alyssa with most of the planning and I just paid the bills, but I know Alyssa told me it would just be family and a smattering of friends.
I don’t have many friends, and she doesn’t either, yet all these folding chairs are full of people.
My neck is tense, as are all the muscles in my upper body. It doesn’t help that standing right behind me is the last fucking man on the planet I want at my back—goddamn Theo.
It’s my fault, I guess. I’m too antisocial. Alyssa had her sister and both of mine to stand up with her. I had Greg, the manager at the local hardware store.
He’s a real nice guy, but I guess he’s not technically my friend. He seemed shocked as hell when I stopped in and asked him to be an attendant at my wedding, but then I showed him a picture of Alyssa’s sister and explained it wouldn’t be right to make her walk down the aisle all alone since she’s single. Just like that, I had a groomsman.
The other two are just the bozos my sisters had kids with, and that means Theo is one of the assholes in tuxes standing here behind me today.
At least I only have to get married once. Aside from pallbearers at my funeral, I can’t think of another occasion where I’ll be forced to produce friends.
It’s boring as hell standing here like this, waiting for the women. I don’t want to make uncomfortable eye contact with anyone, so I look around at all the decorations Alyssa set up.
She did a nice job. This section of the yard is sprinkled with rose petals and there’s an aisle runner down the center of the seating area where Alyssa and her half of the bridal party will walk.
It’s simple, but nice. I like it. I’ll have to remember to tell her that later.
I think the procession is finally about to start when I see Bri walking toward me in her wine-colored bridesmaid dress with her hair done up all fancy…though I’m a little confused as to why she’s coming around the side of the barn instead of through it like they did at rehearsal last night. I frown, because she doesn’t stop behind the guests; she veers around them and comes straight at me.
A frown transforms my face, my gut telling me something’s wrong.
“What is it?” I ask before she even makes it to me. “Is Alyssa okay?”
She stops in front of me, heaving a sigh from hustling all that way. “Physically, yes.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
She sighs again, this time less from physical exertion and more from utter exasperation. Her gaze bounces around for a few seconds, then she looks me dead in the eye and asks, “Do you love her?”
I’m so stunned she’d ask that, I just stare at her. “What the hell is this, Bri?”
“Just answer the question. No bullshit. Do you really love her, or are you marrying her out of some sense of obligation?”
My eyes widen, half from disbelief, half from aggravation. “Are you fucking with me right now? This is my wedding day. Are you seriously still trying to save her from me?”
“No, it’s not…” Bri trails off, frowning as Theo inexplicably steps forward.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“This is none of your business,” Bri snaps at him.
I can’t quite contain my surprise, and neither can Theo. The first bit of fun I’ve had today is looking over and seeing him gaping like a fish.
Growling, Bri grabs me by the arm and hauls me off to the side, away from nosy eavesdroppers. Once we’re a little more alone, she moves in front of me and looks up at me again. Her eyes are imploring, like she’s begging me to cut the shit and just be straight with her.
Heaving a sigh of my own, I look around at all the people staring at us then bring my gaze back to Bri. “Yes, I love her.”
“For real?” she demands, lifting her eyebrows severely like she’ll kick me in the shin if I’m lying.
Her ire draws a little smile out of me. “Yes, for real.”
As if she doesn’t believe me, she plants a hand on her hip and narrows her eyes. “What do you love about her?”
“I love everything about her,” I say easily. “She’s a weirdo, but I like it. She’s funny and sweet and loyal as hell. For some reason, she loves me no matter what I’ve done, and I guess I love her the same way.” Shrugging, feeling a bit bashful about saying all this, I tell her, “I don’t know. She makes me happy… happier than I’ve ever been. I just like having her around.”
Some of the weight seems to come off Bri’s shoulders and she relaxes a little. “Okay. Well, you need to go talk to her. I don’t know what you’ve done, but she thinks you don’t want to marry her anymore. You better set her straight, or there’s not a shot in hell she’s walking down this aisle.”
My mood whips around real fast, a scowl transforming my face. “What?”
Pointing at the house, she says, “She’s in your room. Go.”
“Goddammit,” I mutter, looking up at the house for a split second before I take off in that direction.
“Don’t make her cry,” Bri calls after me. “She’ll ruin her makeup!”
The whole way up to the house, my mind races with indignation. How can that crazy little shit think I don’t want to marry her? I’m risking the most important relationship in my life to be with her—that’s not something I’d do half-cocked.
Of course, I know why she thinks that. By the time I get to the front door, all I can see in my mind’s eye is how disheveled she looked in the barn that day when I caught her locked inside with Theo. I can see the helpless guilt on her face, the flush in her cheeks, the regret she already felt, and the moment had only just ended.
I do believe she loves me. I even believe she wants to be faithful to me. I just don’t know if she’s strong enough.
I hate thinking that. It makes me feel like a real bastard. Theo got his hooks into her before I did, though, and if she couldn’t stand up for herself, there’s little sense in expecting she’d suddenly have the strength to stand up for us.
Goddamn Theo. I want to put him through a fucking wall, I swear to God.
As I’m stalking up the stairs, frustrated as hell that Alyssa’s doubting me, I recognize the unfairness of it. I’ve been punishing her every single day since I pulled in the driveway and saw Theo’s car parked here. I should probably be more surprised it took her this long to have those doubts.
She’s been asking me for reassurance, too. Not with words, but she’s been begging all the same, and I’ve withheld it. Too many memories of the girl who played games with my heart floating around to be me
rciful toward the one who doesn’t.
By the time I make it to our closed bedroom door, I’m not angry anymore.
I ease it open without knocking. Alyssa is sitting on her side of the bed with her back to me—damn, her back looks sexy in that dress. I get distracted momentarily, but then she turns her head to see who’s coming in and her eyes widen in horror when she sees it’s me.
“What are you doing?” she demands, jumping up off the bed. In an absurd and poorly thought-out attempt to hide herself from view, she grabs her veil and tries to hide her dress behind it.
Her sheer veil.
I crack a smile. I want to grab her and kiss her right now, but I settle for closing the bedroom door and moving closer. Once I get in front of her and she’s backed up against the wall, I reach out and take the veil from her.
Huffing at me, she complains, “You’re not supposed to see me in my dress before the wedding.”
I put her veil down on our bed. “According to my sister, you’re leaning toward there not being a wedding at all.”
Alyssa sighs, not meeting my gaze. She doesn’t say anything right away either, just moves the long train behind her so she can sit down on the window seat. Finally, she says softly, “I don’t think we should get married.”
“Why?” I ask with an impressive measure of patience considering how much I hate hearing her say that.
She doesn’t say a word, just sits there looking beautiful and refusing to answer me.
After a moment, I push her a little more. “You don’t love me anymore?”
That gets her attention. She looks up at me like my question offends her. “Of course I still love you.”
“Then why wouldn’t we get married?”
“Because you don’t love me!”
I’m surprised by the force of her words, but she doesn’t even give me a chance to respond before she continues.
“And you never claimed to, so I understand that I’m the one… backing out of this or whatever, but I can’t do this to you. I can see that you don’t want to marry me anymore, Brant. I can see it plain as day, but you still will because you’re crazy.” She shakes her head. Then, with considerably less heat, she adds, “Because you’re—because you’re crazy and honorable, and I’m some pregnant stray you opened your doors to, so you’ll still marry me, but you won’t love me. You’ll never love me, because I made a stupid mistake once, and now you don’t think I’m worth trusting.”
“That’s not true, Alyssa.”
Her eyes widen crazily. “It is true! And you never really wanted to marry me—not when you were sober, anyway. The only reason we’re standing here right now is because I was awful, and I told Bri I was pregnant knowing what it would mean for you. I trapped you, and I knew it would trap you, and it was so awful, but you were being so mean to me, and you made me feel so wretched, and I just—” She throws her hands out wildly then drops them and shakes her head. “But you’re still mean when you want to be, and I love you now, so it’s so much worse. Before you offended me and hurt my feelings, but now you reach right into my chest, yank my heart out, and squeeze it to death in the palm of your hand.” Looking up at me sadly, like she’s at the end of her rope, she says, “I get it, Brant. I do. I’ve made mistakes, really bad ones, and I understand why you can’t let your guard down with me. I know you can’t love someone you can’t trust. I wish I knew how to make you trust me. I wish you could look inside my heart and see that I would never hurt you that way, that I would never hurt you at all. But you can’t do that, and I can’t change the past, and… I don’t know what kind of life we can have together when I love you and you don’t care.”
Sighing, I push her dress aside and sit down beside her on the window seat. “I do care, Alyssa. I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel that I don’t.”
Sliding me a sad look of disbelief, she says, “Brant, come on.”
Pulling back the sleeve of my tux, I check my watch and see that the ceremony should have started about ten minutes ago. Seeing as Alyssa just unloaded at least an hour’s worth of insecurities at my feet, I consider the need to hurry this along.
Looking over at her, I suggest, “How about we pause this conversation, I tell you you’re gonna marry me today whether you like it or not, and I haul you down the aisle myself?”
Alyssa cracks a reluctant smile. “You’re going to walk me down the aisle and marry me?”
“Hey, it seems more appropriate to me than letting your mom give you away,” I point out. “We are getting married today, and we have an awful lot of guests sitting out there waiting for us right now.”
Her smile fades, and that tells me she doesn’t just have a case of the jitters; she’s serious about not marrying me. “I can’t, Brant. I’m so sorry to have caused all this and then be the one to back out, but I just… I can’t.”
Reaching over and resting my hand on her thigh, I tell her, “I understand why you think I don’t want to marry you right now—I’ve been a real bastard lately. I don’t understand why you’d say I never wanted to, though.”
Laying her hand over mine, she looks at me with sad eyes. “Because I forced you into this. You didn’t want to marry me, you didn’t even want to date me until I blurted out that I was pregnant in front of your sister. You didn’t want it, Brant, I… I forced you.”
“And I forced you to fuck me the night we met,” I offer back, rather casually. “Sometimes we have to push each other a little to get things going. It all worked out.”
“Uh…” Her eyes are wide, her jaw a little slack, and she shakes her head. “Okay, so, we’re gonna talk about that, huh? Cool.” Shaking her head again as if to clear away my distracting points, she says, “Anyway, it’s not the same.”
“It’s not that different. It also doesn’t matter how it happened. I did want to be with you, Alyssa, I just couldn’t bring myself to…”
“Be with your brother-in-law’s slut-whore babysitter mistress without being blackmailed into it?” she suggests.
I roll my eyes at her. “Hey, don’t talk about my wife that way.”
Alyssa sighs, looking down at her empty ring finger. “I’m not your wife.”
“You will be in about ten minutes.”
Shaking her head, she says, “You deserve a pristine wife, an angel on earth who would punch Theo in the dick if he ever even looked at her funny.”
“We might have different ideas about how angels behave,” I suggest, cocking my head in thought.
“You know what I mean,” she mutters morosely.
Moving my hand from her thigh, I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her against me. “Alyssa, you are the only woman in the world I would ever want to marry. I don’t need you to be perfect. God knows I’m not, and why would I want you to be? I love your weird little quirks and everything that makes you who you are. I love past Alyssa, future Alyssa, and current Alyssa—even though she’s presently trying to get out of marrying me. I love you, Alyssa, and I always will.”
“Don’t just say that, Brant. Those words mean something.”
“I am well aware of that,” I assure her, pulling back so she can meet my gaze. “And I mean them. I never stopped wanting to marry you. I was mad at you, that’s all. I was a jerk. I’m sorry. I’m used to being alone, so when certain buttons are pressed and I get in certain moods, I sink into myself. Now that I’m not alone anymore, I will try to do better.”
“I just want you to love me back,” she says miserably, like she hasn’t heard a word I’ve said. “I could deal with your moods if I knew you loved me and you were just working through something, but it hasn’t felt that way. I’m so crazy about you and I think you’re so wonderful, and I just want you to think I’m wonderful, too.”
Turning in the seat so I’m facing her, I tell her firmly, “Alyssa, I do think you’re wonderful. What happened before you met me—that doesn’t make you any less wonderful in my eyes. So you fucked up. Who hasn’t? That’s not what went wrong. That’s not… t
hat’s not why I’ve been such an asshole.”
“Then why?” she asks, like she truly wants to understand.
I sigh, trying to wrestle my thoughts into words that won’t offend her. “I don’t need you to be perfect, Alyssa, but I do need you to be honest with me. I told you that before. You can’t lie to me and expect me to be able to trust you.” I pause, and she looks down. “But I understand now that I’ve put an unreasonable amount of pressure on you. I tell you to be honest with me, but I also tell you that if you’re with me you can’t make certain mistakes, and maybe that’s hard for you. Just because it wouldn’t be hard for me doesn’t mean it’s not for you, I guess. We’re different people with different strengths, and maybe I…” I trail off, looking down at the window seat as I try to round up my wandering thoughts.
One of my coasters is sitting there, blue and pink resin with a little splash of purple where the colors mixed.
This is from the set I made for Amber. I pick it up, absently running one thumb across the harder, textured corner where the wood is. I drag my other thumb across the perfectly smooth strip of resin on the other side. The resin is always smoother and nicer to the touch, measured out and poured specifically to fit between the broken cuts of wood.
Every single piece of wood I use to make these is imperfect. Without the soft, pleasant-looking resin flowing through all the empty places, these coasters would be an ugly mess of useless, unwanted pieces.
Alyssa is the resin, smooth and colorful and pretty, and I’m the cracked old wood, knotted and split and ugly as hell without the beauty she brings to the table.
“What are you looking at?” Alyssa asks.
I glance up at her then tilt the coaster in her direction to show her where my gaze was fixed. “See that?” I ask, pointing to a crack in the wood. It’s the kind of thing you can try to cut around, but you can’t fix. If you want to use a certain cut of wood, you’ve gotta take it flaws and all.