Meant For You

by Tomas, G. L.

  I had seconds to contemplate that I was about to walk through those church doors and inform all our friends and family that the wedding was still going to happen, but it just wouldn’t be until a later date. Having spent tens of thousands on securing the venue for the reception and church Anna wanted, employing the best wedding planner in Finland, making arrangements for an exotic honeymoon, top tier catering, and designer wedding gown, I knew postponing this event would hardly go over smoothly without pushback, but what could I do?

  I didn’t even care about mercy at this point. I just wanted to marry someone I loved. It mattered not whether it was a lavish wedding or one that only required a Justice of the Peace. I was only interested in the starting my life over with my wife, or rather, my soon-to-be-wife.

  By law, I was still married to my first love, Benny. She’d held all my dreams, all my fears, and helped me face some emotional drawbacks that I can’t believe I hadn’t reached out to her, even as just a friend. I shouldn’t even be thinking about her in the manner I am, and surely not on the day I was meant to marry someone else, but as I made my way through the chapel doors, I was riddled by memories of what once was.Lavish flower arrangements were countered by the simplistic beauty of a single flower in Benny’s hair and a modest bouquet of flowers she held to feel like a real bride. Neither of us had come from wealth, so the only option we’d had was to wed in our fanciest clothes, a far cry from the dream wedding most women fantasized about as young girls.

  I’d never spoken the words out loud, but I promised myself that if I had ever gotten the chance, I would have renewed my vows to Benny, reimagined as the wedding she’d always wanted. Or at the very least, the one she’d been too modest to admit to wanting.

  We’d never gotten that far, so the most we had left of those times were memories. I’m sure that deep down it was why I never questioned the expense of what I’d meant to give Anna. I was about to give her the worst memory of her life, and worst of all, it would be tied to her big day. I mean, our big day.

  I sent a text to my parents asking if they would meet me near the bathroom of the lower level, so I could at least provide a proper explanation, a privilege I wouldn’t have with Anna. I don’t think it surprised me to learn they weren’t upset. If anything, they understood my fears, despite wondering how I’d forgotten something so crucial as already being married.

  “Your challenge now will be explaining that to the Swede,” my mother softly replied, her bad attempt at hiding that she wasn’t disappointed. It’s not as if my mother had ever disliked Anna; she just hadn’t understood how she fit into my life once they learned about my past in the “life”.

  Since I’d been a kinkster since the age of twenty-two, I found that it would be difficult to hide for the times I didn’t have a girlfriend but wanted to invite my submissive up for a family dinner. It was a coincidence that Benny had not only been my submissive but my girlfriend, and eventually, my wife as well. My parents were conservative, so they weren’t well-versed in the lifestyle etiquette, but they were convinced Benny had been so polite because I’d trained her to be, which made me laugh at their stereotypes of being a Dom. Benny had been polite because that was her personality. Anna, not so much…

  In fact, most of my ex flings, girlfriends, and even submissives, my mom had tolerated before Anna. I never knew what turned my mother off to her, but in safe spaces, she hardly ever referred to her by her Christian name. Oftentimes, “The Swede” had been so engrained coming from her lips, I’d programmed my mind to simply hear Anna instead.

  My father was the complete opposite. He minded his business like a typical Finn, only injecting advice at the most vulnerable moments. “I’m sure she’ll understand. She has to.” He pat me on the shoulder, comforting me in the only way a traditional Finnish man knew how to for his son.

  “And if she doesn’t, you always have another wife.” Even though it had been intended as a joke, Mother hadn’t even cracked a smile, changed her tone, or offered any other subtle changes in expression. But she’d offered to find Anna and separate her from her bridezilla-like mother, who seemed just as, if not more, eager to see today go through without any hitches.

  That would’ve been convenient, but the courage rising forced me to turn down the offer. If I was going to face this, I was going to do it as a man, not as a person who couldn’t even tell his bride he’d made a mistake on the wrong yet most important day of her life. If I couldn’t own up to my mistakes, why did I think we could even start a life together?

  * * *

  Anna would be in the back of the church, preparing her hair and makeup before the ceremony. We booked this church based on the space Anna wanted to prepare herself. I, on the other hand, hadn’t planned more than getting ready on the way. It wasn’t the most romantic, but the wedding was far beyond what I would have planned if I had had any say in it. Today was just an event I wanted over with so we could move on to more important things like starting a family together. I never thought I’d get well into my thirties without ever becoming a father.

  “Stop messing with my hair, Mother. It’s already perfect.” Anna’s voice wasn’t far beyond my reach.

  “We could always use a bit more effort on a day like this,” her mother offered.

  Anna and her mother’s comments ricocheted back and forth until the conversation went into a unique direction that I’m glad I heard but deep down would have rather stayed ignorant to. “I swear, Mother, you always get this way when you become desperate.” It was a good thing I spoke fluent Swedish; otherwise, I’d have no idea that the conversation took a turn for the worst.

  “I wouldn’t be so desperate if you’d just asked him for the money earlier, like I asked you to.”

  Anna’s voice grew quiet, but with my luck, I could still hear despite the sudden quietness. She’d definitely only intended on her mother hearing what she had to say. “Mother, I love you. But I can’t afford to have you ruin my big day. This is my day. Let me have one day where I’m allowed to think about myself. When we are married, I’ll give you all the money that you need. Until then, please be patient with me. I do not have time to worry about Father’s gambling problems.”

  There wasn’t a time better than now to burst the idea around today falling apart. I could wait, or I could do it now, but either way wouldn’t bring a better outcome. “Anna, I need to speak to you. Right now.” I stormed in, pretending I hadn’t heard pieces of their conversation. Anna screamed, almost smudging her intricate eye makeup in efforts to conceal her face and dress from me.

  “Olli, what are you doing here?!” Her voice cracked under the weight of her current state. “You’re not supposed to see me until the ceremony.” She made sure to remind me how much bad luck we’d get for having seen her before I was supposed to. If only she knew that should be the least of her worries.

  “What I have to tell you holds more importance. I’m sure nothing else will matter once you hear what I have to say.” Anna looked over to her mother as she reluctantly left the room to allow Anna and me to talk.

  For a day, I’d just wanted to get over with. It still went without saying how beautiful Anna had looked. She looked like a princess in a fairytale, with her overtly tight bun gathered over her head and make-up that made her appear both blemish-free and older than her twenty-six years. But the dress was what really made her appear like a fantasy. An hourglass corset to accentuate her modest hips, she may as well have been Cinderella.

  It was a strange shift in memories, but my wedding day with Benny came to mind, and I couldn’t help thinking I had never seen a woman more beautiful in a white dress. For as much effort as it took, they would’ve made equal impacts on me had I gone through with this the way we’d planned.

  “What is it, Olli? What was so damn important that it was worth giving me bad luck before we get to the ceremony?” I didn’t believe in luck, but I had believed in fate. It just wasn’t as friendly as it’d used to be when it came to me and Anna.

 
“Before I go on, you must know it wasn’t my intention for this to happen—”

  “Get on with it!” Anna screamed.

  “Obtaining our marriage certificate. I ran into a minute yet unavoidable problem.”

  Anna narrowed her elven eyes, testing me with dagger-like stares. “Like?”

  There was no better way to say it, and if I fluffed and dragged it out, I’d make it worse for myself. It was best to just start with the truth. “Legally, I can’t marry you because I’m still married. To my first wife.”

  At first, I was sure she hadn’t heard me clear enough. Her initial reaction wasn’t nearly as loud or filled with the passion I’d grown accustom to defending with Anna. In her calmest tone possible, she held her bouquet close to her chest, faked a smile, and asked, “Olli, what exactly does that mean?”

  “It means it is a temporary setback at best. It’s not something that can be settled today, but if we play this right—” Though I hadn’t gotten the chance to say much more before her crystal eyes widened, her pupils dilating to the point where most of the blue had left her eyes. I was halfway into explaining that today would be difficult not to postpone and that all I needed to do was finalize my divorce and we’d be right again. But somewhere between all of that, I must have triggered her. One moment she was listening to my explanation of where we went from here; the next she was striking me over the arm with her bouquet.

  “I ask you to do one thing, Olli. Take care of the marriage certificate. I took care of everything else; that was all that I asked you to do. But you didn’t do it when I asked. You wait until months of preparation had already been made. Family and friends are sitting out there waiting for us to become husband and wife. I didn’t even make a big deal when you were too busy to show up for rehearsals.

  Because all I expected of you was to show up. With the marriage certificate. Now, you walk back here and cause me emotional stress because I can’t go back on you seeing my dress. And you have the nerve to tell me—on my wedding day—that you’re still married to someone else?”

  When Anna and I first met, I’d made her well aware that I’d been married nearly a decade ago, though I’d only mentioned our separation in passing. She’d held my separation as seriously as a divorce, implying I had to have taken care of it in the time we’d gotten serious, to the time we’d begun planning our wedding planning.

  Having spent four long years with Anna, I didn’t push back when she thought our relationship should naturally progress to marriage. It hadn’t meant I’d actually thought about what it would take to finalize my divorce, and since Benny and I lived thousands of miles apart and hadn’t been in contact for years, in the moment, it felt like a thing of the past.

  “Do you know what would have happened if you had tried to obtain that certificate when I asked you to?” It was a rhetorical question, but there was a chance she’d wanted me to answer anyway, just so she could have the upper hand. “You would’ve known you were still fucking married, that’s what. And prevented this whole shit situation from happening—”

  “I know, Anna, and I’m sorry. I don’t know how many times I can tell you from the bottom of my heart how I hadn’t planned for any of this to happen.” An apology was the last thing she’d wanted to hear, but it was all I had, at least until James drafted out those divorce papers to my preference. Before I could say anything else, he rushed through the doors, arriving in my weakest moment of need.

  “Trust me, Anna; Olli has been making every effort to make things right about today; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.” James assured us that he had a way to deal with the situation swiftly, but Anna wasn’t convinced by mere words.

  “Olli, what is he talking about?” she asked, pointing in James’s direction.

  “Your solution,” James interjected, before reminding us this was why I paid him his worth in the services offered to me, “is if we can just get your soon-to-be ex-wife to sign the paperwork, we’ll be likely to handle everything in as little as seventy-two hours,” he said matter-of-factly as Anna snatched the draft of the divorce documents from his hand, unable to suppress her curiosity by flipping to the page with my favorable settlement.

  “If she could hop on the next flight, you’re looking at a pushback of a week, two weeks tops. It’ll be like today never happened, and you’ll two love birds will be hitched by the end of the month,” James added, but there wasn’t a solution that would’ve satisfied Anna at this point.

  In justified anger, Anna threw down the copy of the draft and crossed the room with her arms held over her head, emitting a muffled scream of frustration. “That still doesn’t remedy the fact that I still have a room full of people waiting for me to walk down that aisle and get married, and I have to tell that that I’m in fact not getting married.”

  “Anna, if this is about money, you know it’s of little object to the situation.”

  “You bet your ass it won’t be an object to our next wedding.” Anna interrupted. “Because there wouldn’t be a need of a second one if you’d done what was required of you in the first place. I plan to have a brand new dress, all new catering, completely new arrangements… and you will see that I get all of it. I want the best wedding planner in the world, not just the best Helsinki can provide,” She spoke with an arrogant confidence, mumbling something under her breath before either of us could decipher what she said.

  She ripped the dress’ detail in the torso, claiming it was no longer acceptable, considering everyone, including me, had already seen her in it already. “Now, I have to go back there and tell everyone the truth.” She walked past James and stuck a hand in his face before spewing, “Fix this.” Anna disappeared through the chamber doors, and that was the last we’d see of her until we sought her out.

  “Thank you.” I reached out for James’s hand and was humbled when he took mine to shake on it. “You really saved my arse.”

  “I was only doing what you asked. And I assume that since you haven’t mentioned it that Anna knows next to nothing about the investment deal?”

  Not if I wanted her where her nose didn’t belong.

  “I’ve taken the necessary measures to keep this deal under wraps. Nothing else is going as planned, but at least I know that will.” I took the additional paperwork James wanted me to review and buried that, along with the divorce draft, deep within my coat.

  “It’s probably time you call Bendición.”

  “You’re probably right. I hate it when you are right.” James pat me on the shoulder before wishing me luck about next to everything else. He said he’d make sure to call me to confirm that I’d reached out to contact Benny. Even though it was a necessary step, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to put myself in that scenario. I wasn’t scared to do a lot of things, but to imagine a life where Benny was permanently not in it? I hadn’t thought about it until now, and the idea of it made my stomach turn.

  Even if she’d moved on after all this time, the churning in my gut convinced me everything was about to change once I made this call.

  4

  Benny

  I wish this woman would get off her cell phone. God, did anyone have any regard to the safety of those around them on the road? It’s bad enough traffic was as backed up as it was, but having to worry about the drivers who thought their phones were more important than keeping their eyes on the road made me even more irritated during the drive to Olivia’s school.

  “Hey! I’m trying to get over!”

  “Asshole!”

  The result of a heated exchange between two drivers, a lane away, yelling from car to car. There was a longwinded honk that accompanied the encounter that could raise the dead. My psyche focused on the combination of grinding brakes, wheel tires feeling the weight of the potholes that West Covina needed to fix, and the consistent beeping at my bumper that happened every time a car behind you didn’t think you were driving fast enough.

  Anything to get my mind off of losing my job. I was going to be a few minutes late, but at
least I had called Olivia’s school ahead of time. Money was going to be tight. I couldn’t help but be grateful that I had at least received a severance that would get me through two solid months or until I found another job. Olivia’s tuition was paid up for the semester, so for now, that was the least of my worries. But something told me I was not about to get any sleep tonight, fearing how I would provide for my daughter once my severance is depleted.

  I could just hear my mother’s voice now. “Only fools test the depth of water with both feet.”

  Whenever something went wrong in my life, you could be sure there’d be an Equatorial Guinean proverb to go with it. Mami was harsh, but even harder on me ever since I had Olivia without her father in the picture. Ma had only seen what she wanted to see: me following her footsteps as a single mother based on her bad choice in my father. Unbeknownst to her, Olivia’s father wasn’t in the picture due to his own accord. That was all me.

  It had felt so long ago and deeply rooted in the past that it was hard explaining that while I hadn’t been ready when I was pregnant with Olivia, I didn’t trust Olivia’s father would be ready even less. But I moved past it. I let the past stay there and took responsibility for my choices and have managed to make ends meet so far.

  I knew if I just started looking soon that things could work out; I would just have to be diligent and have faith that I could find work in a decent window of time. If I thought positively, my outcome might end that way. I just needed a job for now; that way, none of my expenses for the month would suffer from the loss. Worst case scenario, I could move back in with my mom.