Almost a Bride

by Jo Watson

  Margie barely had a chance to finish her sentence when, BANG, Angel pushed her. Alien Lady wasted no time in pushing her back, and soon I was watching a live episode of Jerry Springer—and way too close for my liking. Margie was screaming something about the pyramids being transporter beacons and Tom Cruise being involved in the global conspiracy, while Angel taunted her by flashing her boobs. Even the crack addict joined in, making a strange throaty cackling sound that I assume was meant to resemble laughter and egging them on.

  I’d never seen anything like it before, and I crept backward, trying to retreat into a corner. I was frightened. I mean, I know what goes on in prisons. I watch Orange Is the New Black.

  I didn’t belong here.

  I really, really didn’t belong here.

  “Miss Anderson.” One of the guards came up to the cell and started unlocking the gate. “You’re free to go.”

  “Oh, thank God.” The relief was instant, and I practically threw myself out of the cell, without daring to look back at my fellow inmates—who were now on the floor wrestling. I walked into the waiting area of the police station, and that’s when I saw him. My stomach lurched.

  He looked every bit the lawyer wearing that crisp, suave black suit and clicking his expensive Montblanc pen impatiently. He looked up and saw me.

  “I’ve come to spring you, as they say.” He smiled at me like a Cheshire cat, and then looked at the officer behind the desk. “I’m usually the one putting them behind bars, not setting them free.” He gave a small chuckle. “Lawyer…if anyone ever needs one.” He took a card out of his pocket and slid it across the reception desk, before winking at the woman. He never missed a PR opportunity. Even now.

  “Anne…” He oozed silver-tongued charm as he sauntered up to me and then reached out and took me by the hands. “Tess and I have agreed to drop the charges. We realize that it was a bit of an emotional moment for all of us, and maybe you just lost your head a bit. But no harm done.”

  No harm done? “What?”

  I was stunned. I was downright offended. This was not the reaction I was expecting. Where the hell was my apology? Where the hell was the deep shame and the guilt and the relentless begging on bended knees?

  “Tess and I?” I asked with an edge of desperation in my voice. “Since when is there a ‘Tess and I’?” My voice went slightly quivery and my knees seemed to follow suit. Suddenly I didn’t feel very well. Especially when I saw how he was looking at me.

  “Listen, Anne. Let’s be honest here.” He cocked his head to the side. “It hasn’t been working for a while now with us. Let’s be adult enough to acknowledge that. Mmmm?” Another head cock. I hated that condescending tone in his voice.

  “But…but…,” I stammered, and shook my head in absolute disbelief. This was all wrong. Trevv had obviously been handed the wrong script. He was on the wrong page, too, and this was definitely the wrong scene.

  “But what about dinner at Piccolo Primi tonight?” I asked.

  “I was going to talk about us. I was going to tell you about Tess and—”

  I cut him off. “Yes…You were going to tell me that this is all just a terrible, horrible mistake. That it meant nothing and then you were going to propose to me. You were going to ask me to marry you and I was going to say yes because we’ve been together for two years and we love each other and we’re going to be so happy together.” The words were flying out of my mouth like uncontrollable bullets. “Look, I know we’ve been going through a rough patch lately, but all couples go through this, it’s perfectly normal, and getting engaged would fix it.”

  Trevv looked at me with what seemed to be total confusion. He nodded slowly, as if he was trying to process what I was saying, and then brought his hand up to his chin and rubbed it in a thoughtful manner.

  “Why did you think I was going to propose to you?”

  “Trevv, I found the receipt for the ring you bought and I saw the red roses in your car.”

  “Those weren’t for you, Anne.”

  “What?” My mind went blank. That news shocked me almost as much as seeing them in bed together. “But…but…I had my nails done. We’re getting married. You’re marrying me…”

  As soon as those words were out of my mouth, I realized just how pathetic and illogical and mad I was being. Why would I want to marry a man that had just cheated on me? Where the fuck was my brain when I needed it? But despite all that, I decided to continue. I decided to do away with any tiny iota of self-respect that I might still have.

  “…because she means nothing to you. We love each other and I’m going to be your wife.”

  Trevv moved closer to me and for the first time since he’d arrived, I got the slightest glimmer of sincerity in him. “I think we should talk about this outside.”

  I gasped loudly. “She doesn’t mean nothing to you?” I looked at Trevv and his expression said it all. “Oh God, she’s not a fling. Do you love her? Do you still love me? How could you do this? How long has it been going on?”

  “Ssshhhhh!” Trevv tried to shush me as my voice got uncontrollably loud and shrill. “Let’s take this outside. This is all getting a tad awkward.” He tried to put an arm around me, but his supposed sincerity just pissed me off even more, and a wall of rage slammed into me with such force that I thought I might fall over.

  “Awkward? Awkward?” I screeched like a deranged banshee. “You call walking in on you having sex with your coworker a bit ‘awkward’?” I gestured some dramatic air quotes and several cops turned around and stared.

  “Sssshhh,” he hissed, looking around self-consciously. “Anne, this is all very inappropriate.”

  “Inappropriate?” I scoffed loudly. “You know what I call inappropriate? Try walking in on you wearing nipple clamps.” I had definitely gotten people’s attention now. Some of the cops even put down their paperwork and turned to watch.

  “Oh, and I’m so very glad you found such a good use for the tie I bought you. Funny, the man that sold it to me never mentioned that it could also be used as a kinky-sex blindfold.”

  Trevv looked angry now. “Outside, Anne!” he demanded curtly. How dare he make demands at a time like this!

  “No! I don’t want to.” I stomped my foot like a petulant toddler having a tantrum. “I want to talk about this here. Surely you’re not embarrassed? Not embarrassed that you had sex with another woman in our bed and got caught out? Nooo, I wouldn’t be embarrassed if I were you!”

  A collective gasp rose up from the room, and one of the female cops clicked her tongue in blatant disapproval.

  “Bastard,” she said, shooting some death stares in Trevv’s direction, which I was ever so grateful for. Another voice pierced the air; it was Angel. “I would have cut it off!” she yelled from across the room.

  “Anne.” His tone was now annoyingly diplomatic. “I think it’s best if you come around tomorrow and remove all your things.”

  “You want me to—”

  “Move out. Yes.” Cue head cock to the left.

  “But…it’s my home.”

  “Technically it’s my home. You were just staying there.”

  “Just staying there? Wow, is that all I was doing?” His words stung me, implying I was nothing more than a guest in his house. A house we had shared together for eighteen months.

  Cue head cock to the right. “Maybe your sister could take you in? Or one of your millions of friends and cousins?” He said it with such contempt that it made me fume. He’d never liked my friends.

  Take me in? Like I was some scaly, flea-bitten, half-breed mutt that needed rescuing from a dirty sewer?

  Shitface spoke again. “Of course, Tess and I don’t expect you to get all your stuff out immediately, but maybe just the basics. Clothes, toiletries.”

  “Oh, how very generous of you and Tess.” I said her name as if it were poison, or a hideous infectious disease. “Aren’t you and Tess just so damn thoughtful.”

  “Good-bye, Anne.”

  The bas
tard had the audacity to kiss me on the forehead before turning and walking away. I stood and watched as he got closer and closer to the exit, and just as he was about to open the door and walk out of my life, I was gripped by a kind of irrational panic. I didn’t want him to walk away. Despite everything that he’d done, I didn’t want him to leave.

  “Trevv. Wait.” My panicked voice quivered as a lump started forming in my throat. He turned around, looking somewhat irritated by now, although still trying very hard to maintain the thin veil of “professional lawyer” that he had left.

  “What?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but there were no words for what I was feeling. It was a nauseating paradox of rage and desperation—all still covered by the haze of confusion that hadn’t quite lifted yet.

  “Nothing, Trevv. Nothing and everything.”

  Trevv shook his head slightly before pushing the door open and stepping outside. I watched him as he ambled to his car, as if he was going for a leisurely stroll on the beach. Tess was waiting for him in the passenger seat. My passenger seat. And then he drove off, out of my life.

  When I was about six, I was doing a twirly thing on the top bar of my jungle gym and lost my grip. I fell so far and so hard, that when I hit the ground the wind was knocked out of me. I must have gasped for several seconds before finally sucking in the oxygen my aching lungs were so desperate for. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. I thought I was dying.

  That’s how I felt right as I watched them drive away together.

  After that, things just went from bad to worse. The horror of that day, the thirteenth of January to be specific (and it wasn’t even a Friday, if you believe in that sort of thing), was not yet over. Not by a long shot. By now I had totally missed the photo shoot, not to mention broken the pièce de résistance.

  My boss, Sonja, is fashion personified. What was hot and what was not began and ended with one syllable from her pert little mouth. A severe and impossibly shiny black bob framed sharp pointy features and piercing blue eyes. She was tall and rail thin, so she could wear all the gorgeous things that went wafting through our office. It was rumored that she hadn’t eaten solids since 1998, living entirely on a diet of carrot juice and kale. Her skin glowed, her lips sparkled with the latest shade of lip gloss, and she was so effortlessly stylish, she could make a plastic bag look like haute couture.

  But she was also renowned for her razor-sharp tongue, her deadly ambition, and a supreme set of balls that made her as competitive and ruthless as any male CEO.

  And she had also called me into her office.

  “So I believe you were arrested for attempted murder earlier today.” She said it with total indifference and a deadpan stare that looked straight through me.

  “No, it was a misunderstanding, they had it wrong—” How had she even found out about my arrest?

  “Oh no, don’t get me wrong, darling. You caught your boyfriend cheating. Perhaps you planned on maiming him a little…I can respect that.” She smiled at me as she slid out of her Perspex seat and sashayed over to the window, gazing out over the Johannesburg skyline. “What I can’t respect, though, is that you totally fucked up my photo shoot, not to mention the shoes that Christian himself specially shipped here. Do you know how much those shoes cost? And the photo shoot? It’s not cheap renting camels.”

  “Camels?”

  “Not to mention the Ethiopian refugees,” the fashion director, a younger carbon copy of Sonja, piped up. “We were going for that whole third-world-poverty-chic vibe. Can you imagine what a statement starving, dehydrated children wearing Louboutins would have made?” She was furious now. “But you just had to go and fuck it up.”

  Sonja nodded. “And that’s why you’re fired.”

  Even though I knew I was probably—NO, definitely—going to lose my job over this, it was still rather shocking to hear the words spoken out loud. The situation was broken beyond repair—like the shoes. No doubt there was a meaningful metaphor lurking in there somewhere, I just wasn’t in the mood to find it. There was nothing I could do or say to redeem myself, so I turned and walked out of the office, trying not to burst into tears.

  “Oh and Annie,” Evil Boss Bitch spoke again, “if you do ever work in the fashion industry again, which is highly doubtful…” She looked at me as if she’d just caught the whiff of rotting fish eggs. “Try not to wear boyfriend jeans. They went out two seasons ago.”

  Her snide punch line completed, I exited. And that was it. The end of my enviable job at the most glamorous fashion mag in South Africa. And the ugly end to my dreams of becoming a fashion director.

  I walked out through the ostentatious, gold-framed front doors and stood on the sidewalk with slumped shoulders. Now what? I took a few miserable steps until I realized my legs were no longer capable of working properly. I leaned against the nearest thing I could find, a trash can, and hung my head. Now fucking what? I was wallowing in miserable splendor and, quite frankly, didn’t care who saw me…

  Only I did care. Because when some caring soul placed five dollars in my hand and told me to buy a hot meal, I knew I had to do something. So I did the only thing my muddled brain could think to do and walked to my friend Jane’s office. She worked part-time in her father’s dental practice as his assistant while finishing up at dental school. Her father wanted her to learn the business ropes since he had grand plans of her taking over his practice soon. I wasn’t sure she was thrilled with the idea, but I was grateful the office was just a few blocks away.

  The first thing that always strikes me about a dental practice is the smell. That strange medical smell that is totally unique to dental rooms alone. And then there is the drilling. The repetitive whirring sound as it grinds away at some poor person’s tooth, followed by that disguising suction sound. Usually those sounds make my skin crawl, but today they felt rather soothing. Perhaps it was because I was imagining chasing after Trevv with a dental drill?

  I sat down and waited for her to finish with the patient she was currently helping her father torture. Mind you, right now I would’ve gladly exchanged places with them. I would much rather be enjoying the sharp pain of an unanesthetized extraction than enduring this. I was physically shaking from the adrenaline overload, and my palpitating heart felt like it was being ripped out of my chest while someone punched me in the stomach. Finally, after an hour or so, Jane and her dad emerged.

  “Hello, Annie,” Dr. Smith said with a smile. I’d known Jane for over ten years now and her dad had been doing my teeth ever since. “Are you flossing like I told you to?”

  I forced a nod and the best smile I could muster under the circumstances. “After every meal.”

  “Excellent. Now if you’ll excuse me.” I was relieved when he walked off. Not because I didn’t like him, but because I was struggling to hold it all together.

  “Annie?” Jane rushed over to me. “You look…What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Trevv…” It was all I could manage without breaking down and flooding the room with another gush of tears.

  Jane lowered herself next to me. “What happened?”

  “Imagine the worst thing that you could ever walk in on your boyfriend doing. And then, multiply that by ten and throw in nipple clamps and a blindfold.”

  “Oh?” Jane looked at me for a moment or two, “Ooohhh! I see.” She finally got it. “So you walked in on him doing…?”

  “Sex.”

  “With?”

  “Kinky sex things.”

  “And?”

  “Tess.”

  “That girl from his work?” Jane gasped. “The one with a fiancé? We all had dinner with them a month ago!”

  I nodded. “Same one. Apparently he’s in love with her.”

  “But I thought he was going to ask you to—”

  “Obviously not!” I cut her off quickly. I didn’t want to hear that word out loud again.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “I don’t know.”
I wailed so loudly that it drowned out the drilling sound coming from the other room “Oh, and he wants me to move out of his house today. Oh, and he also had me arrested. I’ve just been in jail.”

  “What?”

  “And I also broke the fucking shoooe,” I moaned.

  “Tess’s shoe?”

  “No, that would have actually been enjoyable. Because it seems that I broke the world’s most important shoe. The most important, special, shiny, expensive bloody shoe that has ever been bloody made, and now I’ve been fired because of it.”

  “Okay.” Jane snapped into organizational mode. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Will you help me move out?”

  “Of course.” Jane canceled her appointments for the rest of the afternoon and an hour later, boyfriendless, homeless, jobless, and just less, I was standing in my soon-to-be-former house ready to pack up my life—well, what had been my life for the last year and a half, anyway. I’d given up a gorgeous downtown loft to move in with Trevv because he’d asked me to. He’d loved me once…or had he? It was all so surreal, and I wasn’t sure what I was meant to be feeling: anger, sadness, depression?

  Maybe I was just numb. All I knew was that I just had to get through, even if it was on autopilot.

  But when I walked into the bedroom and saw the rumpled sheets, the pillows on the floor, and the tie draped across the bed, the numbness quickly evaporated. I scanned the room and all I could see was her. I glanced down at the floor and something caught my attention. I bent down and picked up the two broken tips from my newly manicured nails. My cheeks flushed red and my skin stung from the sudden, overwhelming surge of embarrassment that rushed through me. I’d made such a big deal about it. I’d told the entire world we were getting engaged. I’d endured painful eyebrow plucking.

  How could I have been so stupid?