Almost a Bride

by Jo Watson

  Jane marched up to me, took the nails away, and tossed them into the trash can. “The faster we do this, the better,” she said, ushering me into the bathroom. I was glad it was Jane with me right now. She was the least outwardly emotional in our group, and I needed someone like her right then, or else I might have crumpled to the floor in a heap.

  “Look.” I pointed my finger across the bathroom to where the basin was. “Looooook,” I hissed in a voice I barely recognized. “It’s pink.”

  Trevv and I kept our toothbrushes in a cup next to the sink. Mine is lime green, my favorite color, and Trevv’s is blue. But there, squashed between the green and the blue, was a pink one. I moved closer, bending down to stare it right in its bristly little face. It seemed to taunt me with its diagonal bristles for those hard-to-reach places. Both brushes were leaning against the blue one, and the irony of the situation struck me as both laughable and simultaneously disgusting.

  Jane and I stared at the cup for a while, and then she turned to me with wide eyes, as if she could sense what I was thinking.

  “No, Annie. Don’t do it. Be the better, bigger person. Rise above it.”

  I walked over to the cup and took the pink toothbrush between my fingers.

  “No, Annie. Rise. Rise.”

  I shook my head.

  No. I wasn’t above it.

  No. I wasn’t the bigger woman.

  And, no, I wasn’t about turning the other cheek and rising today.

  “Oh God, I can’t watch.” Jane turned away quickly.

  I took the brush and ran it over the inside of the toilet bowl, then dunked it into the water for good measure before slipping it back into the cup from whence the evil thing came.

  The idea that Tess might come down with a deadly strain of E. coli poisoning did make me feel better. It felt like the only revenge I could get right now. But the thought only made me feel better for a minute.

  Six small boxes, two full suitcases, and three hours later, Jane and I were ready to go. I stood in the driveway looking up at the home that I’d shared with my boyfriend. Even though it was officially Trevv’s house, I could see signs of myself everywhere. I’d planted a bed of roses by the kitchen window—they were in full bloom. I’d painted our front door red, and that little crack in the window by the lounge—that was made when I haphazardly opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate getting my new job.

  And now…I was just walking away?

  Closing the door on a chapter of my life.

  What the hell was I going to do next?

  CHAPTER TWO

  I had officially crossed over to the dark side. I was devastated in that gothic-writing, angsty-poetry, threatening-to-self-harm, burning-black-morbid-candles, and not-washing-their-hair kind of way. Which is never a good look for anyone.

  I was so depressed that I’d even started listening to a Depeche Mode mix that Damien had once inflicted on me. Right now I was listening to them drone on about pain and suffering and relating to every single word.

  My days of sudden unemployment also gave me too much time to think, and I’d spent the first week staring at my phone, waiting for Trevv to call me and tell me the whole thing had been a terrible, terrible mistake.

  That he was desperately sorry. That he was a bastard. That he deserved to be punished—and I could do it. That he was wrong and had made a mistake and loved me, not her. God, I felt pathetic.

  I was rapidly vacillating between wanting Trevv to come running back to me begging, to wanting him to beg for his life before I ran him over with a combine harvester. I was one step away from needing a frontal lobotomy, a straitjacket, and drastic electroshock therapy.

  It’s bad enough breaking up with someone, but to walk in on them having kinky sex with someone else just adds a whole new layer to the devastation. In retrospect, there’d been some signs that Trevv’s bedroom proclivities were a touch on the twist my nipple until it bleeds side.

  One evening, while innocently cooking a chicken-and-mushroom casserole, he’d taken out the spatula and spanked me on the ass—hard. Of course I was horrified, and very concerned that he’d left a greasy mark on my MaxMaras. On another occasion he’d suggested hot wax. When I ascertained that he was not talking about hair removal, I just thought he was joking.

  Obviously I’d been mistaken.

  But the devastation became even more unbearable when I got a phone call from my hairdresser wanting to know when she should book me in for bridal hair. A message from my manicurist soon followed, asking for a picture of the gorgeous ring. I didn’t know what felt worse: the pain of my heart breaking, or the searing embarrassment of having to explain to people why, no, we are not getting married.

  Even when I slept, I couldn’t escape it. My dreams were plagued by images of Tess, and in every single one she was perfect. And the more I saw her, the more imperfections I saw in myself every time I walked past a mirror…no wonder he wanted her and not me. She was gorgeous. And clearly she was able to give him something I couldn’t in bed.

  Maybe I was just bad in bed? Clearly I bored him.

  Was that why he had gone looking elsewhere? Maybe I wasn’t pretty enough? Boobs not big enough? Bum not pert enough? Body not bendy enough? With each thought, I ripped another strip of myself away. The ambitious, confident girl I once was, was disappearing until I started to feel like a totally different person, plagued by insecurity, fueled by anger, and stung by the injustice of it all.

  But by the tenth day, when Trevv still hadn’t rung, I lost it.

  It was eight p.m., I was pacing the lounge, and overwhelmed by this insatiable, almost physically painful need to see him. And because Jane was working late, there was unfortunately no one there to stop me.

  I needed to see Trevv. And, more importantly, I needed to see what his life looked like. I hoped it was falling apart like mine. I hoped he was sitting miserably in a chair contemplating what a bastard he’d been. Wallowing and choking on his own guilt and realizing what a terrible mistake he’d made…

  Driving there felt so natural, and everything looked exactly as I’d left it. Nothing had changed since I’d been gone, and it pissed me off. In moments like this, when everything is falling apart, you expect the rest of the world to be going through the same thing and it’s almost offensive when you discover they’re not. While your entire life has come to a grinding stop, everyone else’s just seems to be carrying on as normal.

  I parked the car a few houses away, turned off the lights, and climbed out. I was wearing cargo pants and a black hoodie and knew that I probably looked like someone who belonged on the sex offender’s registry. But I was so drunk on insanity and adrenaline that I didn’t care. I crept up to the house and peered through the window. All the lights were on, and through the net curtains I could just make out a silhouette in the kitchen. Trevv?

  I got as close as I could, carefully navigating my way through the thorny rosebushes. For a split second the thought did flash through my mind…

  Annie. What the flipping, fucking fuck are you doing?

  But as quickly as the thought had come, it was gone and I was peering through the kitchen window like a Peeping Tom.

  I could hear talking but couldn’t make it out. I could see movement but nothing definitive. The window was slightly open…Should I stick my hand though it and pull the curtain aside, just for a quick peep?

  No, Annie, no! a voice from above seemed to yell at me.

  Do it, Annie, do it! an even louder voice wailed. And so I did. I slid my hand through as silently as I could and with my fingertips, grabbed the edge of the curtain, and pulled it aside.

  A candlelit dinner for two at the table…red roses in a vase, a heart-shaped note hanging from them…My stomach churned, and bile rose up my esophagus.

  Handholding, eye staring, smiles, and whispers…I wanted to cry.

  But at the same time, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was like looking into a mirror, but the person looking back wasn’t me. It should be me, t
hough. It was my kitchen. I had chosen those wineglasses, that saltshaker, even the table they were sitting at had been my idea. So how had another woman stolen my entire life?

  I stayed glued to the window out of morbid fascination, watching as two actors played out the life that had once been mine. But when Trevv leaned in and kissed her like he’d never kissed me before, I let go of the curtain and slumped down. I tried to hold the tears back, but there were just too many. I crumpled to the ground and heard a soft involuntary moan escape my lips.

  My shoulders started to shake as I sat in the cold, wet soil silently crying my eyes out. It was the kind of crying that seems to take over your entire body and paralyze you. I must have sat in the flower bed for ages, the rose thorns scratching at my skin. I bit my lip and dug my fingers into the ground to stop myself from screaming and punching something.

  I finally managed to climb back into my car at some stage. Covered in mud and blood and aching from top to toe. My bones felt sore, my skin itched, and I wanted to crawl up into a ball and die. How pathetic and embarrassing can you get? Crying in the dirt outside your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend’s house. I hated myself so much for doing that.

  I drove off and vowed I wasn’t going to tell anyone about this. Not even my friends. I’d just keep it to myself and use it as yet another thing to drive myself mad with.

  And when I wasn’t making myself mad, some of my friends were doing it for me, especially my cousin Lilly. A few years ago she’d been dramatically abandoned at the altar in front of five hundred wedding guests. At the time she’d been devastated, but it had all worked out for the best, because she’d met Damien. But now she was tossing around deep, philosophical advice like ice cream sprinkles. Stuffing an endless stream of clichés down my throat until I was practically choking on them.

  “Everything happens for a reason…”

  “…meant to be…”

  “…blessing in bloody disguise…”

  But I just wasn’t ready to see the Dr. Phil side of life. My only friend that wasn’t plying me with platitudes, besides Jane, was Stormy-Rain. As soon as I’d told her what had happened, she hadn’t rushed to soothe me; rather, she simply said, “I knew it would happen eventually. It was in the cards.”

  She had been very vocal when I’d gotten together with Trevv. She had thrown around words like arrogant and capitalist money-suckering tick (she wasn’t known for subtlety). But I was blinded, as one is in those early intoxicating days. Through the misty haze of dopamine and lots of sex-induced endorphins, I couldn’t see any of the things she was saying.

  With Trevv it had been that love-at-first-sight thing, although he seemed to be everything I never knew I wanted in a guy. Prior to him I’d dated a string of complete losers. In fact, it seemed that in my early dating days I’d gone out of my way to pick men that were fundamentally wrong for me. At the time I was very much into the fashion-y types. Those cool, elusive kinds who were sooo weird that they had to be creative geniuses headed for greatness. You know the type, those quiet, intense types that looked like they needed a vitamin-infused IV, a razor blade, and a tan.

  Being in the creative industry meant that there were plenty to choose from, too. My personal preference always lay with the tortured, struggling artists, with their knitted cardigans, scruffy paint-stained jeans, worn sneakers, and hair that looked like it needed a good brushing. But after a few years of dating guys like that, the novelty just wore off. I was no longer into dating guys that seemed more sensitive and emotional than me and had thighs half the size of mine. A strange longing for a real man—whatever that meant—took hold of me.

  So, one night when I was out drinking with my friends at some fancy place we could ill afford—I saw him. We were all sipping the same drink we’d ordered over an hour before, in an attempt to make it last longer. I did well as a stylist working in advertising (a job I hated, by the way), but not well enough that twenty dollars for a cocktail seemed even vaguely reasonable. But then Trevv went striding past. I smelled him before I saw him. I’ll never forget; he smelled of sandalwood and tropical rain—a strangely intoxicating combination that made me swoon. And in that moment he must have seen me looking at him (gawking perhaps), because a few minutes later he was at our table.

  “Can I offer you ladies a drink?” He was so gentlemanly, something I was completely unaccustomed to. I was also unaccustomed to a man who wielded a shiny credit card with the power to buy cocktails for everyone—usually my dates would be scrounging for coins in their jean pockets and cursing because they had forgotten that this pair had the holes.

  “Sure. Since none of us can afford to buy a glass of water here,” I said, which made him laugh. And by that I mean he really laughed, as if I was some kind of stand-up comedian. So several drinks—and three hours of conversation—later, I made the decision that he was exactly what I needed. There I was, longing for change, and just like that a man like him came falling into my lap! And he was into me; perhaps it was because I was some kind of an exotic creature to him, a departure from the corporate pinstriped pantsuits he usually dated. Although, that’s what he went back to in the end.

  And I liked the fact that he was a bit cocky and sure of himself. Confident and even slightly arrogant. It was very appealing. All the qualities that Stormy had pointed out to me as possible shortcomings were actually the qualities that I found most appealing. And he was terribly good-looking, in that total model-slash-actor way. Universally good-looking, the kind of good-looking that your ninety-year-old grandmother would find attractive. Perhaps I should have known he was too good-looking, especially for someone like me.

  After Nipple-Gate, as my friends and I affectionately called it, dear Jane took me in rent-free, since I currently found myself with a very rapidly diminishing savings account. It was great for the first month or two—we fell into a pleasant, predictable routine; I wallowed on the couch in self-pity all day while she went to work, and in the evenings we watched the documentary channel.

  I’d always wondered where Jane’s abundance of facts and figures came from, and now I knew. I also knew that you replace every particle in your body every seven years, vending machines kill four times as many people as sharks, and when male bees climax, their testicles explode and then they die. This put the slightest smile on my face as I started imaging this happening to humans and that Trevv’s balls were currently bouncing off the bedroom walls.

  For the first two months, Jane’s apartment felt like a peaceful sanctuary, a safe house from the madness of the world outside. Until I realized just how often her mother made impromptu visits. One morning I awoke to her instructing a team of people to rip up the carpets and replace them with wooden floors. She’d done this without consulting Jane, just as she’d done when she’d removed all carbohydrates from the pantry and reupholstered several of the living room chairs.

  Jane’s mother is something very special. We always thought Jane was exaggerating the stories about her, but I can say with confidence that she is not. If anything, she is downplaying them. Mrs. Smith, as I still call her, has absolutely no concept of personal boundaries and space. She is also obsessed with trying to find Jane a boyfriend, and as soon as she discovered I was single, too, well, she doubled her efforts. She even asked for personal pictures so she could set up an online dating profile for me. She’d secretly set one up for Jane, who only discovered this by accident when a man recognized her on the street.

  “Try to give me a variety,” she’d said one day after walking into my room unannounced. “Men like women who can be versatile. And make sure you give me a bikini one; those are always the most popular. But not a bikini that say’s you’re easy. The bikini needs to say, ‘I’m modern, classy, and confident but don’t have sex on the first date even though I still expect you to pay for dinner and open the car door for me.’”

  I wasn’t even aware that bikinis spoke.

  Given her mother’s constant presence in our lives, Jane wasn’t offended when I told
her I needed to find a place of my own, not to mention a job. I’d been lounging around aimlessly for ages and I knew it was time to stop. I had this vision that moving into my own place would be a good thing, a positive step in the right direction, and that things would get better after that. Only they didn’t. They got worse.

  The months ahead were pretty much all downhill. A steep, winding downhill where you could easily lose your footing or sprain an ankle, especially if you were wearing heels.

  Luckily I wasn’t wearing heels, nor was I anywhere near a heel, for that matter. Sonja had been right; I couldn’t find another job at a fashion mag. Apparently no one wanted to employ a ruiner of very expensive photo shoots, not to mention an attempted murderer. Yes, the incident had been completely blown out of all rational proportions. The gossipmongers had had a field day with it. Stretching, elaborating, exaggerating, and milking it for all it was worth.

  Of course the fact that no charges were ever brought against me was of no consequence to anyone. Why let facts ruin a perfectly good story, hey?

  Several versions were in circulation. In one, I’d suffered a psychotic break and voices had told me to pick up a knife. And in another, I had been planning on committing a Lorena Bobbitt.

  For those of you who don’t remember the story, Lorena—not unprovoked, mind you—chopped off her husband’s willy, took it for a little drive, and tossed it out of the window into a field. Some hailed her as mad, while others called her a hero. The penis was eventually reattached, and her ex-husband enjoyed a brief career as a porn star. True story!

  But at some stage I knew they would grow tired of me; the fashion industry is fickle that way, especially if a famous model admitted to having bulimia, a substance abuse problem, or showed up on shoot with cellulite.

  I had no desire to go back to the highly stressful world of being a stylist. I wouldn’t have been able to cope with that in my current state. I had also been so vocal about getting out of that industry and moving on to greater things that I felt too embarrassed to admit defeat and failure. Especially since everything else in my life was a failure, too. Besides, dressing people in corporate yet down-to-earth relatable clothes so that they can sell life insurance policies on TV isn’t really my thing.