Almost a Bride

by Jo Watson

  Tess rushed forward with a kind of faux concern that was almost believable. Almost. “Annie, my God, are you okay?”

  Let’s review. Was I okay? Standing in my (nonmatching) underwear in front of the woman who had kinky sex with my boyfriend, in our bed. Who broke up my relationship and destroyed my self-esteem and any confidence I once had about my “boudoir” performance. Who was perfect, and hot, and made me look short and fat and plain.

  “I’m fine, thanks, Tess, thanks for asking,” I managed before walking into the dressing room. I closed the door behind me and collapsed on the floor.

  “It really was a lovely dress, though,” Tess said through the door. “If I were you I would take another one. I’m sure Boyson can help you get into it.”

  “Boyden.”

  “What?”

  “His name’s Boyden.”

  “Oh, right. Of course. Isn’t that what I said? Oopsie.”

  How was this woman even a lawyer? She came across as someone who had an IQ of a sea urchin. I pulled my old dress on, grabbed my bag, and walked out of the dressing room trying to salvage the little dignity I had left. Tess was still standing there admiring herself in the full-length mirror.

  “So Boyd seems nice.” She smiled happily at me.

  How was it that she didn’t feel awkward in front of me? If I had done what she had, I would be so wracked with guilt that I wouldn’t be able to look the woman in the eye. But she was a different breed, it seemed. Different species perhaps?

  “So tell me, how did you and Boyd meet? I must know. I love romantic stories.”

  Oh shit! Chris and I hadn’t really discussed the logistics of our “relationship.” What was I supposed to say? I was still wracking my brain to come up with the right answer when the assistant returned with a light blue boob tube dress—no straps involved.

  “Try zis. More suited to you, I think.” Her tone made me want to smack her over the head with a baguette.

  I grabbed the dress and ducked into the changing room. I was actually able to get this one on so I opened the door and came out.

  “Mmmm.” The shop attendant looked at me and tilted her head a few times. “It is better, yes. But maybe it’s a bit…” She looked at Tess, who was also tilting her head from side to side, examining me like a creature in the zoo.

  “Maybe a tiny bit too small.” Tess emphasized the word tiny, I guess to try to cushion the blow of being told I was basically fat.

  Oh God! As if this couldn’t get any worse. Tess then looked down at my stomach and I instinctively pulled it in as much as I could.

  “Oui, maybe one size bigger.” She started looking on the rack for another one when I jumped in.

  “NO!” The word came out a little too loudly and the shop assistant spun around. “It’s fine. I don’t want another one. I just want to pay for the other dress and go. Thanks.”

  I felt so desperate to get out of this shop, and away from the prying eyes of Tess and her shop assistant sidekick. I dove back into the dressing room and was only too happy to slip into my crappy dress again. God, I was mortified and I felt like I was about to crack.

  Okay, so I know I’ve put on ten pounds this year. And I know nearly every one has found its way to my middle section. But to have it pointed out to me by a bitchy shop assistant and my ex-boyfriend’s mistress, well, that’s just plain rude. Suddenly I was filled with a mad anger.

  I glared at Tess. “Actually, Tessssss”—I hissed the s out like a snake—“I’m not okay. Okay?”

  She looked at me as if I was speaking Greek.

  “I am not okay with you and Trevv being here in this hotel on this island. I’m not okay with what you and Trevv did, either.” The shop attendant turned and looked at us now. “And I am not okay that you are ten sizes smaller than me and that your hair is so fucking shiny. Okay?”

  For the first time ever I saw something soft in Tess’s eyes. Was that remorse? Was this woman capable of such an emotion, or was it my imagination? Was I just projecting my feelings onto her, because I was so desperate for her to feel them?

  Guilt and shame for what she had done to me. For how she’d destroyed my life and destroyed the person I used to be. She’d done more than just sleep with my boyfriend, she had stolen everything from me: my confidence, my job, all the dreams and ambitions I once had. They had all been ripped out from under me and I was still struggling to get them all back, no matter what I did. The old Annie seemed so far away right now, and I didn’t like the new one that had moved in.

  Tess opened her mouth and paused, and my eyes dropped to her lips, willing the words out of her.

  “We were very upset you had to find out that way. It wasn’t meant to happen like that.”

  I waited, wanting to hear more. I stared at her lips, but they didn’t move.

  “And?” I urged.

  “And what?” She looked genuinely confused.

  “Really? Is that all you have to say? Is that it?” I was still holding on to this idea of a grand apology. But, like Trevv, she seemed totally oblivious to the feelings of others. I shook my head. It was like speaking to a wall.

  “Whatever,” I said as I walked toward the door of the shop.

  “Annie,” Tess called after me and I turned. “I use a macadamia nut oil conditioner on it.”

  “On what?”

  “My hair.” She twirled a strand between her fingers.

  I blinked at her a few confused times. What the hell was I meant to do with that little nugget of info? Be grateful and pleased that she had let me in on a beauty secret like a friend might do when they discover the perfect lipstick? Maybe I should tell her about my amazing sun cream and then we can have a slumber party and braid each other’s hair and talk about kissing boys?

  And then she extended the strangest olive branch ever. “You can borrow it if you like. It will definitely help with the dullness.”

  And now I had dull hair, too! I turned and walked out of the shop feeling worse than I had in a while. In fact, I felt about as shitty as I had the day my life had exploded. I felt completely deflated and defeated once again. That little spark of confidence that I’d felt this morning was gone. She’d taken it away from me once more. Why the fuck did I let her have so much power over me?

  The minute Chris saw me heading toward him at the bar, he gave a little whistle and wiggled his eyebrows at me. But it wasn’t enough to cheer me up. I sat down next to him and slumped into my chair.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked in his best suave, charming Casanova voice. Under normal circumstances, I might have laughed.

  “Chris. Do you think I look fat?”

  He burst out laughing, and I wasn’t sure how to take that. “Wow. Look at the two of us. Just like a real couple.”

  “I’m not joking. And does my hair lack luster?”

  His laughter grew but then suddenly stopped when he must have noticed the distinctly unamused look on my face.

  “And since you’ve seen them, practically fondled them, do my breasts lack perkiness?”

  “Annie Anne, you have great breasts.”

  I slumped over and placed my head on the bar counter and let out the loudest sigh.

  “Annie”—I felt a hand on my back—“you look amazing. Seriously.”

  I regarded him, my face still pressed against the bar.

  “Really?”

  Chris nodded and then reached down, brushing the hair out of my face. “Aren’t redheads meant to have more fun anyway?”

  “That’s blondes.” I sat up straight. “Or in my case, shiny, raven-haired women. Are you still going to buy me that that drink, by the way?”

  “Whatever you want, my dear,” he said with a smile.

  “And don’t go easy on the rum this time.”

  * * *

  Two exotic cocktails later, a slightly tipsier disposition and an hour spent in Chris’s company had made me forget all about the incident in the shop. I really did have fun with him. What was not fun, however, wa
s trying to navigate the bridge across the pool in my current state.

  “I’m not shure this is such a good look for me,” I said to Chris, very aware of the slightest little slur in that sentence. I was hoping Chris hadn’t heard it. But of course he had.

  “If I wasn’t shuch a nice guy I could totally take advantage of you right now, Annie Anne.”

  “Get your head out of the gutter and just help me over the bridge.” I held my hands out to him, thinking he would just support me across it. Instead he scooped me up in his arms and carried me. Shocked, I let out a shriek of surprise.

  “This is so not dignified,” I screeched as he walked me over the bridge. I wrapped my hands around his neck so as not to lose my grip and suddenly found myself really liking it. I liked the close proximity to him. I liked the way he was so strong and was carrying me as if I was light as a feather (despite previous references to my weight). I tightened my arms around him and realized I hadn’t been this close to a guy in ages.

  He carried me all the way to our room, which was totally unnecessary and caught the eye of a few passing people. But hey, I wasn’t objecting. After making a quick joke about carrying me over the threshold, he popped me down gently on the couch.

  “Thanks for that,” I said.

  “Hey, what are fake boyfriends for?”

  “So, I think I might go for an afternoon nap.” I pointed to my room.

  “Do you think you can climb the stairs, or should I carry you to your bed?” His eyes flashed with a mischievous wickedness, and I put my hand up in the air to stop him.

  “Down, boy!” I gave him one last smile before climbing the stairs.

  “Just shout if you need someone to keep you company,” he called after me as I threw myself down onto the soft bed.

  I lay there looking up at the ceiling as a thought ran screaming through my mind. It ran back and forth until I could no longer ignore it. Do I want him to keep me company? I sat up and looked at the door. It seemed to call to me. “Open me, let Chris in.”

  I was a little bit tipsy, a little bit—no, a lot—sexually attracted to him, and I was seconds away from walking out that door, down those stairs, and demanding that he did more than just keep me company.

  Fuck it.

  I threw myself out the door and down the stairs as quickly as I could in case something stopped me.

  “Chris!” I said loudly the second my foot flew off the final stair. He turned and looked up at me from his computer.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Who was I kidding?

  The words came out as insecurity and self-doubt came rushing in.

  “I’m going to take a nap.”

  “Okay,” he said, looking confused as hell. He went back to his computer and I was left looking at the back of him. I rushed upstairs silently cursing myself. I crawled into bed and closed my eyes.

  * * *

  When I woke up, it was dusk. The temperature was cooler and the air was tinged with a mauve that seemed to melt into pale yellow. I must have slept the entire afternoon away.

  A frantic tick, tick, tick, ticking was coming from downstairs, and I went to investigate.

  Chris was seated at a table, three big empty coffee cups in front of him, wearing a large pair of reading glasses. His laptop was open, his iPad was lit up like a Christmas tree, and he was typing faster than I’d ever seen anyone type before.

  I watched in silence; he was chuckling to himself, and every now and then he paused for a moment or two, before whispering a few words out loud. He was so wrapped up in his own world that it felt like a sin to interrupt.

  But as my foot reached the bottom stair, it creaked. He turned around immediately and looked up at me with a kind of manic intensity, and then practically slammed his computer closed.

  “I see you got inspired?” I said, indicating the now-closed computer.

  His face scrunched up into a look that can only be described as sheepish. For a second he looked shy. Coy. He was probably one of these creative types that got bashful about his work.

  “Yeah, I got inspired.”

  “Read some to me.” I’d never read a movie script before. It sounded exciting.

  “No. I never read to people while I’m still writing.” He was firm.

  “Can’t you make an exception for your wonderful girlfriend?”

  He shook his adamantly. “Not even for you.”

  I let out a sigh, “Oh well…So what do you want to do now…boyfriend?” I asked playfully, collapsing into the most absurdly comfortable couch my derrière had ever had the pleasure of sitting on.

  Chris came over and joined me. “Personally,” he said, “I could quite happily get room service and watch movies all night.”

  Room service and movies? It just sounded so…pedestrian. Like dry toast and bland, milky tea. I could do that any day of the week. Why would I do that on my tropical island paradise vacation? But the more I sat there trying to hype myself up to do something more exciting, I felt the undeniable tug of the couch’s gravity—and the further I sank into its unbelievable comfort, the more the idea started appealing to me. So I found a compromise.

  “How about, instead, we eat dinner on the roof and look out over the sea.”

  “We could do that,” Chris said, reaching for the room service menu.

  The view from the roof was spectacular. By the time we were up there with our food, the sun was already setting. Shafts of warm golden light shot through the sky like those beams you find outside nightclubs. The sea was now a pale violet hue; it was as if the two colors—amber and blue—had mixed to create the shimmery color that was now rippling across the surface of the water. The palms and trees were tinged with a soft orange hue, and one small, faint star was poking its way into the sky. We both sat at the table in silent appreciation.

  “That’s a pretty crappy view.” Funnyman Chris clearly never let an opportunity for sarcasm and razor-sharp wit pass him by. “Disgusting, in fact,” he added with a repulsed cringe.

  And again I found myself laughing. The way he seemed to find the funny side to everything was refreshing. It was interesting and entertaining and unique, and he was just so, so—

  I stopped laughing and found myself staring at him as I was thinking about what exactly he was. He, too, had stopped laughing and his eyes came up to meet mine. My stomach instantly constricted. The way we were looking at each other in that moment was something…else. There was nothing friendly, casual, or mundane about this look. Nothing “Yo, yo, buddy, what up?” No. There was definitely something very other about it.

  I had enough self-awareness to know that I found him attractive, but I found lots of guys attractive and I didn’t get a stiletto-in-the-stomach feeling when they looked at me.

  I cleared my throat.

  It looked like the moment had gotten uncomfortable for him, too, because his hands were unnecessarily moving through his hair and letting it fall back into his face, which just intensified my desire to keep staring.

  “So perhaps we should get to know each other a bit now that we’re in a relationship and all,” he said, putting his feet up on the chair in front of him. I could see he was trying to act cool and casual again. It was only half working.

  “Okay. I suppose we should. Let’s play a game of twenty questions, then. I’ll go first.”

  “Oh God, no.” Chris slapped his hand on the table. “Please, that’s so Cosmopolitan magazine, ‘How to Know Your Boyfriend Better,’ ‘Is Your Boyfriend a Moron or a Keeper,’ ‘Is He Willing to Let You Pick Out His Clothes,’ and ‘Does He Love His Mother More Than You.’”

  “You sound like you read Cosmopolitan magazine.”

  Chris flinched a little in his chair.

  “Oh my God—you read Cosmo!”

  “I have to read it for my job, okay? I need to understand the truly un-understandable complexities of the female psyche!”

  I burst
out laughing. “You read Cosmo!”

  “Only little bits.” Chris smiled with such coyness that I almost felt compelled to jump across the table and hug him.

  “Okay, fine…twenty questions it is.” He folded his arms in mock defeat.

  I sat back in my chair for a moment and contemplated the questions I might ask him. There were a million things I wanted to know about him. I decided to start with the fundamentals…

  “Where do you live?”

  “LA.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “LA. My grandparents moved there from Germany.”

  “Siblings?”

  “One brother, one sister.”

  “Favorite color?”

  “Mmmm, blue.”

  “Favorite food?”

  “Chinese. Definitely Chinese.”

  “Favorite car?”

  “Porsche.”

  “Do you have one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you rich?”

  “I do okay.” I regarded him quickly. For a guy that drove a Porsche, he was completely down-to-earth. Not like Trevv.

  “Hobbies?”

  “Watching movies.”

  “Favorite movie of all time?”

  “Too many to choose from.”

  “Favorite author?” I felt like I was seriously running out of questions now.

  “Dr. Seuss.”

  “The children’s book writer?” This answer had surprised me.

  “You clearly haven’t read Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”

  I shook my head.

  “I think you’d like it.”

  “Favorite vacation spot?”

  “Definitely Mauritius now.” He flashed me a loaded look and smile. “Even though I hate the water.” His smile grew even more and, as if it was somehow connected to mine with an invisible string, my lips followed suit. Suddenly I feel a bit silly, giddy, reduced to some prepubescent version of myself.

  I suddenly forgot what we were doing…Oh, questions. Getting to know him. Getting to know Chris, my fake boyfriend.

  “Facebook or Twitter?” I asked when the smile finally petered out enough for me to move my lips again.