by Mia Madison
Jenny looks amazing in her simple cream gown decorated with tiny pearl beads, set off with a beautiful bouquet of creamy white roses and freesias. The happiness radiates off her as she walks down the aisle. No bridesmaid seems to be missing or covered in nail polish stains. The four girls look lovely in pale blue. Crisis averted. I hope that I’m wrong about marriage in Jenny’s case, and she really will live happily ever after with her guy. He seems to adore her, anyway, from what I’ve heard.
I glance at Ewan, and he is watching the bride the same as everyone else in the church, but there’s an unreadable expression on his face. I can’t think that the emotion of the wedding has gotten to him. But when I glance at him again, he seems uneasy somehow, almost horrified. He catches me looking and smiles, squeezing my hand. Does he have a hidden wedding phobia or something?
The ceremony trundles on, as familiar as ever, the hymns, the vows. No worries there. Ewan joins in with the rest of the congregation, and I relax. We’ll soon be outside. I must have been imagining that look on his face.
But when the wedding party go off to sign the register, Ewan whispers in my ear, “Sorry. I just...I’ll talk to you later.” And before I can say anything, he’s gone.
He must have needed air. It’s pretty hot in the church. I expect to find him outside, but I don’t see him anywhere when the ceremony is over and we all go out.
Mom comes up to me with one of her sisters. “I was just telling aunty June about your new man. Where is he?”
I have to say he’s just gone to the car for something. But when I go to find the car, it’s not where we parked it, and then my heart drops. What happened?
I text him, “Where are you?”
“Sorry I had to leave. Please give my apologies.”
That’s it? He’s gone?
CHAPTER 16
Ewan
Oh fuck! I can’t believe it. Not here today of all days.
The wedding car chauffeur gives me a funny look when I go outside. “Everything all right, mate?”
I nod, but I’m far from all right.
I get in the car and drive away as calmly as possible. I see him in my rear-view mirror, looking at me curiously, but I’m out of there. And it’s only once I’m well away from the church that I feel I can breathe again. That was close.
When Lara’s text comes through, I stop at the side of the road and send a message. I hate what I’m doing to her today, but it’s nothing on what might have happened at the wedding once everyone was free to mingle outside the church.
What will she say about today? About how I basically ran out on her at the ceremony? Leaving her there to answer awkward questions from her family, the ones who want to pair her up with guys at weddings. They had better leave her alone today.
Oh, fuck. She’s not going to take this well. But I hope she’ll forgive me when she hears why I had to leave. I just hate that I hurt her at all.
The wedding reception will go on all day until late. My overnight bag is still at her mother’s house. I’ll have to just leave it for now. I don’t need an audience when I try to make it up to Lara. There’s no point in hanging around waiting to find time with her alone. There’s too much risk in that, not for me, but for the wedding. I’ll go and pick Lara up, if she lets me, tomorrow. There’s nothing else I can do.
I drive home. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
CHAPTER 17
Lara
Even when I text back, “What’s wrong?” to his message saying he had to go, all I get is a message saying, “I’ll explain later. I’m sorry.”
I’m left mumbling something about him not feeling great to Mom and everyone else she’s told about my new man, which is everyone at the wedding she knows—pretty much the whole party.
If I have to explain once when someone asks “Where’s your gorgeous new man? I must meet him,” I have to explain a hundred times. The wedding will never end. And I’m acutely aware of him being missing the whole time. The photographs outside the church including the group shot he won’t be in. The reception where I have an empty place setting by my side. The dancing where my only partners are my uncles and cousins.
Instead of being just the single one who needs a partner, I’m now the single one who invites a guy who runs out on her. Just what I need for a great day. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted any guy to do what he’s supposed to. I thought he was different, but he’s just like all the rest, most of them, anyway. Maybe Jenny did get all the luck today. The great marriage, the great husband. If so, good for her.
When I get back to my old childhood room well after midnight, it’s a relief to escape that nightmare of a wedding, but I know I’m not going to sleep anytime soon. That room should be a comfort, but it’s not.
It brings back all the fighting that went on downstairs they didn’t think I knew about. All the bitter words I overheard and the anguish I felt at my parents screaming down each other’s throats before it stopped and Dad was gone. For good.
I was never enough to stop them and not enough to get Dad to ever come back. Mom was ill after that. She went into the hospital for months. My aunties looked after me a few weeks here, a few weeks there, and I was warned never to mention Dad again or Mom might end up right back in the hospital. And so I never did.
*
Ewan texts me early the next day, “I’ll come and pick you up. About ten?” as if nothing happened. He has got to be kidding me.
I’m tempted to say “okay.” I want to know what he’s going to say. How he can explain what he did? But I won’t give him the satisfaction of thinking I need him to get home. I organized a lift with one of Jenny’s friends when I thought he was gone, one who I hope knows nothing about the reason I need a ride.
I send a text back to him. “No thanks. I’ve got a lift,” and let him stew, if he even cares. I’ll have his bag. I’m not going to go out of my way to get it back to him. He can work it out if he wants it back.
Jenny’s friend, Rebecca, is full of chat about the wedding and the dresses and the cake and everything else that went on. It turns out she’s getting married herself in a few months, so she is totally immersed in the whole bride-to-be experience. I don’t have to say much, which is just as well. I don’t feel like talking.
Toby is with my neighbor. I go and fetch him as soon as I get back. At least my dog is happy to see me, jumping up at me and trying to lick my face, and I take him for a walk in the woods where everything looks just the same as it did before I left for the weekend. But I feel drained by the whole experience. I don’t think anything will ever be the same for me.
When we get back, I see Ewan’s blue Audi parked in front of my cottage, and Ewan is leaning against his car. I flounce past him to open my door.
“Let me explain,” he says. “I’m really sorry I had to do what I did. I had no choice.”
CHAPTER 18
Ewan
“I guess you just want your bag back. I have it inside,” she says, unable to look at me, but I see the hurt in her expression, and it tears me apart.
“This is not about my bag. Fuck the bag. I came to see you, to explain. Can I come in?”
She pauses for a moment before opening the door. I’m glad she lets me in, because this is not the kind of conversation I want to have on the doorstep. But she stops in the narrow hall, blocking me from going any farther. Toby races through our legs into the kitchen, unaware of how serious this is.
Turning, she says, “Couldn’t you have told me what was going on at the wedding, instead of leaving me with all the explaining to do and nothing to say?”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“So you keep saying. But sorry doesn’t change anything. Just take your bag and go. I’m not interested anymore in what you have to say. You’re just like all the rest. We’re done here.” She picks up my bag lying under the hall table, drops it at my feet and walks away.
“I’m not done.”
“You are. I’m not listening to your lies, so you may as well go.�
�
“I couldn’t let the bride see me.”
“What?”
“Jenny, the bride. I couldn’t let her see me. I couldn’t go to her wedding.”
“Why the hell not?”
“We went to high school together and...”
She sighs as if exasperated or exhausted or both. “I went to school with a lot of people. Doesn’t make me want to turn tail and run from their weddings. At least not any more than other weddings.”
“We went out with each other for five weeks.”
“You’re kidding me? I’d rather you hadn’t dated all my relatives, but that’s a pathetic excuse. You went out for five weeks, years ago? Do you think anyone cares about that?”
“Jenny did. She...I...I was a kid of sixteen when we were dating, and I didn’t want to be tied down. I didn’t know what I wanted, but it wasn’t Jenny. When I ended it, she tried to kill herself, took an overdose, ended up in the hospital.”
There’s a look of horror and disbelief on Lara’s face. “She what? I didn’t know anything about that. Why didn’t I know?”
“I guess it was hushed up at the time. I don’t think they blamed me, and I didn’t even know at first. It was only when I bumped into her best friend a few years later that I found out.
“We were reminiscing about school, as you do, and I mentioned Jenny, wondering where she ended up. She never came back to school after the summer we broke up. I’d just shrugged and assumed her family had moved or she went to another school or something.”
“You didn’t know until years later?”
“No. Her friend couldn’t believe I didn’t know. But she’d been told not to say anything back then, and I don’t think anyone must have known outside Jenny’s immediate circle. It would have gone around the school like wildfire, for sure. Her friend only told me then because none of us were still in touch.”
“Oh god, poor Jenny. I didn’t know anything.”
“I was pretty cut up about it when I found out. But by then, she was okay. Her friend told me she was happy now, and there was no lasting harm done. Just seeing her at her wedding...”
“You didn’t want to show up and bring that all back?”
“Exactly. There was no way I could do that on her wedding day. Imagine! And I didn’t feel like I could say all that by text. It’s not something you could have given as an excuse for me leaving anyway.”
“Couldn’t you have pretended to have appendicitis or something? It would have been less awkward than just going. I had to say you were ill.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to lie to you. What disease did you give me?”
“I should have said you had something horrible. Montezuma’s revenge out of both ends.” She gives a wry smile. “Oh, I can’t get over Jenny doing that. Mom said she thought Jenny would never get married. She was very shy and didn’t go out much. I just thought she was sensible. And then she met Richard.”
“She did look very happy. I was glad. I didn’t even know I felt so guilty about all that until I saw her. What did your mother say when I left?”
CHAPTER 19
Lara
He wants to know what everyone thought, and I don’t feel like sugar-coating it. “You know mothers. She came over all protective, called you all kinds of names. Some of them unrepeatable. She said you were just like my father. Which is no compliment, because she hates him and hasn’t mentioned him for years. I thought she blotted him from her mind. But apparently not.”
“And do you think I’m like him?”
“You’re nothing like him. Not even close.”
“Why?”
I look up at him. “You came back.”
He pulls a face. “I’m sorry I made you think I wouldn’t come back. And sorry about your dad. I’m sure I’m not flavor of the month with your family.”
“No. My aunties have got a contract out on you. Would Jenny’s family have recognized you if you’d stayed?”
“I don’t think so. We never hung out around her house.”
Ugh. I have a horrible thought. “Did you...did you and she...?”
“No. We didn’t. She was only fifteen. Not that I was an angel, but we didn’t. One thing I’m happy about in all this.”
“Well, she’s happy now too, so that’s good.” I can’t equate the smiling, head-over-heels Jenny from yesterday with a distraught teenager in so much in pain she wanted to end everything.
He opens his arms to give me a hug, but I’m not ready for that. He drops his hands. “Do you still want me to go?”
“Yes. I think you’d better.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Oh yes, I believe you. I don’t think you’d lie about something like that.”
“Then why can’t we pick up where we left off?”
“The thing is, since I met you, it feels like my life is out of control. One minute we’re having a laugh at the beach, the next we’re friends with benefits and then I’m at a wedding feeling worse than I felt at any of the other weddings I’ve been to in the past. I think I’d rather go back to how thing were. Peaceful. Calm. Just me and Toby.”
I’m not sure I can ever go through a day like yesterday again, feeling as bad as I felt when he ran out on me. My whole life has been up and down like a roller-coaster since he came into it.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“Then can I just say that I can’t do the same. There’s no way I can put this particular genie back in the bottle. There’s no going back for me.”
He picks up his bag, and I can’t stop a little sob coming out of my mouth.
That stops him in his tracks. “Fuck this,” he says, his bag falling to the ground with a thump, and before I know it, he’s kissing me, his mouth hard and forceful, taking what he wants, unyielding, his strong arms holding me against the solid mass of his chest.
“Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll leave you alone for good,” he growls, pausing for a moment, as I make a feeble attempt to push him away.
But I can’t tell him to go, and he knows it. There’s no hiding how I feel from him.
“Right then, in that case, we’re going back where we left off.” He picks me up and carries me to the bedroom, laying me down on top of the bed. He leans over me and kisses me gently. I’m quivering with fear, with need, with longing for him. “Are you going to tell me to go again?”
“No. Not this time.”
“Good. In that case, you’re way overdressed for the occasion.”
“What?”
“I want you naked, no place to hide. I’m going to kiss every inch of your body and then I’m going to fuck you—hard.”
I gulp, my heart hammering in my chest. He kisses me again and then lets that thought sink in, and it does, right from my brain down my spine, and I swear I start trembling even more with anticipation. He doesn’t know it’s my first time. And now I don’t know whether to tell him.
“Still want me to stay?” he asks.
I nod. I don’t think I can speak.
“Show me then,” he says, standing back a little, so he can see all of me.
My hands go for the buttons at the front of my shirt, and I fumble to undo them, as he watches me. I blush as I unhook my bra. Can I go on?
“Are you sure you want me to stay?” he prompts.
Pulling at my clothes, I bare my breasts to him. I must be scarlet by now. I feel the heat coming off my face. But I want his mouth on me again. I want his hands all over me. I don’t want him to go.
“Let me help you out,” he says, unbuttoning my jeans. He unzips them and plants kisses down my stomach as he pulls them down and off my legs. Stripping them away from me, he throws them in a heap on the floor along with my socks and shoes, and my tangled shirt and bra.
“You look beautiful lying there, but the rest has to go too.” He pulls my panties down and off, landing a kiss right on my mound, and then he lifts his head. I’m naked and feeling as vulnerable as I’
ve ever felt in my life, his eyes on me. He sits down on the bed beside me and pulls me onto his lap, and I curl into him.
“Just had to be sure you weren’t suddenly going to take off to walk the dog,” he says, kissing my hair, my nose, my cheek, holding me against him, his hands on my back holding me tight.
“No, I won’t do that.”
“I thought you were with me last time, so responsive, and then...”
“Yes. I know. I’m sorry. It felt like we went too far too fast.”
“But you’ve done this before, right?”
I can’t lie to him. “No.”
“You’ve never...”
“No.”
He hugs me tighter than ever. “I knew you were younger than me, but I thought...you’ve been to college and everything.”
“I never met anyone I wanted to sleep with.”
“And now?”
“I have.”
“I feel honored.”
“I don’t want to run away this time.”
“Good, but if you’re not hundred percent with this, we can stop. I won’t be mad.”
“Ewan...”
“Yes?”
“Please, just forget it’s my first time and kiss me.”
CHAPTER 20
Ewan
I’m her first! She asks me to forget but, how can I? I always wanted the first time with her to be special, but now even more so. She’s sitting naked in my lap after I stripped her. I wanted to teach her who’s boss, to have her do my bidding, but fuck! I didn’t know it was her first time or I’d never have done that. I kiss her gently, tenderly on the mouth, and she kisses me back.