Worth It

by S. M. Shade

  “Definitely sexy,” he says, clearing his throat while shifting his feet.

  I grin when he walks toward me. It probably won’t be sexy when I try to sit down, but I’ll take the moment. With the hand not holding the rose, he cups my chin, using it to tip my head back, and his lips come down with one of the barest of kisses.

  He pulls back, and I wobble a little. Let’s just blame it on the heels.

  He smiles again before handing me the rose. What do I do with it? Take it with me? Leave it here? What’s rude or acceptable? No guy has ever brought me a rose or flowers of any kind before a date.

  Deciding I can’t carry around a rose, I kiss his cheek and place the rose on the table. “If you’re being sweet, should I worry?”

  He puts a hand over his chest, feigning hurt. “A guy can’t use a romantic gesture without being suspected of something nefarious?”

  I arch an eyebrow, and his grin returns.

  “Come on, pretty girl. Let’s join the party before the natives grow restless. I’m sure Monica is dreading what you might do tonight.”

  “I’ll be on my best behavior,” I say, drawing an “X” over my heart with my index finger.

  I quickly pull on Jill and harness her. It takes away some of the prettiness of the strapless dress, but at the same time, it gives it a bit of a steampunk flair that sort of works.

  I lace my arm through Roman’s, feeling like a blushing girl on her first date, and he leads me down to the dinner. As soon as we reach the massive ballroom that has been turned into a dining room for the night, Roman releases me and pulls out a chair where my name is on the card.

  But his card isn’t on either side of me. There are a few people, including Gretchen, in here, but no one is paying us any attention as they carry on talking about whatever it is they talk about.

  “You can’t leave me here on my own,” I tell him, scowling as he starts to walk away.

  Instead of ditching me, he swipes a card, then he returns and swaps it with the card on my right. After he takes the other card down toward the end of the table, he comes back, and I stare at my seat woefully.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  Deciding not to tell him I’m packed in this dress like a vacuum-sealed ham, I blow all the air from my lungs and start the scary process of lowering myself to my seat. I have to angle myself just right, but I manage to get seated. And hey! I can still breathe… a little.

  “Your sister back?” I ask, trying to find something to say in order to keep him from asking questions about why I may or may not be wheezing a little.

  He settles down and puts his arm around the back of my chair with too much ease.

  “Don’t think she’s coming back. She’s a workaholic like me, and she had no reason to continue taking time off for a wedding she’s not that interested in.”

  “Why’d she come in the first place then?” I muse, taking a sip of the water in front of me.

  “Because I asked her to.”

  I grimace. “And then I stumbled into your room naked and have since occupied the majority of your time.”

  He flashes a grin at me. “She wasn’t upset. She was relieved, if anything. She didn’t want to be here, since she’s not fond of Anderson either.”

  “I like your sister already, then.”

  He laughs under his breath while shaking his head.

  People start filtering in, slowly filling the table until it’s completely full. My mother frowns when she sees Roman beside me, and Mr. Bald Guy is now sitting where Roman was supposed to be. He’s next to a seriously beautiful woman, so I’m wondering if my mother was planning sabotage against my budding romance by playing cupid.

  Ms. Hottie glares over at Baldy, and he glares back. Okay… That’s weird.

  Ignoring it, I happily take a glass of champagne as the waiter starts bringing in various things, salads included. Roman’s fingers start idly tracing circles on the bare skin of my shoulder, and I lean against him, keeping my slant just right, since a ninety degree angle is impossible.

  “You okay?” Roman asks close to my ear.

  I’m not okay. Breathing is getting harder and harder.

  “I’m great!” I lie, forcing the fakest smile in history.

  He doesn’t look convinced, but my mother is standing and trying to get everyone’s attention, taking the focus off me.

  “Thank you, everyone, for joining us tonight.” She takes her husband’s hand, and he smiles while winking at her. It’s the first time I’ve ever noticed him being affectionate publically. “We can’t express to you just how much it means to us to have so many wonderful friends and family.”

  It’s all blah blah blah from there, because I’m getting a little nauseated. Not because she’s spilling sappy words out the ass, but because breathing has now become a hell of a lot harder.

  I slant a little more, giving myself just enough room to breathe a hair easier, but my ass is just barely touching the chair now. Roman arches an eyebrow, but Monica is still talking about how wonderful life has been for our family and yada yada yada.

  “You frigid bitch, it was your fault, not mine!” a man’s voice yells, jolting me.

  A hushed silence falls over the room, and all eyes move down the table to Ms. Hottie and Mr. Baldy.

  Ms. Hottie wags her finger at him. “No! It was your fault! You stayed gone all the time! What was I supposed to do?”

  “You were not supposed to fuck the pool boy!”

  Wow… Cliché much?

  “It was an accident!” she spits out, furious now.

  Oh, this is getting good.

  “Your vagina accidentally fell on his cock and you kept falling on it for seven weeks?” he snaps.

  I burst out laughing, but then smother it immediately when I realize I’m the only one laughing. Not my fault this guy said the same thing I’ve said when people ‘accidentally’ cheat. That’s hilarious!

  Damn people need to grow a sense of humor, since no one wants to laugh.

  “You shouldn’t have hired him! I was lonely, and he wasn’t more concerned with work than my body. I had needs!”

  “I guess scooping leaves out of the pool wasn’t quite as tiresome as defending criminals all day!”

  From there, the woman dissolves into Spanglish that I can’t follow, and he snaps a few more retorts at her. Monica pinches the bridge of her nose before casting a nasty glance in my direction.

  “Oops,” Roman says next to me, and I choke back a laugh.

  The longer I sit, the more pain I find myself in. I’m starting to sweat now, and I lose interest in the heated argument I found so entertaining. That’s when there’s suddenly a loud scream, and once again I’m distracted from the suffocation I’m enduring.

  “There are strawberries!” Jane shouts, frantically scratching her stomach and neck.

  My eyes widen when I see all the welts forming on her face, neck, and arms. Her face is blotchy and red, and her eyes are bugging out in horror.

  “Oh shit,” Roman says under his breath before sniffing his salad. “It’s the dressing!” he says loudly, having to speak over the arguing couple who still are not relenting about whose fault it is that she fucked the pool boy.

  “His name was Justin! Stop calling him the pool boy!” Ms. Hottie shouts loudly.

  “Help me!” Jane yelps as Anderson rifles through her purse in a panic.

  “Like I give a damn what the help’s name was? He was supposed to clean the traps and pool! Not flush your pipes!”

  “She’s allergic to strawberries?” I hiss, looking over at Roman. “Does she have an Epi-Pen?”

  Not that I know what the salad tastes like, because there’s no room for food in this dress! Strawberries sound really good right now, by the way.

  “The help?! The help are people too!”

  “He cleaned the fucking pool! That makes him the pool boy!”

  “Not deathly allergic,” Roman says, grimacing as Jane shrieks loud enough to pierce the ears
of the dead.

  I’m forced to stand when I can’t breathe, but the dress takes one last stab at me. I end up slamming into the floor face first instead of standing when it refuses to give me even an inch of room. Ouch.

  “Shit,” Roman says, jumping up and racing to my side.

  “He was hung like a horse! Unlike that teeny weenie you boast about so much!”

  “Can’t… breathe,” I heave to Roman as he flips me over.

  I think the dress has shrunk, or my body has grown since we came down the stairs. Or maybe I’m just out of strength to keep sucking in.

  Roman panics, trying to turn me back over, possibly to reach the zipper. He stops before succeeding when I cry out, because the dress is digging into my sides now, as though it’s shifted just wrong.

  “My dick is not tiny! It’s not! She’s a lying whore!”

  “I found the rash cream!” Anderson yells.

  “I need the Benadryl!” Jane yells back.

  “I specifically told them no strawberries!” my mother barks.

  “Your dick is so tiny that I had to fake all my orgasms!”

  All I can think about is tearing my dress off as the madness around me ensues. As Roman tries to scoop me up, Jill suddenly makes all my dreams come true. She comes at me like a horny caveman, and grabs the front of my dress with obvious intentions. Material tears, and I gasp as my robo arm hero rips it down the front, stripping it open and turning it into a robe that doesn’t close.

  Silence returns to the room, and I cover my eyes with one hand, as though I’ll disappear if I can’t see them. Roman coughs, and a few perverted whispers sound out from men far too close to the money shot. I groan loudly, which is the only loud sound in the room right now.

  Even the Mad Hatter couple from hell have stopped talking about dick sizes.

  I’m wearing a bra that has little bite marks on the nipples, along with drizzles of blood—no, not real bites or blood, people. All else is see-through on the zombie-inspired bra. Then my panties, oh my panties. They’re white and in bold, red print, they read, “I like it rough,” right on the front.

  The back reads, “be gentle” but no one has seen that yet.

  Bright side? I can breathe again.

  “Really, Kasha?!” my mother snaps.

  “It was a size four! I wear a six!”

  “I thought you were a four! How did you gain so much weight since Christmas?”

  “I was a six then too!”

  I pull down my arm to see Roman is fighting with all his strength not to laugh, as he shrugs out of his suit jacket. I snatch it gratefully, and cover my front as he helps stand me up. As if covering my body from prying eyes has suddenly broken the spell, the craziness resumes.

  “There’s no Benadryl in here!” Anderson barks.

  “There has to be! I always keep some in my purse.”

  “Maybe if you didn’t let just anyone’s dick inside you, nothing this big would seem so small.”

  Baldy totally jerks his pants down, and suddenly there’s a penis in the room. A penis that isn’t necessarily huge, but certainly not small either. It’s also not circumcised.

  I cock my head, staring at it while keeping my front covered. I’ve never seen one with so much foreskin.

  “Eyes up here,” Roman says, smirking when I look at him.

  “See?! It’s teeny!”

  “It’s not tiny,” another woman says all breathy.

  “Put your fucking penis away!” another man shouts to Baldy, then turns to the breathy woman who is fanning herself with her hand. “Stop looking at his penis!”

  Things just devolve from there, and Roman bursts out laughing as the madness just gets madder. I sigh, happy this time that I wasn’t the one who started it. Well, I sort of was, since Roman changed the seats around to be by me. How were we supposed to know a simple seat change would lead to a penis being thrust in people’s faces to prove the size isn’t under scaled?

  Monica drops to a seat, and Heath squeezes her shoulder for support. He looks more amused than upset, but Mom looks like the apocalypse has arrived in the form of lewd behavior and strawberry allergies.

  More arguments break out, and Roman starts guiding me toward the door. I’ve officially been a part of all the worst moments of the wedding so far. Life goals.

  A few curious gazes meet us from people who have gathered around to listen to the craziness going on at the ‘rehearsal’ dinner. We never made it to the rehearsal part. Maybe they should have led with the whole rehearsal thing then moved onto dinner like a normal wedding party.

  “By far the most interesting dinner I’ve ever attended, and we never made it to the entree,” Roman says, laughing under his breath as I awkwardly shift his jacket to cover up the right side of my bra.

  “What? All your dinners don’t consist of two people arguing about the size of a dick and a pool boy? Or a little strawberry allergy chaos? Or maybe your girlfriend’s robot arm stripping her dress off for everyone to see her embarrassing underwear yet again? Never happened before?”

  I realize too late what I’ve said, and Roman’s smile grows as his eyebrows go up. “Girlfriend?”

  Annnnnd now I sound like the creepy chick who is designing a tattoo of his name for her ass. Awesome.

  “Not… I mean… I didn’t mean to… I just—”

  He kisses me to stop the ramble, and I forget I’m holding onto the jacket when he pushes me against the wall on the staircase. In fact, I forget everything. It tends to be an issue, because his lips are laced with pheromones that make me stupid or something.

  I guess I still haven’t scared him away. His weird-o-meter is epically impressive.

  When he finally breaks the kiss, I’m barely able to open my eyes. Now to make the impossible fairytale possible. Right?

  “I’ll order some pizza and we can go to the bonfire,” he says randomly.

  “Pizza sounds… great?” I’m not sure why that sounds like a question, but I do know why I sound confused.

  He smiles and takes my hand. It’s not until a guy almost falls down the stairs while gawking at me that I remember what I’m wearing and jerk Roman’s jacket back over me.

  The guy looks away quickly when Roman glares at him. Awww. A guy glared at another guy for me.

  “I’ll just… um… change clothes before the pizza,” I tell him, still thrown off by how completely out of the blue that was.

  “I’ll wait on you in my room,” he says, brushing his lips over mine again before walking away.

  Sigh.

  I opt for some jeans and the llama shirt because… Yama.

  Snickering, I check my hair and happen to glance out the window. My eyes land on the lone figure who is walking toward the back with a bottle of champagne in her hand.

  I shouldn’t care. I really shouldn’t.

  Cursing myself for caring, I jog out the door, passing Lydia.

  “What happened at the rehearsal dinner?” she calls out.

  “A naked penis, more underwear viewing, and a strawberry breakout!” I say over my shoulder as I hurry down the stairs.

  “So the usual,” I hear her say through laughter.

  As I make it past the ballroom—that is still in complete disarray—I shake my head. She’s just going to yell at me and blame this all on me, so I don’t know why I’m chasing after her.

  It takes me a minute to find her, but I finally spot her on a gazebo that is near the edge of the woods. She doesn’t even look surprised to see me as she sips her champagne from her flute, not saying a word.

  “I just wanted to see if you’re okay,” I tell her, standing just outside the gazebo—out of striking distance and far enough away to have time to dodge the bottle or glass if she loses it.

  “I’m just tired,” she says on a sigh.

  She sounds… defeated. But Mom never sounds defeated. Imperious? Absolutely. Obnoxious? All the time. But defeated? Not Monica. Never.

  Cautiously, I move up the few steps and sit be
side her on the wicker sofa. She hands me the bottle of champagne, and I arch an eyebrow.

  “I don’t have another glass.”

  Shrugging, I take the champagne, and very elegantly sip it straight from the bottle.

  She sighs heavily while continuing to take hefty gulps from her glass before finally pulling the bottle back for a refill.

  “For the record, I had no idea that couple would dissolve into a penis riot,” I decide to point out.

  I expect her to chastise me or huff some indignant answer, but instead, Monica—the humorless queen of stone masks and straight faces—suddenly erupts into laughter. In fact, she laughs so hard she loses her breath and has to wipe tears from her eyes.

  She sighs long and hard when she comes down from her giggle-high. I’m staring at her like someone has invaded her body.

  “I honestly expected as much. You’ve never failed to liven a party up.”

  She’s drunk. Totally wasted. Or maybe that champagne has ecstasy in it too. No way would she say that otherwise.

  “I didn’t know they’d argue, and technically Roman did it.” Why does it sound like I’m tattling?

  “You hate me, don’t you?” she asks abruptly. Like there’s zero preamble. One second we’re talking about the penis-arguing couple and card-swapping, and the next she’s hitting me with that question.

  “I don’t hate you,” I tell her uneasily, possibly lying. I’ve hated her a little over the years, after all.

  “But you hate that I left your father and blame me for the mess he is today.”

  “You cheated on him, broke his heart, and then married Heath the second you could,” I point out dryly.

  “I wish I hadn’t cheated. I wish I’d just left him without breaking up our home as terribly as I did. It cost me the relationship I had with you. It felt like I was forcing you to come see me. But I don’t regret leaving him.”

  “Because he wasn’t rich,” I add, reminding her where her priorities lie.

  “That’s not why,” she says, looking at me hard. “Your father never loved me until I was gone. He only thinks he loves me now because he lost me. Loss is a more profoundly beautiful thing to an artist than love can ever strive to be.”

  I shake my head adamantly. “That’s not true. Dad loved you. I remember it.”