by Hadena James
No one said anything. Alex tried to hide her smile. Kenzie refused to meet my eyes, instead turning to stare at Lucy. Lucy had the grace to look somewhat guilty. She stared at Alex. Zeke and Lucy had originally tricked me into taking on Zeke as a roommate well after he had been good and divorced. Almost everyone knew it was all a misunderstanding that, originally, we couldn’t make my mother understand. Now, we couldn’t make either mother understand, so we were getting married. I was sure this made us the most pathetic couple on the planet. Zeke didn’t seem to mind. I kept trying to think of ways to get out of it, but I was becoming more and more convinced that not even death would get me a reprieve.
“I am not going to be able to get into my wedding dress with a bandage on my shoulder,” I reminded them.
“Damn,” Melina covered her mouth. My mother almost never swore.
“Uh, hello, what about my purse? My gun? It was my favorite gun. And you guys are acting like it can just be replaced. Knowing that it was stolen in Nadine’s presence it will probably end up being the murder weapon in a homicide/suicide, but if you want to continue talking about the wedding, that’s fine,” Alex huffed.
“Sorry, Alex,” Ivan gave her a sheepish look.
“There were three of them,” Alex told Ivan. “The last one stole my purse and ran out. It had my gun, my driver’s license, my private detective ID, all my credit cards, my house keys, and the new security codes for Nadine’s building.”
“Please tell me the gun is registered,” Ivan spoke very quietly.
“Of course the gun is registered,” Alex had the grace to look offended.
“Purse snatching isn’t really something I specialize in,” Ivan shrugged. “Your gun will eventually turn up, probably somewhere bad. We’ll do a theft report for all of it, but you shouldn’t hold your breath about getting it back.”
“Damn, I really liked that gun,” Alex sighed.
“May I go to the hospital now?” I asked.
The ER ran me through X-Rays and a CT scan before proclaiming that in a week or so, I’d be fine. The bullet had managed to miss everything of importance. It had torn through some muscle and some skin, but that seemed to be all. Then a doctor, who had my deepest sympathy, attempted to dress the wound while my mother stood over his shoulder giving him instructions on how to make the dressing as small as possible.
When we arrived home, Alex, Kenzie and Telisa were at my kitchen table, eating the left over cake and sugar cookies. They were also giggling like mad. I was pretty sure it was at my expense or maybe I was just getting paranoid.
“Where’s Aunt Olga?” I asked, sitting down.
“She went home with Ivan. The guys are all staying at various locations, have to keep you and Zeke apart from now until the wedding,” Alex giggled at me.
I wanted to tell her where to shove it. Or say something worse. Since I couldn’t, I took a bite of her cake and forked it into my mouth.
“We’ll have to go have your dress refitted tomorrow. I’ll call her and tell her we have an emergency,” my mother grabbed her own slice of cake. The “her” she referred to was a cousin of mine that did custom dresses. No expense was being spared, luckily, most of it was coming out of Zeke’s pocket. I blamed him for the mess we were in. If he had just stood up to my mother on the first day, we wouldn’t be getting married now.
Of course, after meeting his mother, I understood why he hadn’t. She was just as determined and head strong. I liked her.
“She can’t remove the bandage for the wedding?” Telisa asked.
“No, the doctor said she would need to wear it for at least a week. It has to be changed every day until the drainage stops,” my mother seemed to like her too.
“And I suppose being in a white dress with no sleeves, it would be bad if she suddenly started bleeding during the ceremony,” Telisa sighed.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” my mother responded. “That would be horrific. The bride bleeding all over the place. We will have to do something about getting her sleeves and giving them some extra fluff to cover the bandage.”
Alex and Kenzie both snickered at this. I gave them a look that should have dropped them dead in their spots, but they survived it, so I got my own piece of cake. I should have gotten something very crunchy so I couldn’t hear the conversation over the sound of my teeth grinding food.
“We should change her shoes. If she wears heels, she is more likely to rock when she is standing and open the wound,” Telisa continued.
“Flats would be better anyway, she’s a little bit accident prone,” Melina responded.
“Maybe we should have a train that starts at her shoulders, but as a separate piece, then if she starts bleeding, it will be less noticeable.”
“Good idea, we could secure it to the shoulders at the seams, but leave the rest of it unconnected to the dress. Have someone stand behind her and hold it up some.” As my mother spoke, all I could imagine was Wonder Woman in a wedding dress wearing her cape with Underdog holding it up. I tried not to giggle at the thought and ended up choking on a piece of cake. It flew across the room and hit Kenzie. Kenzie made a grunting noise and tossed the half chewed cake to the ground where Baldur promptly licked it up.
“Wait, the extra weight might be a problem,” Telisa said as if nothing had just happened.
“I’m going to bed,” I announced, standing up and throwing my fork into the kitchen sink. It missed, ricocheted off the counter and landing with a splat on the floor. Baldur rushed to it, but was beat by Loki who inhaled the fork and spit it back onto the floor after he sucked all the cake off of it.
“Now you have to replace the fork. That’s why we don’t throw silverware,” my mother automatically told me without looking at me.
I ignored her and went to my room. A few seconds later, Kenzie and Alex were with me, snuggled into the blankets. Both of them were still giggling.
“What do you want?” I asked them.
“You are getting cranky in your old age,” Kenzie grinned.
“You mean as I get closer to being married,” I grumped at her.
“Yep,” Kenzie agreed.
“What do you expect? Zeke and I have been on a couple of ‘official’ dates, they were kind of nice, but the first date was the only one that didn’t end up with us working. I always expected fireworks and romance, not this…” I spread my arms wide. “We are both too busy to really date. Now our dates are him fixing dinner while I watch the ball game or play with the dogs or lay around complaining that some body part hurts because I was slammed to the ground or something equally bad.”
“Yeah well, this is what you got,” Alex reminded me.
“I am very well aware. How did it come to this?”
“You and he both wussed out of telling your moms,” Alex giggled again.
“I did tell my mother, she didn’t believe me!”
“True, but only because she didn’t want to believe you, essentially you’ve been steam rolled into this, might as well make the best of it,” Kenzie told me.
“I’m trying.”
“He cooks, he cleans, he likes the dogs, works a lot, has money, lives here already, I can’t really see any faults with marrying him,” Alex informed me.
“How about love?”
“Overrated,” Kenzie answered.
“Love is overrated?”
“It is in a marriage and I should know,” Kenzie wiggled her eyebrows up and down, finally making me smile. While she was only a year older than me, Kenzie had marriage experience enough for ten people. She had been married five different times. She complained that the men all changed once she got married, didn’t want her doing dangerous work anymore and what about children. Kenzie’s idea of kid friendly was Charles Bronson movies. She was the only person I knew that would make a worse parent than my mother.
“I have no desire to go see Natalia tomorrow for yet another dress fitting, it is torture.”
“That I believe,” Alex put her arm around me. “M
aybe you can bleed on the dress and it will have to be started over. That would buy you a couple of weeks and you’ll be in good company. I can’t escape your insanity because I can’t get into my house. At least, Sebastian has been sequestered with Zeke. He is starting to pester me about moving forward in our relationship. What the hell does that mean?”
“That means he wants to move in with you or worse,” Kenzie gave her a look. “I know every time a guy tells me we should move forward, I end up divorced.”
“Back to my problems. They are a little more pressing than yours, I’m getting married, not divorced,” I snuggled into my pillow. “Why is Zeke not here, dealing with his own mother?”
“You can’t get divorced until you’ve been married. And Zeke isn’t here because they, meaning the mothers, have decided no hanky panky before the wedding, so Zeke is staying with your brother, Devlin, at the moment,” Alex responded.
“I guess they don’t realize there has never been any hanky panky in this relationship,” I felt myself getting tired. The painkillers were working wonders.
“What do you mean never?” Kenzie gave me a look.
“Zeke and I have not had sex. We’ve never gotten past a kiss. This one time when we tried to kiss, his appendix ruptured.”
“What about the trip to Hawaii?” Alex asked.
“We kissed and I think he was going to put his hand up my shirt, but someone dropped a glass of wine off the upper floors of the hotel. It nearly killed him. The universe seems to be plotting to keep me celibate, so we don’t do anything now except talk.”
“Well then, maybe we are guarding the wrong person. Maybe we should be protecting Zeke from cosmic forces determined to keep you from getting laid,” Kenzie told me.
“I can’t imagine what will happen if we kiss in the church,” I frowned.
“No shit, now scoot over,” Alex told me. “No one is going to give me any sympathy about not being able to get into my house?”
“Why? You have spare keys,” I told her.
“I just had extra deadbolts installed. I’m going to have to have a locksmith get through them.”
“Nah, I’ll just have one of the guys go pick the locks,” I reassured her.
“That doesn’t help with the ‘once inside problem’,” she told me.
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” I looked at her. “Well, a locksmith can change the locks after he forces them open.”
“This sucks,” Alex sighed again.
“Scoot more towards the middle,” Kenzie told me.
I scooted over and instead of the dogs, snuggled down with my two closest friends. I had a vague moment when I wondered what had happened at the club after I had left, but it was swallowed by Percocet and sleep.
Sunday
My morning started with disorientation and pain. Alex was curled up on my shoulder and I couldn’t for the life of me remember how she had gotten there or why. Kenzie was curled up on the other side of me. Both women seemed to be spooning me. Somehow this was both nice, because I felt protected, and weird, because I hadn’t considered either of them to be spooners.
We untangled from the bed clothes and awkwardly, each other. We took turns in the bathroom, but none of us bothered to shut the door, so I couldn’t imagine why we dressed in there. I jumped into the shower last. Kenzie held my arm outside the curtain, while Alex attempted to adjust the water to a spot that didn’t burn off my skin or freeze me to death. I scrubbed what I could with my one good hand, while Kenzie kept pulling me further and further out of the shower to keep her cigarette from getting wet.
Luckily, this was followed by bagels and cream cheese from Panera Bread Company and another Percocet.
Pill taken, bagels eaten and Lucy called to change the security codes, my mother and Telisa were now getting everything ready for our day out. There was a dress that would have to be refitted and there was talk about doing some other shopping. Alex and Kenzie were to become my faithful companions, meaning the mothers were forcing them to join us on our outing. This almost made me feel better.
I slept on the thirty minute drive into the city where my cousin Natalia was specifically missing church to deal with my emergency dress fitting. My mother reminded me of this no less than three times during breakfast. Alex reminded me once, very quietly in the car, as I drifted off to sleep in a Percocet haze.
“Nadine,” Natalia was all smiles and sparkly personality for someone that was missing church. I had a feeling she attended for the same reason I did, our grandfather was the priest. Attending church was required at least once a month, on holidays and Saint’s days. This means we attend often, because there are an awful lot of Saints in the Russian Orthodox Church. I almost envied the lack of Saints under the Catholics, and they were removing more every year.
“Natalia,” I faked my own enthusiasm.
“I heard you got shot, again. Aunt Olga has been calling everyone this morning. How bad is the bandage?”
“I don’t think the excruciatingly-tight dress that is held up solely by my boobs is going to work,” I told her. In the back of my mind, I had been pretty sure that my maid of honor would accidentally step on my dress and pull it down. Of course, Alex was my maid of honor, so calling it an accident would be giving Alex the benefit of doubt that I just wasn’t sure she deserved. I hadn’t been all that crazy about it anyway. My mother had loved it.
“That bad, huh?” She put one hand on her hip. The other was writing things down. Natalia always seemed to be taking notes. It was distracting to have a conversation with her.
“Could have been much worse,” my mother informed her sternly. “At least she won’t need surgery, unlike the tiger bite and some of the other things she’s done.”
“What size are you again?” Natalia didn’t need me to repeat it, she knew my dress size; it was a way to steer my mother from listing everything else I had endured.
“A six,” Alex answered for me.
“Considering the very short time span, we are going to have to work with something off the rack that can be slightly altered to bring out the very best in you,” Natalia was picking out dresses. My mother and Telisa were hovering over her, offering commentary.
At noon, Kenzie and Alex went and got some food. We inhaled the Taco Bell carry-out, I popped another pill and we went back to pinning a dress that my mother and Telisa had agreed upon. It had too many bows and too much lace.
“I look like a wedding cake,” I told them standing in front of the mirrors.
“Nonsense, you look amazing, it’s just the pain and the medication making you feel that way. You’ll be stunning walking down the aisle,” my mother informed me.
“Can we remove some of the bows?” I asked, pressing forward.
“Bows are very classy,” Telisa told me.
“Not all of them, just some of them. Like why do I need bows on my boobs? Do I want everyone staring at my boobs while I walk down the aisle?”
“Ok, we can remove those,” Telisa conceded.
“And what about…” I stopped, suddenly feeling a bit off. Sometimes pain pills made me feel sick, even after eating. I climbed from the platform taking Natalia with me and sat down in a chair. I did some deep breathing. The spell passed.
I stood back up and threw up all over the new wedding dress. I sat back down.
“Get out of that dress,” my mother ordered me.
“I need to sit. Actually, I need to sleep,” I argued.
“Not in that dress you aren’t,” Melina walked over to me and began undoing the zippers.
“Nadine, are you alright? You look a little pale,” Natalia at least seemed more concerned for my well-being than she did about the dress.
“Cake problem solved,” Kenzie leaned in and whispered.
She was right; there was no way to use this as my wedding dress now. It wasn’t blood, but it was pretty close. I was also sure that I had just bought a second wedding dress and was in need of a third.
I found a couch in the
back and fell asleep. Somehow while I napped, Natalia, Melina and Telisa managed to strip the dress off of me, I was guessing it involved scissors. Natalia threw it in the trash. Alex and Kenzie cleaned up the mess.
I had slept about an hour when my mother woke me up.
“Feel better?”
“A little,” I told her.
“Good, we’ve been using Alex and Kenzie as our dress models but neither of them are proportioned like you. Alex has bigger hips and Kenzie doesn’t have any boobs. We’ve narrowed it down to two choices.”
I got up and followed her into the dressing area again. Alex was standing in one dress, Kenzie in another. It was my turn to giggle. Both looked like they were on the verge of panic. I couldn’t wait for Alex to get married. I was so going to pay her back.
“The lace one first,” my mother said to Kenzie. She climbed off the pinning platform and began removing the dress. It hung on her bra and tore at the zipper. I giggled. My mother sighed. Kenzie blushed. I stealthily grabbed Alex’s phone while her focus was more on Kenzie and trying not to giggle about the dress problems. I took a picture of her in the wedding dress and sent it to Sebastian. I couldn’t wait for his reply since it looked like it came from Alex.
“Don’t worry, it can be fixed in time,” Natalia assured everyone as Kenzie finished wiggling out of it. She clumsily dressed and stepped out the front door.
I stepped into the dress. Of the six hundred or so that I had been forced to try on in the preceding months, it was the one I liked the most. It was a simple dress, very few embellishments, with a v-neck front and back.
“Too plain,” Telisa said.
“Too old fashioned,” my mother added.
I took it off. Alex was struggling to get out of hers. It had a hoop under it and the hoop was causing some issues. I dressed and went outside.
Kenzie was leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette. She was one of the few friends I had that smoked. I stuck my fingers out, she gave me her cigarette. Normally, I didn’t smoke, but once in a while, I would sneak a drag off someone’s. It was too expensive to make a habit though.