The Wedding Dress

by Dani Atkins

  ‘Even though the operation wasn’t as successful as we had hoped, this is not the end of the road. We’re not there yet.’

  ‘More operations?’ I asked dully, every part of me still aching and sore from the effects of the last one, even though it had been over two weeks earlier. They’d warned me about the after-effects, they’d told me to prepare for the pain, and naively I’d told them to bring it on, I could handle it. I was astounded by my own stupidity.

  ‘In the future, yes. But first we need to give you time to recover from the last one.’

  ‘Before you open up the scars and do it all over again? How many more times? Two? Three? More?’

  The doctor’s eyes flickered. ‘It’s impossible to say at this point. But yes, it could be that many…’ He paused, before completing solemnly, ‘Or more. We will keep going until one of two things happen…’ My father and I sat up a little straighter, as though good posture would earn us a better outcome. ‘We’ll carry on until we feel that surgically there is no benefit in continuing to put you through this, or…’

  His eyes were kind, even if his words weren’t. I helped him out, because I already knew what he was going to say. ‘Or until I say “when”. Until I say I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  *

  Sasha had the kind of tan you can only achieve from an extended holiday in the sun. Honeymoon, not holiday, I mentally corrected. This was the first time I’d seen her after her five-week tour of southern Italy. Both she and Phil were teachers and had taken advantage of the long summer break to have the kind of extended honeymoon most nine-to-fivers can only dream about.

  I could read her face as though it was a book. She was shocked to find me still in hospital, recovering from another surgery that had achieved next to nothing. It’s fair to say that I was pretty much exactly where I’d been after the last operation. And while I was gradually learning to come to terms with the way things were, Sasha was still hoping for the miracle I no longer believed was coming.

  ‘How is Aaron dealing with it?’

  That’s my girl; straight in there with the hard questions, I thought, looking at my friend with the kind of love I used to think only sisters could share.

  ‘You know Aaron.’

  Her glossed lips tightened into a line of disapproval in her sun-bronzed face. ‘I do.’ The last time I’d heard her say those words, she’d been pledging her love to her husband. They sounded considerably less warm this time around.

  *

  If I’d ever given any thought to how Aaron and I might break up, I’d imagined it would be amid an explosion of emotions; there’d be passion-fuelled arguments and blameful recriminations. We would combust, and then watch aghast as our relationship went down in a blaze of flames. The reality was so much less, and so much worse than that. My accident was the catalyst, but our ending began like a tiny crack on a windscreen, small and containable – not that bad really – until it began to spread out like a spider’s web. Suddenly the damage wasn’t minor and inconsequential any more as it encroached into every area of us.

  It began so slowly that it was only later, with the benefit of hindsight, that the picture became clearer. His kisses became shorter, frequently landing on my cheek instead of my lips, a location they’d never aimed for in the past. And the hands I locked behind his neck to draw him closer were gently disentangled. If I were to start kissing you properly, Bella, I hate to think of the trouble we could get into. His words were delivered with his old sexy smile, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was reading them off a script for a film we’d auditioned for a long time ago.

  Sometime between operations number two and three, Aaron stopped waiting for the bell to signal the end of visiting hours. It was such a small thing, too insignificant to call him on it, but every time he glanced at his watch and got to his feet it felt like a tiny stab of a knife. And he’d started arriving late, always with a plausible explanation: the motorway hold-up Google Maps hadn’t predicted, or the shortage of spaces in the car park.

  I realised long before he did that Aaron was pulling away from me. I genuinely believe he didn’t see what was happening, even though the writing was on the wall, graffitied there in large neon letters. I’m not sure how much longer we could have continued to ignore it, if I hadn’t decided to intervene shortly after my third operation. Aaron had grown too good at hiding his emotions when I gave him an updated prognosis. His face was a blank mask, and only his eyes flickered when I told him that the odds of me ever being able to walk unaided were now reduced. He nodded, but said nothing, which in itself spoke volumes.

  ‘Aaron, could you call one of the nurses for me?’ I asked, the smile I’d forced on to my lips only just managing not to dissolve. ‘I need a wee.’

  He did as I asked, but I saw the way his eyes fixed on the wheelchair as Rosie helped me into it. Was he wondering how he’d cope when this was his task after I was discharged from hospital? Rosie had wheeled me halfway down the corridor towards the bathroom when I suddenly asked her to take me back. My resolve could easily have weakened, even then, if I hadn’t looked through the window into my room where Aaron sat, believing he was unobserved. He was hunched forward, elbows on knees, his body language screaming defeat. His trademark perfectly styled hair was in disarray, as though despairing fingers had just raked through it.

  He heard the squeak of the wheelchair tyres and lifted his head, a microsecond too slow to hide the look in his eyes. It was the one he’d done so well to keep hidden from me until now. He looked trapped, and in his eyes was the kind of look an animal gets right before it decides it has to chew its leg off in order to get free of the snare. Except Aaron wouldn’t do that; he wouldn’t let himself be that guy; the one who walked away from his injured girlfriend. He would never leave me, but he’d be staying for all the wrong reasons. There was only one person who could release him from me. Me.

  *

  ‘No. Of course that’s not what I want.’

  I’d expected nothing less than Aaron’s knee-jerk refusal to my suggestion that we call time on our relationship. I wondered if he knew that even while his lips were saying ‘no’ to the prospect of release, his eyes had a kind of hope I hadn’t seen in them for quite a long time.

  ‘Aaron, it’s okay. I understand. Things are different now. I’m different now.’

  ‘That shouldn’t matter. That doesn’t matter,’ he corrected rapidly, stumbling into a trap of his own making.

  I smiled sadly and reached for his hand. ‘This isn’t fair on you.’ In his eyes I could see how much he agreed with me, but even under torture he’d never admit it. Because to do that would be to admit to failure. And Aaron didn’t do failure.

  ‘I’m stuck in this chair for the foreseeable future, maybe forever.’ There it was; that almost imperceptible shudder when he looked into our potential future and didn’t like what he saw. It was all I needed to continue.

  ‘I need to concentrate on getting better. That has to be my focus, and if I’m being perfectly honest here, I can’t do that and worry about how you’re coping with the situation. I’ve always known how you were about illness, and I can see how hard you’ve tried to get past that, but it’s just not working any more. Not for either of us.’ I never realised I had such a talent for lying, but once I started, the untruths were practically falling over themselves in their haste to get out. ‘I need space – mental space – to concentrate on me for now. It’s not fair holding you to a promise that we’d never even made to each other.’

  His cheeks coloured slightly and I wondered if he recognised the subtle dig. Two years is a long time to be sitting on the dating fence, without ever discussing where we might be heading.

  ‘This would have been a lot to take on, even if we had made some sort of commitment to the future,’ I said, my arm sweeping over the injured legs he still couldn’t bear to look at without wincing. ‘We both know that everything we had will be different when I get out of here, so maybe now
is the right time for us to take a break. We need to see how being apart makes us feel.’

  The fraying edges of our relationship ripped even further apart as I watched him nod slowly in agreement. Was he agreeing because he thought this was what I wanted? Couldn’t he see that I didn’t mean a single word I was saying?

  ‘I guess you’re right. And if this is really what you want, what you need?’

  I might have weakened then, if he hadn’t already been getting to his feet, his hand unconsciously patting his pocket, ensuring his car keys were in place.

  ‘It is. I think for now it would be easier if we cut all contact between us.’

  Who was I kidding? Nothing about any of this was remotely easy. Even though this was all my doing, I’d still been hoping that Aaron would have fought a little harder for us. To be fair, he did look genuinely upset when he approached my wheelchair to say goodbye. He placed his hands on its arms, as though he needed steadying as he lowered his head to mine, possibly for the last time. His lips already felt like those of someone I used to love, as they brushed against mine.

  Was I doing the right thing? As Aaron crossed to the door with slightly jerky steps, I still wasn’t entirely sure. And yet he’d put up practically no resistance. Didn’t that speak volumes? His heart wanted this, even if his conscience wasn’t prepared to admit it. As hard as it was to acknowledge, this entire scene had played out almost exactly the way I’d anticipated. But everything changed with Aaron’s parting words, delivered when he was on the point of walking away from everything we’d once had.

  ‘I’d been looking at rings. Did you know that?’

  For a moment my brain struggled to assimilate his words, as though he’d slipped into a language I couldn’t speak. I shook my head slowly, truly shocked.

  ‘I’d been thinking of asking you this summer, after Sasha’s wedding. I didn’t think you’d want to steal her thunder.’ He gave a humourless laugh and feigned a shrug, as though he’d changed the meal he’d ordered from a menu rather than a decision that would have changed both of our lives. Just when you think your heart can take no more, along comes a sucker punch that knocks the air out of your lungs.

  ‘I thought of maybe proposing when we went away to India.’

  India. The holiday we’d spoken of, but never got around to booking. An almost proposal, on an almost holiday. I could see just enough pieces of the picture before they disappeared in a mist of memories I’d never get to make. Everything Aaron was saying was hypothetical, because Aaron wasn’t actually proposing, he was just saying that once he had intended to. Before. That future had been written in the stars for the old Bella. The new version had an entirely different story ahead of her.

  ‘You’ll never know how much I wish things were different. We could have been so good together,’ he said regretfully.

  Leave. Please leave right now before you smash the bits of me The Hybrid hasn’t already destroyed.

  ‘I don’t know how to stop being in love with you, Bella.’

  It was a great exit line, even if it wasn’t true.

  *

  Dad made a low growling noise when I told him that Aaron and I had decided to call it a day. It was the kind of sound I rarely heard outside of the grooming room. Even though he’d never actually warmed to my boyfriend, Dad was still furious that Aaron hadn’t stuck by me after the accident.

  Sasha’s verdict was far more prosaic. ‘What a total bellend,’ she’d summed up succinctly, and then hugged me with a fierce protectiveness that made my ribs hurt. ‘He didn’t deserve you, he never ever did,’ she whispered fiercely into my hair. For Aaron’s sake I really hoped he didn’t cross paths with Sasha until some of the fire and venom had left her system, because in the mood she was in she was likely to inflict lasting physical damage.

  ‘Is this one of those things where I say how much I never really liked him, and then you go and get back together the following week and it all gets totally awks and we have to pretend I never said anything?’

  I shook my head sadly at Wayne’s question. ‘I don’t think my getting back with Aaron is at all likely.’

  ‘Good. Because in that case it’s safe to say the bloke is a total wanker.’

  *

  It was sobering to realise how little my nearest and dearest thought of the man who’d been in my life for the last two years. If the accident hadn’t happened, if Aaron had gone ahead and bought me that ring, would any of them have ever said anything? I had a vivid image of a ceremony where not one voice but a whole chorus of them joined together to object when they were asked to ‘speak now or forever hold their peace’.

  18

  ‘Do you think I made a mistake?’

  Will took a long moment, his brow furrowing in concentration. The scar that had once been a vivid red exclamation mark descending from his hairline had long since faded to a faint pink legacy of the accident.

  ‘Do you think you have?’

  ‘That’s not an answer, that’s just another question.’

  Will gave a crooked grin and settled himself a little more comfortably in the visitor’s chair beside my bed. He fidgeted a little as he extended his leg, and I wondered if his ankle was troubling him again today. I’d watched him progress from plaster cast and crutches to a surgical walking boot and a stick, and now his ankle was finally unencumbered. The limp he carried would take a little longer to go, but it was less noticeable each time he visited.

  ‘Break-ups are always tough,’ Will declared. ‘Even when you know without a shadow of a doubt they were the right thing to do, they still hurt.’ There was something in his eyes, a flicker of a memory, and I knew in that moment he wasn’t talking about my relationship, but his own broken one. We had probably covered every topic of conversation you could possibly imagine during his visits, but that one remained off limits. My natural feminine curiosity – which was a polite word for nosiness – was piqued, but I didn’t feel I had the right to probe. We didn’t have that kind of friendship. Although to be fair, if I was asked to categorise what type of connection we did have, I would have been at a loss for an answer.

  ‘Will still visiting then?’ Sasha had asked with a nonchalance I could see right through, as she spied the stack of new glossy magazines on my bedside table. Will rarely came empty-handed.

  ‘Yeah. He still pops in whenever he has to visit outpatients, or more recently the physiotherapist.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Sasha said, with a knowing expression, as she idly flicked past page after page of adverts for designer watches. ‘It must have been a really bad fracture he had, you know, to warrant that much aftercare.’

  I’d frowned. ‘I know what you’re getting at,’ I said, fighting an unexpected urge to blush. ‘But it’s not like that. Will is just being kind and polite.’

  ‘Oh, Bella, “polite” expired a visit or two after the accident. And “kind” had probably run its course a month or so after that. Do you think that – just maybe – there might be some other reason he’s still coming to see you?’

  I’d shot her down and she’d given in with a pretty you-know-best shrug. But she’d planted a seed, which had unfortunately taken root. It was an unasked question that was there every time Will walked into my hospital room.

  ‘To answer your question properly,’ he began, jerking me back to the present with his words, ‘I’d need to know Aaron better.’ It was a politician’s answer, but it was, I suspected, the only one I was likely to get. ‘As I only met the guy once, it’s not fair of me to judge him or your relationship. But I do know that going through something like we’ve experienced makes you reassess pretty much every area of your life. Did you know that eighty-five per cent of people who’ve been through our kind of trauma end up making major lifestyle changes?’

  ‘Is that another of your made-up statistics?’ It was an amusing habit of his, which never failed to make me smile.

  ‘Maybe.’ Will grinned, and then something unexpected happened. The laughter slid from his eyes, le
aving something unfathomable in their bright blue depths. My stomach gave a little lurch, as though I’d stepped forward only to find the ground was no longer beneath my feet.

  Flustered, I grappled to fill the silence. ‘So are you one of the eighty-five per cent? Do you have big changes in mind?’

  Instead of a smart wisecrack, Will kept his eyes fixed on mine as he nodded slowly. ‘I’m giving up journalism.’

  ‘You are? But I thought you loved writing.’

  His smile released my gaze from his and I spent several unnecessary moments pouring a glass of water I had no desire to drink and then downing it in practically a single gulp.

  ‘I didn’t say I’m giving up writing, just the travel guides and theme park reviews. It’s time to do the things in life I’m passionate about. Life’s too short to keep putting them off.’

  ‘And what is it that you want to do? What are your passions?’

  His eyes were back on my face and it was a long uncomfortable moment before he replied. ‘I’m going to write a novel. The idea has been bubbling away at the back of my head for a couple of years now, I just never let it push its way forward. But now… well, now it feels like it’s the right time.’

  ‘Well, good for you,’ I said, genuinely pleased for him, even though I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a totally different conversation running like a subterranean stream beneath this one. ‘What kind of book will it be? Crime? A thriller?’

  ‘Actually, the book I really want to write is a love story.’

  There was absolutely no reason to be embarrassed – I mean, it’s not like he’d said he was going to write a male version of Fifty Shades – and yet I could feel myself growing warm as the blush crept over my cheeks. His eyes were on me, watching silently as I surfed the wave of embarrassment all the way to shore.