Unexpected Bride

by Abigail Graham

  Yeah, that's Karen for you.

  I clap my hands over my mouth as they dance, on the verge of tears. Yeah, the last few days have been weird, but I'm so happy to see her like this. Even if it means I might have to move into my own apartment.

  Jeeze, Julia. Don't be so selfish.

  As maid of honor, I have to dance with Todd's best man, his younger brother. He's barely seventeen and actually terrified of me; it's adorable. I keep it brief for his sake.

  As I step back, Ryan grabs my wrist and leads me onto the dance floor.

  I stare into his eyes as he plants his hand on the small of my back and starts dancing with me.

  "Don't look so shocked," he says.

  "Karen is going to flay you."

  "Not at the wedding," he says. "As long as I don't make too much of a spectacle of myself."

  I try to spot Karen, but she looks busy.

  Her father, however, is staring at me as if I just shat in his cake. I look away from him, hoping he didn't notice that I noticed, and end up staring into Ryan's chest.

  "Don't look so stiff," he says, "Relax."

  "Easy for you to say."

  "It is," he murmurs. "If you want to stay married, you need to keep the rest of these harpies off me. My parents invited half these women, hoping to find me a brood mare."

  I snort. "That's very progressive of you."

  "Who did your makeup?"

  I feel like he's asking me something in Egyptian. Since when do guys notice or care about that? I swear, ninety percent of guys think we just look like this and makeup exists to make us late to social engagements.

  "Karen did," I murmur.

  "I thought so."

  "Oh, so I'm not good enough to do it on my own?"

  "Calm down," he whispers. "She made you look just like that day I walked in on you guys when you were putting your faces on."

  A chill runs down my spine.

  "You remember that," I say, shocked.

  "Of course, I remember it."

  My heart swells in my chest until my ribcage creaks. What does that mean? Why am I so excited?

  He brings his lips to my ear.

  "I remember you watching me at the woodpile, too."

  My eyes fly open in shock, and I stumble a step. Not that I'm really "dancing" so much as swaying while he squeezes my back.

  "Got you that time. Nothing smartass to say?"

  "No," I murmur. "Karen look like she's figured out how to kill us yet?"

  "Me, maybe. She'd never hurt you."

  The song ends.

  "If I dance with you all night, people will talk."

  "They're talking anyway."

  "I know, but I need to do damage control. I'm not leaving."

  Reluctantly, I let go of him and float over to the bar.

  "Give me your finest cheapest drink," I tell the bartender.

  "Ma'am, it's an open bar."

  "Fine, then, something really basic," I sigh. "A pumpkin spice appletini or something."

  After he mixes up a drink with a little umbrella, I take a sip and recoil.

  "You asked for it," he says, shrugging.

  Across the dance floor, Ryan is walking out of sight with his father, and a hard, cold ball forms in my stomach. Karen is staring over her husband's shoulder at me, and Todd is lurking nervously, looking at everyone.

  Great. Fairytale over. Welcome back to reality.

  Chapter Six

  Ryan

  Dad walks away from the pavilion. Behind me, only the sound of the bass carries. Everyone floats through an illuminated world, the lights leaving long pools of silver across the incoming waves. Dad folds his hands behind his back.

  "What are you doing with that girl?" he says.

  "What about her?" I ask, casually.

  He sighs.

  "You know exactly what I mean. Getting her hopes up like that."

  "She's spent her life in my sister's shadow. I wanted to give her a little moment."

  He doesn't know I have my wedding band in my pocket. I may have taken it off, but I'm still carrying it. The weight of it would drown me if I fell in the ocean. The momentum of it drags me along, and its gravity pulls me back towards its mate.

  So many memories came flooding back when she walked into the chapel in the bridesmaid's dress. Something inside me just snapped and melted into an ooey gooey mess, and now I have to listen to this.

  "Don't get her hopes up. She's beneath you, and honestly, I thought you had better taste than fucking the help. Get bored of models?"

  I stand there, speechless.

  "The help?" I repeat.

  "Yes, the help. I let Patricia bring her daughter out to the estate so Karen wouldn't be lonely, but she's your sister's pet. The girl would be scrubbing bathrooms like her mother if Karen hadn't put her through school."

  Incandescent fury burns in my veins, spreading from my heart until the vessels under my skin are so hot they should glow, should cut through my flesh like hot wires. It's only by consciously locking my muscles that my hands don't leap to his throat, squeeze, and hold him while I pick him up bodily and bash his head into a post.

  "She is not the help," I say, my voice distant and echoey, as if someone else is saying it.

  He turns slowly to me, his aquiline features like a marble statue in the dark. Michelangelo's Dickhead.

  "I thought as much," he says. "I'm telling you, no."

  "No what?"

  "You won't get entangled with her. I've tolerated your antics over the last few years, but you've already broken the last straw about ten times. This family has an image to maintain. You've already severely damaged my plans for you, but nothing unrecoverable. It won't do for you to be seen in a dalliance with my dead maid's daughter."

  If I heave him into the ocean, I'll be arrested. If I heave him into the ocean, I'll be arrested. If I heave him into the ocean, I'll be arrested.

  "What does it goddamn matter?"

  He raises one eyebrow. "Are you going to whine, now?"

  "What business is any of this of yours?"

  "Oh, excuse me," he says. "Were you paying for all those yacht charters with your own money? At least Karen has made something of herself, and even if she can't carry on the family name, she knows her place."

  I blink a few times.

  If Karen heard that, she'd flip. She'd cut his throat with a broken champagne flute. I reflexively look back just to check, but she couldn't possibly hear, she's fifty yards away surrounded by pounding Taylor Swift music.

  I close my eyes and suck in a breath.

  "In two years, Bill is retiring," Dad says, casually name dropping a friend of his, a congressman. "You're old enough and you've got the background. Time for you to do something."

  "Do something? Do something?" I hiss. "I did something. I was in the Navy, or did you miss that?"

  "I'm sure you had a girl in every port, playing the hot shot pilot card."

  "I'll bet you had lots of fun when you were in the service, too."

  He smiles enigmatically. "Nothing you need to know of, and even if you did, your mother and I have our understandings."

  "I'll bet you do," I say.

  I don't think they've had more than a five-sentence conversation since Karen was born, but no reason to dig that out now.

  He shrugs. "We do what we do. You built your resumé, time to use it."

  "You're not going to tell me who to date, or to marry."

  "I'm not," he says, "but it's up to me whether or not your lifestyle continues to grind to a halt. Keep that in mind. I hold the purse strings."

  I clench my jaw.

  "I get the message. Are we done here?"

  "Yes, I think so," he says in his usual amiable drawl, as if that entire exchange never happened.

  That's what gets me most; it's not the demands, it's not even coldness. He really doesn't care. I don't think he sees me as any more than “the help” either. I'm an asset, something he needs in order to achieve a purpose for in
scrutable reasons I'll never understand. How can somebody be so worried about his family name when his actual family hates his guts?

  "We should be getting back," he says. "I have appearances to keep up."

  "Have fun," I say, walking the opposite way.

  "You should come back. Your sister is celebrating a milestone."

  I give him the finger over my shoulder and don't look back, but keep walking.

  A queasy feeling ripples through me, and I can almost smell what I need. This is a resort. There's bars. The same one where Bruce had his little talk with me yesterday (was that only yesterday? It feels like a lifetime ago) is open, a bartender standing bored in front of an array of liquors while a handful of bored patrons nurse mai tais.

  I walk up and slap the bar.

  "Scotch whiskey, neat."

  "Did you have a brand in mind, sir?"

  I loosen my bow tie and open my shirt to the breeze.

  "Do I look like I care?"

  "No, but you look like a big tipper," he says, reaching for the top shelf.

  Confession. I actually hate whiskey. It burns, it tastes like someone put a charcoal briquet in gasoline, and I'm pretty sure the entire fermented, barrel aged alcohol industry is a giant game of “the Emperor's New Clothes” where everyone pretends they like this bilge, and it's just about showing off spending money on a frivolity.

  It gets you hammered fast, though.

  The bartender pours me another one after I down the first. After he tips the bottle back, I tap the glass with my fingers, swishing the two fingers he's poured.

  "What am I, twelve?"

  He makes it a double.

  "You came from the wedding," he says.

  "Yeah."

  "Not the first guy to walk up here during a wedding for a quiet drink to himself."

  "What are you, Frasier Crane?"

  "Frasier was the psychiatrist. The bartender was Tony Danza."

  "Ted Danson, and that wasn't his name in the show," I mutter. "More."

  He pours a third drink.

  "You should let that catch up before you drink more. So, is it the bride? I get that one a lot. Lovestruck nice guy walks up to the bar moping over his girl getting married."

  I glare at him. "If I was, is that how you'd open the conversation?"

  He shrugs. "You won't remember this exchange anyway."

  I raise my glass to him in respect. "Fair point."

  He pours me number four, and I'm starting to feel it now. It's tolerable to sip the charcoal gas, so I let myself slow down.

  "The bride is my sister."

  The bartender raises one eyebrow. "Game of Thrones fan, I see."

  I snort, "No, It's not her. It's a bridesmaid. The maid of honor, actually."

  He smirks. "Maid, right."

  I glare at him.

  He shrugs.

  "Want to know? Really?"

  He shrugs. "Sure, lay it on me."

  "We got drunk two days ago, banged like rabbits, and got married in Las Vegas. I legit woke up wearing a ring with a marriage certificate."

  "She hot?"

  "Yes, she's hot, what does that have to do with anything?"

  He shrugs and starts rubbing at an already-clean glass with a rag.

  "You're just doing that because they do it in movies."

  He looks down at his hands.

  "If I have time to lean, I have time to clean."

  "Well, you're just smudging it."

  He sets the glass down. "So what's the problem? You don't want to marry this girl?"

  "No, I think the problem is I think I do."

  "You think too much."

  I narrow my eyes. "Thanks."

  He shrugs.

  "Another."

  He shakes his head. "Hate to do this so fast, but I can't help you, friend. Come back in an hour or so once you're feeling the first four."

  I stare at him.

  "Do you know how much I can drink?"

  "As long as you get it somewhere else. It's for your own good, my friend."

  Grumbling, I slap a tip on the counter and charge the tab to my room, then wander off, away from the wedding, away from all of it. The further I get, the worse I feel, but the worse it would be to turn back.

  I'm going to hurt Julia somehow. I just know it. This can't end well, and she deserves better than I can ever give her.

  Wandering to the beach, I start walking, briskly at first, until I spot another bar. I wander inside, order another whiskey, and this time barely taste it. The more sullen bartender doesn't offer chitchat and I seek none. I seek more booze. This time I pace myself.

  I've had about ten shots’ worth in the last hour or so, and when I leave the bar, the world tilts crazily. I have a nutty notion to go for a swim, but the beach is closed at night.

  I wander out there anyway.

  Sand shifts under my shoes. The smooth soles and heels are slippery, and pretty soon, I'm on one knee, grunting from the jolt. I burst out laughing. I'm in the proposing pose. Propose.

  Funny.

  I fall back into the sand and lay there, not caring that I'll get it all over my back and in my hair. I went and did it now, Karen will skin me alive if I go back to the reception all lit up like this.

  Oh well, I did my duty. I attended. She hates me anyway.

  Julia will be wondering where I am by now, but I can't let her see me like this, either.

  It's a vicious cycle. I take a drink to numb the pain, but it makes the pain more acute, so I take another drink. I keep repeating the same action, expecting a different result, and what does that say about me, after all? It says that I'm a goddamn idiot is what it says.

  It says that I'm a monster.

  I'll never forget seeing that news broadcast, the way it felt when I realized I was one of the three in the air that day, that it could have been me. I might have done it.

  I might have done it.

  The world sways under me. When I try to sit up, I feel the booze shifting in my stomach, acid and cold, and my head drops back down. It felt like I sat up, but I didn't, I just moved my head. Looking straight up into the stars, they start to blur, and I realize why with terrible, angry guilt.

  "Ryan?" a soft voice says. "Ryan?"

  I blink a few times, trying to decide whether or not this is real.

  Julia drifts over and kneels beside me, resting a hand on my chest. The starlight haloes her head, turns her pale skin alabaster in the dark, alive with light. She's like an angel. It's dumb and cliché but there it is, she's an angel. I turn my head just enough to look at her.

  "What happened?" she asks.

  "Nothin'," I slur, "Just needed a couple drinks 's'sall."

  Oh God, not like this, don't let her see me like this.

  "I saw you walk off with your father."

  "Then you know you'd need a drink too," I cough. My throat is so dry.

  "Come on, sit up for me."

  For her. I can do it for her. I groan, and she grabs my arms and pulls with all her might, digging her delicate feet into the sand to drag me upright.

  I start to fall back but she plops in my lap and sits there. The urge to curl around her is stronger than the need to flop back and close my eyes, wrap my arms around her, and hold on like I'll fall off the Earth if I let go.

  I think I actually might.

  "I used to wonder if you ever thought about me," she says, out of nowhere. "You know, when you were gone."

  I swallow. "I've thought about you lots of times."

  "That's not what I mean. I think I'm flattered, though."

  "I don't want to annul our marriage," I blurt out.

  I feel her tense, relax, tense again. She sweeps her fingers through my hair and sand rains down my back.

  "You're a mess."

  "That's all you have to say?"

  "Is that all you have to say?"

  "Do you want to be my wife? For real? Keep the rings? 'Till death do us part?"

  She nods, too choked up to t
alk.

  "What I want to do is just sit here for a while until your head clears."

  "Okay," I say, resting my chin on top of her head. "You look really pretty in your gown."

  "Thanks. Karen thinks you'll pump and dump me."

  "Karen's wrong."

  She runs her hand up my cheek, down again, cups her palm to it and nuzzles my chin with her lips.

  "Bleh, you taste like sand."

  "I just had whisky."

  "Oh yeah? I'm surprised you didn't go for a cocktail. Like sex on the beach."

  I snort. "That was lame, Julia."

  She giggles. "It was a joke. Last thing I want is sand in my hoo ha right now."

  "Then maybe you should have worn underwear."

  "You're upset about something. I can see it in your eyes."

  I turn away from her, but rest my cheek on top of her head and hold her tighter.

  "My father isn't stupid, he knows I'm interested in you."

  "So what?"

  "So he threatened me. Told me I can have a fling with you if I want, but if I marry you, I'm cut off." I laugh bitterly. "He's a little late."

  She tenses.

  "I can't let you do that."

  "Oh bull shit," I snap, pulling her in even tighter. "I do what I want. It's not your fault."

  "So you...you don't care if that happens?"

  "I'm not worried about him. I'm worried about you."

  She sighs softly and starts to rub my back. "Sobering up now?"

  "I need a few."

  She nods and props her head against my chest. I look over her hair, out at the ocean.

  "There are things in my past that I'm not proud of that I worry you'll find out about and you won't want me anymore."

  She tenses.

  "I'm trying to tell you I'm not prince charming."

  "I know that."

  "You don't know," I say, softly.

  "If you're talking about the Instagram stuff, yeah, I get it, you've slept with other girls. As long as you don't do it any more, I don't care."

  I huff.

  "People always assume that."

  "Assume what?"

  "I didn't bang any of those girls, Julia."

  She pulls back and looks up at me, one eyebrow arched.

  "Uh, really?"