by Amelia Mae
“I want you to have the perfect wedding, Aya…”
“Stop, please,” I tell him. “I had the perfect wedding.”
“You had your mother’s perfect wedding. This one will be for us.”
That’s true. My mother never married and probably never will, so she projected every wedding fantasy she’s ever had onto me. But I want Shawn and I to be able to do this our way too. We deserve that.
“I like that,” I tell him. “Thank you.”
He doesn’t say ‘you’re welcome.’ He just kisses me.
Someone at the workstation behind us clears her throat, so I guess we’re getting a little too friendly for the business center of a nice hotel. Shawn wraps up with the lodge’s website and leads me down the hall, towards the restaurant where our families are still eating.
“Do we have to go back in there?” I ask.
“We can hide out in the suite,” he suggests. “Order room service. Eat breakfast in the bathtub.”
“Sounds messy. But fun.”
And so, so tempting.
I sigh.
“Okay, one last thing for everyone else,” I tell him. “Then we get to go home and it’s just us for awhile.”
“Sounds perfect.”
Four
Shawn
After an evening of teaching the advanced pole dancers, Aya pretty much belly flops onto the bed and is dead to the world for the next hour. Perfect.
I keep my voice down and call Cora. She answers on the first ring.
“Shawn? Everything okay?” she asks.
“Has Aya ever said anything to you about a pink wedding dress?”
“Don’t you think the time to ask that would have been before the wedding?”
“Come on. I’m trying to surprise her,” I say. All of the guys in the band and their significant others are on board for the trip and the second wedding idea, but no one knows about this part. “She mentioned something to me about wanting a blush pink wedding dress, and I wanted to know if she’s ever pointed out a specific one or…”
“Not to me,” Cora says. “We went shopping with her mom and all she tried on were white dresses. Not even ivory or champagne. Like… white, white. Her mom insisted nothing else would do.”
“I know.”
“Maybe she did some shopping online,” she suggests. “I’m not saying poke around on her laptop, but…”
“You think she looked at wedding dresses online?”
“I’m sure she did. She probably started looking for dresses, like, seconds after you proposed. Every girl does.”
“Hm…”
“Her password is ‘pancakes,’ by the way.”
“I know that.”
I thank Cora and we hang up. I check the bedroom to make sure that Aya is still asleep and find her laptop on the coffee table. I type in her password and look through her search history for anything that looks like a wedding dress site.
“What are you doing with my computer?”
I look up from the screen and see Aya standing over me with her arms crossed over her chest.
Busted.
She doesn’t necessarily look mad. Just confused.
“Shawn?” she asks.
“Sorry. Couldn’t find mine.”
Her eyes wander to the other side of the room, right by the window-seat.
“Right there,” she says, pointing.
“Oh.”
“Shawn, I’ve got nothing to hide on that laptop. You’re welcome to look through it. But not if you won’t tell me why.”
“I was looking for… a gift for you,” I tell her. It’s not technically a lie. The dress would be a gift. “I was nosy. I was looking through the stuff you shop for.”
“Hmm…” she murmurs. Then she turns a little pink. Like she’s blushing.
“What?”
“I’ve been doing a little… honeymoon shopping.”
“What kind of honeymoon shopping?” I wonder, intrigued.
I can’t help myself. I go to her most recent search history.
Whoa.
“See anything you like?” she asks.
I’m looking at a specialty lingerie site. Mostly white, lacy bridal stuff. Little bits of flimsy fabric that would barely cover her body. My mind races. All of this would look amazing on Aya.
And on the floor.
“You know I don’t care what you wear…”
“I know,” she says. “But I wanted to pick something special for you.”
I close the laptop and pull her into my lap. I try to kiss her, but she pushes me off.
“Shawn, I’m so gross,” she protests.
“I don’t care.”
I don’t. Sure, she smells like she just worked out, but I like her sweaty.
“I need a shower.”
Okay. I can work with the shower. I take her hand and lead her into the bathroom. She gets undressed while I turn on the water and the room fills with steam. I strip off my clothes and pull her under the spray with me. I grab the shampoo bottle and squeeze some into my palm.
“Turn around,” I tell her.
“Huh?”
“I’m going to wash your hair.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I thought…”
“We will,” I whisper. “This first.”
She turns around and I work the shampoo through her long, black hair. After a few minutes under the hot water, with my hands on her, she makes a contented noise, low in her throat. Her head droops forward a bit, like she’s relaxing into a good massage.
I rub her shoulders and the back of her neck as we rinse the shampoo.
“Do you miss the blue?” she asks, suddenly.
I laugh. When I first met Aya, she had been bleaching her hair and dying it a sort of silvery blue color.
“Do you?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” she says, softly. “I mean, this is way easier. And I like not using the bleach and all the chemicals anymore.”
“True.”
“But I just feel… Ugh,” she groans. “I feel like I want to do something crazy. Like dye it pink or cut it all off.”
“Okay, definitely don’t cut it all off.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t you love me if I had a cute pixie cut?” she teases. “Or maybe I could buzz it and rock that look?”
I smirk. I take Aya’s long hair and wind it around my hand like a rope, giving it a little tug.
“I like pulling it too much,” I admit.
She inhales sharply as I pull. “I like that too,” she says, and I start working the conditioner through her hair.
“I like your hair the way it is,” I tell her. “But it’s up to you. Blue, black, pink. Doesn’t matter to me.”
“Thanks. It’s just… after the wedding, being all prim and proper and styled in a way that was so not me…”
“You feel like you need to rebel or something?” I wonder.
“Maybe.”
“Gonna get yourself a pair of combat boots and some heavy black eyeliner?” I tease her. “Get a bunch of tattoos?”
I rub my fingertips up her ribs, tracing an intricate tiger design.
“Already did that,” she jokes.
“I like them.”
“Me too.”
“Well, that’s a relief. You’re kind of stuck with them.”
She laughs for a second. Then pauses. “You know what I mean though, right?”
I finish rinsing the conditioner from her hair.
“Yeah,” I assure her. “When we do this thing up at the lake, we’ll do it our way. If you want to wear jeans and sneakers, that’s what we’ll do.”
“What if I want to wear my Pleasers?” she asks, referring to the eight-inch high platform faux-leather boots she wears to teach pole dancing classes.
I cock an eyebrow, trying not to let on how hot that would be.
“If you wanted,” I tell her, coolly. “If you wanted to do a naked wedding in the middle of the woods…”
“Yeah, everybody
would be really on board with that,” she says.
She’s being sarcastic. They would not.
We finish up in the shower, towel off and climb into bed. Neither of us bother putting on clothes. Aya pushes me to my back to have her way with me. She rides me until her head rolls back and she cries out my name.
When she comes, I take her by the waist and pull her underneath me, snapping my hips up into her until I come, groaning into her neck and panting wildly.
“Let’s not do a wedding,” she says, and I’m not sure I hear her correctly.
“Let’s not? What?”
“Let’s just get a cabin by the lake and stay in bed for two days,” she laughs.
I kiss her cheek, smiling against her soft skin. “What’s the point of inviting our friends, then?” I wonder.
“They’ll figure out how to amuse themselves.”
I laugh. Aya’s got that post-orgasm goofy smile on her face, and it’s so damn cute. I kiss her until she stops giggling and then try to clean up before we both fall asleep.
I pull the covers up over the pair of us and wrap my arms around her.
“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” I tell her.
Five
Aya
A few days later, Shawn and I make the drive up to a small town about three hours outside of Los Angeles on the river valley. We’ve been camping there a few times before, but thankfully Shawn opted to book rooms in a lodge. I was definitely not going to spend my wedding night in a tent.
“Thanks,” I tell the desk attendant as he hands us the room key.
I look around the cute, little lobby as the attendant tells Shawn about the barbecue pits, the general store down the road, and the best place to start if you’re planning to float down the river in an inner tube.
“Sounds fun,” he says.
Suddenly, I hear buzzing. It’s not my phone, so it must be Shawn’s. He silences it while he speaks to the desk attendant, but whoever is calling him is persistent. They keep calling and Shawn keeps ignoring it until they finally give up.
When we get to the room, I ask him about it.
“Who was that?” I ask him. “Who keeps calling you?”
Shawn sighs. It’s that one particular sigh that lets me know exactly who’s calling.
“Donna?”
He nods. It’s his mother.
Shawn’s mother has been making some feeble attempts to get back into his life for a while now. A few calls here and there. Maybe a text message or two. But she didn’t come to the wedding and she’s been hesitant to meet in person.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Shawn shrugs. He’s not. His mother calling and texting but refusing to sit down and talk in person messes with his head. I know that he has a lot to say to her, and he wants to say it to her face.
He doesn’t say anything. He just takes our bags and lugs them towards the cabin.
As he throws his duffel bag on the bed, I grab his hand.
“Please don’t shut me out,” I beg him. “I know it’s a lot, but…”
Shawn takes my hand and squeezes it. “I won’t shut you out Aya,” he says, softly. “Not intentionally. It’s just…” He struggles to find the words. “She’s had years. Why now?”
“I don’t know.”
“She chose alcohol over me. Hundreds of times,” he continues. “And I still offered her a place in my life.”
“I know, Shawn.”
“She didn’t come to my high school graduation or any of the shows when the band was finally making it big. Or even come to the wedding. But she’ll call and text like it’s no big deal. I just don’t understand it.”
“I mean, if I chose my addiction over my family, I wouldn’t be too keen on facing them any time soon,” I tell him. “I would probably think they wanted to yell at me and rub my nose in it.”
“I do want to yell at her,” he confesses.
“Really?”
“Yes. God help me, but a lot of the things I want to say to her aren’t going to be nice. She left me when I needed her. She left my dad to get sober on his own. I… I need her to hear that. I need to know that she understands how deeply she hurt us.”
“I get that,” I concede.
“Yeah.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
“Mobile home park about half an hour from here,” he answers.
“That’s not too far,” I tell him. “And the others won’t be here till tomorrow. I mean… we could…”
He shakes his head no. “Come on, Aya. Tonight is supposed to be our night.”
“Answer me honestly,” I order him. “Are you gonna be totally present here for our night? Or are you going to be here with me, but your mind is somewhere else?”
He smirks. “You got me.”
“Shawn, it’s not that I want to be right,” I assure him. “I just don’t want this looming over us.”
He starts unpacking. “We can go in the morning.”
“Or we can go now.”
Six
Shawn
The drive to the mobile home park from the lodge is short and uneventful. Aya drives, even though she hates driving, because I’m too tightly wound to be behind the wheel again.
We’re quiet, too. We’re never quiet in the car. Especially Aya. Her ability to talk about nothing and keep me laughing even when I’m stressed is one of my favorite things about her.
But today, we’re silent and tiptoeing around each other as we pull up in front of a large, pretty unkempt mobile home.
“Is this it?” she asks.
I nod and get out of the car. Aya follows. We walk up the long dirt road to her home, and I knock on the door. No answer.
“What if she’s not home?” Aya asks. “There’s no car in the driveway.”
“Pretty sure she can’t drive.”
She thinks about it. “Oh.”
I knock on the door and there’s still no answer. So, I do it a third time. This time I hear someone puttering around. I also hear a woman’s voice mumbling to herself, but it doesn’t sound familiar.
The door opens. And there she is.
Donna Kinney. My mother.
Only… she doesn’t look like my mother. I mean, she vaguely does. I knew she’d look different then how I remember her from the day she left. I knew she’d be older and grayer. But I wasn’t expecting this.
She looks old enough to be my grandmother.
She’s surprisingly put-together, though. She isn’t the unshowered, slovenly-clothed, foul-breathed woman I remember from childhood. She is wearing jeans and a tee shirt. Her hair is up in a bun. She looks… okay.
“Hi, Donna,” I tell her.
She winces a little at being called by her first name. But I don’t want to call her ‘mom.’
“Shawn,” she says, looking me over. “I didn’t expect you to come here.”
“I didn’t expect me to come here either,” I say, flatly.
She looks at me, and I stare back at her. I have a flash of a memory of her playing water gun tag with me in the park, running and ducking and yelling, ‘I’m gonna get you,’ at me. But there’s no way in hell she’d be able to run or duck now. Her body wouldn’t allow it.
We’ve been in a staring contest for some time now.
“I’m Aya,” she chimes in, suddenly.
Donna blinks a few times, like she’s just been pulled out of a trance.
“Right. Sorry, Donna. This is Aya,” I parrot. “My wife.”
Aya offers her hand and Donna takes it.
“Congratulations on the wedding,” she says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t…”
I wait for her to finish her sentence, but she doesn’t. Instead, she starts tearing up.
“I couldn’t let you see me like this,” she whispers.
Now she’s crying. And despite everything she’s put me through, how many times she’s failed me, I feel bad for her.
“Can we come in?” I ask.
She nods through her te
ars and reluctantly allows us inside.
I’m immediately taken aback by the overwhelming smell of cat. Not cat urine or anything squalor-like. Nothing unhygienic or unbearable. But still. Cat. I know Aya isn’t going to be able to last in here very long.
Her home is small and cramped, but clean.
My mother never cleaned. Not that I can remember. I remember going to school in stained clothes and not showering for days on end because no one made me. I was a kid, after all.
“Please have a seat,” Donna says. “Can I get you something to drink?”
Ah. This leads us to the big question. Is my mother sober? If so, for how long has she been?
“I have tea,” she offers. “All kinds of tea. Green, chamomile, apple cinnamon, Sleepytime. Well, it’s a little early for Sleepytime.”
“Donna?”
She keep on rambling. “I’ve got peppermint, Earl Grey, and I might even have a little pomegranate-blueberry, though I’m warning you, it doesn’t taste very nice.”
“Anything is fine,” Aya says politely.
I can’t hold back the question. “Do you have any…”
“I don’t have any alcohol in the house,” she says. “In case you were wondering.”
“I won’t lie, Donna. I was wondering.”
“Then let’s get this out of the way now,” she says. Her tone is flat, factual, but not necessarily angry. “I’m not drinking anymore.”
I don’t say anything.
“I’ve made dozens of attempts at getting sober since I… left,” she continues. “This has been the longest successful run. Three years.”
“That’s… that’s good,” I tell her.
“Congratulations, Donna,” Aya adds.
“Thank you,” she replies. “I’ve been to a whole mess of therapy. I’ve done the meetings. I moved out here to the ass end of nowhere, which is the only thing that seems to work. I’m trying, Shawn.”
My eyes dart around her home, and I fixate on random objects, trying to ground myself in this reality. Because I’m not too sure it’s real. My mother is here, an actual living being, right in front of me, and not just an idea anymore. Not just an entity that I knew existed but couldn’t really picture.