Page 80 of I'm Not Yours
“I’ll do it. I think of her as the Firefly Bride.”
“You just wrote my caption.” She cracked her gum. “You’re gonna be busting out with work soon, June. Get ready and remember to get those papers signed pronto; hip hop to it.”
The next morning I dealt with a Bridezilla.
She came for her fitting with her bridesmaids from Portland.
I could tell that her frazzled bridesmaids had come to hate her.
She was bossy, abrupt, and gratingly difficult. I told her bridesmaids to go downstairs and handed them a bottle of wine, even though it was only 10:00 a.m. They practically skipped down my stairs. I kept the screechy bride upstairs and told her that unless she wanted a bridesmaids’ revolt, she needed to start pretending she was a human. She started to protest and I held up my open scissors quite close to the bodice of her dress.
“Calm down, Elise. Be nice. This is one day out of your life. One—”
“It’s my day, my wedding! My day! My wedding! Me and my wedding! I’ve planned it for years, since I was a little girl. It’s about me!” She actually stomped her feet and clenched her fists, tears bursting forth.
“And you’re a little girl throwing a temper tantrum. You need to make your wedding day the day people remember you as being the kindest, most peaceful bride ever, not the day that your bridesmaids drank themselves under the table because you unleashed a
drooling monster with sharp teeth.”
She cried, told me all her problems.
I wiped her face, gave her lemon sugar cookies and a glass of white wine. (No red wine allowed in my studio.)
“Now shape up, Elise. You need to enjoy this time of your life, not tear your hair out, or worse, your bridesmaids’ hair out, by the roots.”
“Oh, I know! I love you, June! And I love my dress! Have I violated the Bridezilla contract?”
“If you stand still so I don’t deliberately poke you in the boobs with this pin, I’ll pretend you were docile today. Last warning, though.”
I dealt with other brides and bridesmaids, I sewed on supersonic speed, I e-mailed and took phone calls.
And not for a second did I forget about my dear and smokin’ hotfriendReece.
He’d done it all, that’s why I teared up.
A bonfire on the beach would keep us warm as the sun dipped into the sunset, sparks flying, shadows dancing. Reece had laid out a red-and-white tablecloth on the sand for us and our pasta Alfredo, garlic bread, clam chowder, salad, and chocolates. He opened a bottle of wine, placed daisies in a glass mason jar, and lit two candles.
I couldn’t even speak.
“Hey,” Reece said, slinging an arm around my back. “What’s wrong, June?”
“Nothing.” I turned my head and studied the white caps of the waves, dusk drawing handfuls of liquid blues and crimsons across the horizon.
“There is something wrong. Tell me, June, please.”
I wiped a tear from my eye, and another one, bending my head so my curls would cover my face.
“June . . .”
So embarrassing.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No, oh no, Reece. You didn’t say anything wrong.” I sniffled and snuffled and he made sympathetic sounds and that made me cry more. I used my sweatshirt sleeve to wipe my tears. “I try not to cry and blubber about too much.”
“Why do you do that? Let it rip, that’s what I think.”
How do you tell someone that you tried to stop crying a long time ago because you were so hurt, so despairing, that tears didn’t work anymore? How do you say that without sounding pathetic? How do you say you try not to cry because you’d taughtyourself not to when the loneliness was about to kill you, without sounding completely closed off emotionally? How do you say that for a long time anger has burned all of your tears away without reminding him of an anger freak?
