by MJ Masucci
Soon, the backyard was full of wedding guests waiting for the ceremony to start. A friend of Michael’s had fashioned an altar out of cedar wood. It was beautifully carved. Alicia’s sister was her matron of honor, and Jason Keene was Michael’s best man. The mid-afternoon sun was fierce as it got lower in the sky. Fortunately, the ceremony was in a mostly shaded area of the property with only the last few back rows of chairs in full sun. Many chairs had been set up, and a white runner ran down the aisle between the two families.
Xander was dressed in a gray pinstriped suit with a white shirt and a lavender tie. Ava was wearing a princess knee length sleeveless dress in the same shade of lavender as Xander’s tie. The neckline was just enough to reveal her ample cleavage which Xander had trouble keeping his eyes averted. It was lucky he was wearing his sunglasses. Her favorite tear drop diamond earrings glinted in the sun as Xander walked her to their seats.
When the ceremony was to start, Ava turned and her attention was drawn to none other than Vance Albridge. She was shocked to see him not only because she was amazed he had the balls to show his face after what he had done to her but because of his appearance. They say time is the great equalizer, but Vance was only twenty-four. Gone was his football chiseled physique. He was now rotund and his formerly solid cleft chin had now turned into two chins. His deep blue eyes were sunken into his head around his meaty cheeks. The blond hair on his head had fallen drastically back into a receding hairline. Time had indeed not been kind to Vance Albridge.
She was able to scrutinize him behind her sunglasses until Alicia walked down the aisle in a wedding dress designed by Rachel. After Alicia had passed and they were preparing to sit down again, she saw Vance look at her and with a flicker of recognition he raised his eyebrows. She fidgeted so much during the ceremony that Xander had to put his hand on her knee to stop her. The exchange of vows and the kiss took all of ten minutes. Alicia and Michael were not much for tradition. They were happily married with babies filling their home. They wanted everyone to enjoy the party not sit through a long ceremony.
The guests walked to the smaller of the two tents that housed many cocktail tables and chairs. Several food carts were stationed around in a circular pattern. Mini corn dogs, gourmet grilled cheese, chicken in a biscuit, shrimp, and grits. Waitstaff circulated with hors d'oeuvres of different types. Some of the men had gone to the horseshoe pit that Xander and Michael had built. There was bocce ball, a corn hole game, large bowling pins and balls designed for play in the grass, a jumping castle for the children. Music played from a DJ stationed in the main tent.
“Sweetheart, do you want me to get you a drink?”
She pulled the handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his brow. It was a very warm day, and she couldn’t wait to get to the main tent to cool off.
“I’d love a gin and tonic with a twist of lime,” she said, causing Xander to furrow his eyebrows at her.
She lowered her voice so that no one but them could hear what she said.
“I know, I know. I’ll take some ice water with a twist of lime.”
He sat her down at one of the cocktail tables and went to get her a drink from the bar on the far side of the tent. Rachel sat next to her.
“So is everything alright with you two?”
“Yes, I talked to him this morning. Everything is great. He explained everything to me.” It wasn’t totally accurate, but she wanted to wait to tell everyone that she was pregnant. So far only Alicia and Michael knew about it.
Xander came back to the table with her drink. He kissed her on the cheek and put his arm around her. She caught Vance watching her every move. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging him. Screw him. He made me leave my home. But I have to thank him because if he didn’t, I would never have ended up with Xander.
Throughout the cocktail hour, she and Xander circulated talking to friends and family. They were directed to go into the main tent, and Ava was thankful. She was sweating and needed a break from the heat. The tent was nice and cool. She and Xander sat at their assigned table, and she removed her sunglasses. She made sure not to make eye contact with Vance. As far as she was concerned, five years was still too soon to see him.
She watched Brooke float around the room like she was a celebrity, speaking to people that she hadn’t seen for years and telling them of her European exploits. She finally sat down when they started serving dinner. Ava was not feeling well. The heat had gotten to her, and she felt nauseous. But this was her brother’s day, and she wanted to be there for him. Halfway through the meal, Xander got up and went to talk to the DJ.
Five minutes later as the entrée was served, “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel came over the loudspeakers. He smiled at her with a mouthful of prime rib. She started to feel the tears welling up in her eyes and used her napkin to blot them away quickly. She slipped her hand under his jacket to rub his back and felt something in his interior pocket. It must have been important because she noticed that Xander kept moving his hand to it. She wondered what it was.
With dinner finished, she decided she needed to go to the house to take a breather. Xander was busy smoking a cigar with a few of her cousins and Michael. She excused herself and made her way up to the house. The house was much cooler than the tent, and she sat down on a comfortable loveseat in the library to cool off. She closed her eyes and a few minutes later she heard footsteps coming towards her. In the dimming light of the day she saw who it was, Vance Albridge.
“Ava, I see that you have changed for the better.”
She wanted to punch his smug face. “I see that you have changed for the worst, Vance.”
“You don’t say hello? Is that any way to treat someone you went to school with your entire life?”
Ava gave him a tight-lipped smile, seething as she spewed at him, “I could ask you the same thing about what you did to me at Cameron. How dare you talk to me after what you put me through.”
Vance smacked his forehead. “It was a joke, Ava. It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. Get over it already because it was five years ago.”
“To you, it might have been a joke but to me it was everything. I liked you Vance, and you took advantage of that.”
“You were crushing on me so hard all through high school. Did you think that when I asked you out in college, I meant it? If I did, why wouldn’t I have asked you out in high school? You know why because I was way out of your league. I dated girls like your sister, Brooke, not girls that spent most of their free time in the library.”
Ava felt the rage simmering just under the surface waiting to explode out of her. She circled him in her mind like a shark waiting to tear into its meal.
“Yes, you were quite the ladies man weren’t you. How about now Vance? Dating many pretty ladies? It looks like your days of being a football god are over, long over.“
Vance’s face turned bright read. He spat back at her, “Fuck you, you bitch. You couldn’t get me back then, so you’re going to hold a grudge?”
“Temper, temper Vance. How the tables have turned.” Ava watched as he clenched his fists, open, closed, open, closed.
“You might have turned from the ugly princess, but before you get all high and mighty, you should think about this. Your boyfriend, Alexander Wilder, was the one that set up that little prank in your honor. Did he tell you that? It was his idea to hold the Ugly Princess party. Yep, Mister Pledge Master himself. He told us all to go out and find the ugly princesses of Cameron University. Whoever got the ugliest girl won a prize. Guess who won the prize, Ava?”
Her mouth dropped open, and she felt nothing but revulsion for the man standing in front of her.
“You’re a fucking liar! He has known my family since I was born and he would never have done that. You’re just jealous.”
“Here is the man of the hour now, ask him. Why don’t you tell her about how you set up the Ugly Princess party.”
Xander pushed Vance in the chest with his open hand.
> “Shut the fuck up Vance, before I shut you up.”
Vance laughed and took a few steps towards Xander.
“Tell her, big shot, Mister Pledge Master.”
Xander turned to Ava who was sobbing, trying to calm her down. “It’s not true sweetheart; it’s not.”
“Ho, Ho. You are a so full of shit, Wilder. Tell her how you sat all the pledges down and planned it out.”
Xander turned away from Ava, grabbed the lapels on Vance’s jacket and screamed in his face, “I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t stop talking.”
The two men started to tussle and by the time Xander pulled away, Ava was gone from the library.
“Get the fuck out of this house, Vance, before I do something you will regret.”
Vance backed away while Xander ran around the house looking for Ava. He heard keys and then the front door slam. He ran out after her and saw her getting into her father’s SUV.
“Ava, stop. Please stop.”
Xander ran as fast as he could stumbling on the front steps. She started to pull away just as he reached the passenger side door. He was able to run alongside the vehicle, open the door and jump into the passenger seat. Ava slapped at him while trying not to slam into any of the parked cars along the driveway. Xander pulled on his seatbelt and noticed Ava did not have hers buckled.
“Sweetheart, please stop. Pull over. It’s not true. Please let me explain.”
She ignored him slamming on the brakes at the end of the driveway and then stamping on the gas pedal to head out onto the winding country road. Tears were streaming down her face blinding her as she accelerated the SUV well past the posted sign of thirty miles per hour.
“How could you? How could you? I can’t trust you, and we need to be apart,” was all she could manage to say. Xander tried to calm her as she weaved partially in the other lane and back to the dirt shoulder trying to negotiate the road. Xander could hear the rocks and pebbles kick up as she raced along, and still she accelerated.
“Please, stop. I promise to tell you everything. The truth.”
“Don’t you dare promise me anything. You don’t know how to keep your promises. I don’t want to be with you anymore,” Ava screamed at him.
Before Xander could answer the SUV swerved up the slight rise on his side of the road. In her effort to straighten the direction of the SUV, Ava overcorrected and the vehicle started to slide on the gravelly shoulder. She stomped on the brakes to try to recover, which sent the SUV into a spin. The vehicle careened to the other side of the road flipping over, aided by a low guardrail and went down an embankment.
Xander came to still strapped into his seatbelt. The SUV was upside down. His left eye was stinging, burning, and his hair was soaked. He touched it and in the dying light of the day he saw it was blood. He felt a thick flap of tissue that had peeled from his face along his jaw line and halfway up his face. He saw a gentle stream of white smoke coming from the engine. The smell of a mixture of gas, oil and blood struck his nostrils. With great effort, he turned to see if Ava was alright. She was gone.
He screamed, “AVA, AVA, WHERE ARE YOU, AVA?” He reached over to release his seatbelt and almost passed out from the pain shooting through his left shoulder. He instead used his right arm to release his belt sliding to the torn roof of the SUV and narrowly missing a shard of metal that protruded inward. The windshield had been broken out, and its frame had partially crushed inward. There was no way he would be able to get out that way. Amazingly, the driver’s side window was badly cracked, but the frame was intact. He would be able to slip out of that if he could knock the cracked glass away. He kicked at the window, and it gave way easily. He continued to call for Ava. His voice was growing hoarse.
He scrambled over broken glass and shards of metal to slip out the window frame. His hands torn from the debris. Blood was dripping off his face as he frantically looked for Ava. His shoulder screamed with each movement of his upper body, and still, he hunted for her not caring about the pain.
“AVA, PLEASE ANSWER ME!”
Then he spotted her in a heap several feet up the embankment. He ran to her. Her body was contorted, and he fell to the ground next to her. He stretched his blood stained hand out to check her throat for a pulse. It was weak, but it was there. Her face was covered by her hair and matted with blood and glass from the windshield. He pawed at out trying to remove it from her face. There was so much blood, and he had no idea from where she was bleeding.
“Ava, open your eyes, open them,” he screamed at her.
Her eyes fluttered open, and he could see her life fading from them. He touched her throat again and got no pulse; she was dead. He could hear the sirens in the distance, but no one was going save her if he didn’t do something. He moved her to her back, completely ignoring his own pain. With great effort, he started doing CPR on her. He continued to do it even after he heard the voices of the paramedics behind him.
“Sir, we’ve got this,” the paramedic kneeling alongside him said, “Let her go.”
He couldn’t.
“Let her go. Let us do our job.”
He fell back landing on his backside. He watched them work on her while another pair of paramedics worked on his face. At that moment he made a promise that would change both their lives forever.
“I got a pulse,” he heard one of the paramedics say.
“Come on sir, let’s get you to the hospital,” a young female voice said to him.
“Not before she goes. Please.” He pleaded with the woman.
They put a neck brace on Ava and then laid her on a backboard to stabilize her. Two of the paramedics carried her up the embankment. The young woman tried to slip a neck brace around his neck, but he pushed her away.
“Sir, please let me treat you. You might have an injury to your neck, and we want to stabilize you.”
“I don’t care,” was all he said.
“Then at least let us take you on a stretcher to the ambulance.
“I can walk.” He trudged up the hill with their assistance. They had bandaged his face as best they could to stem the flow of blood. His arm was in a sling. The paramedics helped him over the guardrail just as Ava’s ambulance left for the hospital. He sat on the stretcher in the ambulance and let the paramedics take his vital signs.
“You are going to have to get quite a few stitches for that wound to your face.”
He didn’t care. Let it heal as it may. He responded to them with a flood of silent tears.
“Sir, don’t worry, your wife is in good hands.”
“My wife?”
“Yes, you are both wearing wedding rings. I’m sorry, I assumed she was your wife.”
“She was going to be, but now that is over.”
“Sir, she is in good hands. Think positive.”
When he arrived at the hospital, Ava was already in the bay next door to his in the ER. There was a flurry of activity around her as several doctors and nurses hooked her up to machines, took vitals and administered medications. Xander tried to get off the gurney to see her making the doctor who was taking care of him angry.
“If you try that once more I’m going to order the nurse to sedate you. Let us do our job.”
He tried not to listen to what they were saying in the bay next door until he heard the words, “She’s coding, crash cart now.”
He struggled with the doctor who was trying to clean the wound on his face. The nurses summoned security and they gave him a sedative, which made his sleepy. He woke some time later in a private room. His face was bandaged, and his dislocated shoulder immobilized. He wasn’t in his suit any longer, but in a hospital gown. His parents were sitting in chairs against the window. He tried to get out of bed, but his father stopped him.
“Alexander, stop it. You were involved in a terrible accident.”
He struggled against his father, saying over and over, “I have to get to Ava. Please.”
With a saddened face, his father softly talked to him. “She’s in
surgery right now. She almost died from blood loss. Jason is beside himself right now. Everyone is in the waiting room hoping for good news.”
Again, Xander recited the promise he made to himself. Peter touched Xander’s leg.
“Son, do you want to tell us how this happened? What were you doing driving on that road? The reception wasn’t even over, and we had no idea where you were.”
Xander related the entire horrible story to his parents. How Vance had told her something, he should have been the one to tell her. How she ran out the door crying and he couldn’t stop her and finally what happened after the accident. Tears were streaming down his face as he told it. After he was done, he looked around the room frantically.
“Where are my clothes? My suit jacket, where is it?”
He tried to get out of bed, but his father stopped him.
“Alexander, calm down, or they are going to sedate you again. They have your clothes in a bag but why would you want them, they are soaked in blood.
He pleaded with his father, “Please bring them to me. I need something.”
His mother opened the locker in the corner of the room and took out the bag of blood-soaked clothes. She handed the plastic bag to him, and he immediately dug into it like a man possessed.
“Alexander, take it easy. You are going to make your shoulder worse,” his father said.
“It already hurts, Dad, and I don’t care.” The hand of his good arm finally clamped onto it. He grasped it and pulled it out of the bag. The little velvet box was undistinguishable as black since it was stained brown with dried blood. His mother put her hand over her mouth when she realized what it was.
“Is that an engagement ring?”
“Yes, mother, I was going to ask Ava to marry me, and now I will never have the chance to do it.”
“Don’t say that. Ava is going to make it. You’ll see.”
Xander hung his head. “I hope with all my heart that she does, but as far as asking her to marry me, it doesn’t matter. She hates me.”
His mother stroked his hair. “She doesn’t hate you.”
