The Wedding

by Sian Ceinwen

  “I’ll think about it,” Heather told her.

  Zoe picked up her pad and pen, now, and wrote something down, “That’s very good. So, what do you feel is the progression for this new relationship with Harrison?”

  “What do you mean?” Heather was confused.

  “Okay, well, when you broke up, you were engaged to be married. Do you see yourself back in that position? I see you’re not wearing your engagement ring.”

  “Whoa, slow down,” Heather raised her hands in a ‘stop’ signal, “we’ve fucked a few times, that’s it. We’ve talked about it, and we’re not really putting a name on it right now.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean, is there some path toward a full reconciliation that you can see? What would that look like to you?” Zoe did the head-tilting thing.

  Heather thought about it. What did the path to reconciliation look like? She’d been in the dark on this aspect for months, but now she could kind of see what she needed to get there.

  “Okay, well, I don’t think I’m ready to be engaged again. I know within myself that until the nightmares stop or even decrease dramatically, I can’t marry Harrison. I just don’t want to start our marriage that way. I do know that my days are better when he is in them, the two times we’ve seen each other, it’s just been less painful to exist.

  “We haven’t talked about moving in together again, yet. I’m pretty sure that Harrison is taking my lead on that, and I’m not ready for it. I’m still wary about going back to our apartment. I keep reminding myself that we have so many more good memories there than we have bad memories, but I’m scared.

  “What we have at the moment feels fragile right now, it’s so precious to me that I’m scared of doing anything that might shatter it. I don’t think either of us would survive another breakup.”

  “Do you consider yourselves to be ‘together,’ then?” Zoe asked when Heather had been silent for a few seconds.

  “Like I said, we haven’t really put a name on it,” Heather shrugged.

  “Sorry, that’s not what I meant to ask, do you consider yourself to be ‘together’ with him?” Zoe raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Oh…” she trailed off and thought about it, “yes, I do. I would never be with anyone else, and now that we’ve started having sex again, it feels like getting back together is an inevitability.”

  Zoe nodded, writing something down on her pad and said, “Well, it seems like you’re going well. It’s natural to be hesitant, given what happened, but you’re in a much better place mentally than you were back in December when you first saw me.”

  “I’ve been trying really hard,” Heather smiled.

  Zoe smiled back at her, “That’s been very obvious. I feel like you know what the next step to take is, but you need to be sure that you’re in the right place to take that step. When you’re ready, I really think that might be the thing that helps with the nightmares.”

  “You’ve almost got me convinced,” Heather laughed and then sighed, “I don’t like the idea at all, but I’m committed to beating these shitty dreams, and if I don’t do it, then I can’t be honest with myself that I’ve tried everything within my power to do that.”

  “You’ll be surprised at what good can come from getting some truth and hopefully some more understanding of the topic.”

  Their session finished soon after that, and Heather thanked Zoe as she left her office. She had a lot to think about. She was seeing Harrison again on Friday, but she knew that the idea of talking to Maddy wasn’t something that she wanted to discuss with him.

  That conversation would be too painful for both of them, especially if she didn’t know if she was actually going to do it. She felt like she probably was going to, though. Zoe was right; it would give her the answers to questions that had been at the back of her mind for months.

  Was this why she was still having the nightmares? Was it because in the absence of the whole truth, her brain had to fill in the gaps with the ideas it had about how it had all gone down?

  *****

  After meeting up with him on Friday, Heather spent the entire weekend with Harrison at her apartment. Cruise Control was gearing up for the release of Games We Play, and it was his last free weekend for a while. They were lying in bed together on Sunday evening after having sex, and he had his arms around her; she was so at peace with the world right now.

  “So, you have to tell me the truth,” she began, with a serious look on her face, “who chose the release date for the album?”

  He grinned at her, “You want to know if I was so tragically desperate for you that I insisted we release our next album on your birthday?”

  “Pretty much,” she laughed.

  “I can’t lie, I did suggest the date on a whim, but everyone agreed to it, and it worked with the schedule for the release. I think everyone just felt sorry for me and gave me what I wanted.”

  “Well, I mean, it’s not as good as having an entire album dedicated to you like Ariana got, but I guess I’ll take what I can get,” she winked at him.

  He laughed, then dropped his head to give her a kiss, “Cheeky wench!”

  They still hadn’t given what they were doing any official label. Heather didn’t need to have a discussion with Harrison to know that he wouldn’t be sleeping with anyone else, and it was the same for him. She’d been thinking about her last session with Zoe and what steps she needed to take in order to make this reconciliation official.

  Heather had decided to call Cooper tomorrow and ask him for Maddy’s contact details. The whole idea of talking to her was utterly terrifying, but it was something that Heather needed to do in order to move forward. Once she’d had that conversation, she would talk to Harrison about the possibility of some kind of trial living together again to see how it went.

  This weekend had been something of a low-key trial for Heather to see if there was still that awful tension between them, and she was pleased that it wasn’t there. When she’d woken from her nightmares each night, he simply held her until she calmed down. Last night, she’d initiated sex afterward, and it had easily burned the memory of her nightmare away from her brain.

  *****

  On Monday, she sat in her office at Serenity, and she was sweating. Her heart was racing, and she had to take several deep breaths to try and calm down. It was just a phone call; she just needed to speak to Cooper and ask for Maddy’s contact details. Fuck, if she felt like this now, how was she going to feel when she needed to call Maddy.

  She stared at her phone, with Cooper’s name on the screen. One thing at a time, that’s all she needed to do, and she would hopefully end up back with Harrison. Step one, call Cooper. She pressed his name on her phone’s screen and waited as it rang in her ear.

  “Heather. How can I help you?” he answered in his usual curt tone.

  “Hi, Cooper, how are you doing today?” Heather asked him.

  Occasionally she liked to play this game where she forced him into pleasantries, just to make him act like a normal human being, today she was just putting off what she’d called to ask, though.

  “I’m fine. What can I do for you?” Heather felt some grim humor at his response.

  “I’d like Madeline Turner’s contact details if you have them, please?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Heather.” He sounded stern.

  “Okay, well, it doesn’t matter what you think is a good idea. I need those contact details.” She’d thought that he might have this reaction.

  “Except that I don’t have to give them to you, Heather. Nor, do I think I should.”

  “Cooper, you’re just the easiest way to get them. I can find her details using other methods if I have to,” she sighed and pulled out her ace card, “my therapist thinks that it’s a good idea. Hopefully, it will really help me with Harrison, and I know you’d like him to be more focused on the album release.”

  Step two, find the bottom line, present
Cooper with it. It was the truth, though. If this helped, then it really would help things to be a lot smoother between her and Harrison, which would undoubtedly be good for his mindset during promos for the album. Especially since reporters would almost certainly ask him about her.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Heather. I don’t know that she’ll want to talk to you, but I’ll give her your number and ask her to call.” Cooper sounded concerned.

  “Thanks, Cooper, and one last thing, can you not tell Harrison about this?” she asked him.

  “I thought you were doing this to try and help him?” Cooper sounded surprised.

  “Yes, but I think it’s best if he doesn’t know I’m planning to talk to her. I think he will stress about it, and there will be more pressure on me for it to go well,” she decided to be honest with him.

  “I understand.”

  He hung up, and Heather sat there, feeling numb. Would Maddy even call her? There was nothing that she could do now but wait. She distracted herself with work. The new designs were coming along really well, and Heather was excited for the direction that Serenity’s next collection was taking.

  A few hours later, Heather was distracted from her work when her phone started buzzing on the table nearby. She looked at the screen and saw a number on the display that she didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?” Heather felt her nerves reach boiling point as she answered the phone.

  “Hi, is this Heather?” the person asked.

  “Yes, is this Maddy?”

  “It is.” Heather heard a deep sigh from the other end of the line. “Cooper asked me to call you.”

  “Thanks for calling me.” Heather hesitated, unsure of how to ask the question she needed to ask, and realizing that there was no point in beating around the bush. “I was wondering if you would be willing to meet up and talk to me?”

  “I’m not really sure…” Maddy trailed off.

  “I know that it’s uncomfortable, trust me, I’m not enamored with the idea, but it would mean a lot to me to get some answers to questions that I have about that night,” Maddy didn’t answer immediately, “please, Maddy?”

  “Okay, I guess. Where do you want to meet?”

  Heather let out a breath that she hadn’t realized that she’d been holding, “I know that I’m asking a lot, but would you mind coming to my apartment? I can give you a code to get into the underground garage. It’ll mean that we can meet up, and there won’t be any paparazzi bullshit about it.”

  “Will Harrison be there?” Maddy asked, sounding concerned.

  “No, he won’t.” Heather laughed. “As if I want you two in a room together again. Sorry, that was bitchy.” She immediately corrected herself. “I apologize. No, he won’t be there. We don’t live together at the moment. He doesn’t even know that I’m planning to talk to you.”

  “I see. When do you want to meet?”

  “When are you free?” Heather asked her, and they organized to meet the next day at seven in the evening.

  *****

  Heather was incredibly stressed for the next twenty-four hours. Harrison sent her a text on Tuesday afternoon, and when she saw his name on her screen, she thought for a second that Cooper must have told him about Maddy.

  Hey angel. Want to catch up tonight? I’d love to see you before my flight.

  All of Cruise Control was flying to Los Angeles the next day for press events to promote Games We Play.

  I can’t. God, I wish I could. Maybe you could call me?

  Spending the evening in bed with Harrison was a much better proposition than what she was actually going to do. Heather knew that she needed to get this conversation over and done with. She would see how tonight went for sleep before she could see him again. By tomorrow, Heather would know within herself where exactly she was mentally, and they could move forward from there.

  Of course I can, angel. I’ll look forward to it. Can I book you in for next Monday after I fly back?

  She grinned, the knowledge that he wanted to see her as soon as he was back in the city was pleasing.

  Yes. I think I can pencil you in. I love you, Harrison.

  I love you too, angel. Always and forever.

  By the time seven rolled around that evening, Heather was wound tighter than a spring. She was incredibly tense and jumped when she heard a knock at her door. Oh, god, this was happening. She walked to the door, feeling as though she was walking toward the gallows, and couldn’t help thinking that having her head chopped off would probably be better than this.

  Heather opened the door to see an incredibly nervous-looking Maddy on the other side. She looked so young and completely vulnerable that Heather felt bad for her and a wave of gratefulness that she’d even come tonight, washed over her.

  “Hi, Maddy. Please come in,” she stood aside, holding the door open for Maddy to enter the room. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “I haven’t drunk anything since…” she trailed off.

  Heather nodded, feeling bad for Maddy. She’d obviously been scarred by what had happened, and Heather wondered if she’d been having any kind of therapy. It wasn’t her place to recommend it, but Heather hoped that she was.

  “Would you like coffee or tea or juice or something?” Heather asked.

  “A coffee would be nice,” Maddy said.

  Heather made them both coffees, then they walked over to the dining table and sat down opposite one another. Heather took a deep breath and looked at Maddy. This was the woman she’d dreamed about every night for the last five months; she’d seen her perform hundreds of different sex acts with Harrison in her brain. She’d resented her for a lot of that time, but now that she was here in front of her, Maddy was nowhere near as scary as she’d imagined. She just looked broken.

  “How are you coping?” Heather surprised herself with her first question; she hadn’t expected to ask it.

  Maddy gave a hollow laugh that Heather recognized from when people used to ask her how she was doing, “Oh, just brilliant. The entire world knows me as ‘the slut who fucked Harrison Fletcher.’ It’s been so much fun.”

  “I can imagine that’s been really hard for you,” Heather grimaced.

  She recognized the use of the coarse language as a defensive mechanism that, again, she had used herself plenty of times over the last five months.

  “You have no idea,” Maddy caught her eye and actually laughed this time, “Okay, you probably do. I’m so sorry, Heather. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to apologize to you enough. I know that you told Cooper not to fire me. Thank you for that, you didn’t have to do it.”

  “I was very angry at you,” Heather told her, “but you were a victim as well. I couldn’t let Cooper do that; it wouldn’t have been right.”

  “Thanks. I couldn’t keep working for him, though. Everyone knew what happened; I felt so ashamed. Of course, I’ve started a new job where everyone knows what happened, anyway,” she cringed, “but at least they weren’t there and watching it happen that night, you know?”

  In all of the run-throughs that Heather had done in her head of this conversation since Zoe had suggested this, she’d never imagined herself to be sympathetic in any way, shape, or form to Maddy. She’d imagined a lot of shitty outcomes from tonight, but it was clear that Maddy had suffered as badly as she and Harrison had since it happened.

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, Maddy,” Heather said gently, “I know that this will probably be hard for you and I’m sorry about that, but I need to know everything that happened that night.”

  Maddy shook her head, “No, Heather. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you really do.”

  “You’ll be surprised, but my therapist thinks that I apparently do. I have nightmares every night about you and Harrison in bed together, did you know that?” Maddy looked horrified. “Yup, that’s the reaction I was looking for. Every night since I found out, my brain has treated me to a se
x show of you and my ex-fiancé in bed together. I just want a full night’s sleep, and Zoe thinks that if I find out what happened, my brain might chill the fuck out on filling in the blanks for me.”

  “Heather, I’m so, so sorry.”

  Maddy wiped a tear away from her eye, and Heather walked over to the kitchen, grabbed a box of tissues and came back as she handed one to Maddy, “I think we might both end up needing these.”

  “Okay,” Maddy swallowed heavily, “what do you want to know?”

  “Tell me everything that you remember, please, from the time Harrison sat down next to you until the time you last saw him.”

  “I was so stoked when Cooper told me I could go to the event in your place. I don’t normally get to go to the cool stuff. It all started out normally—they arrived a little bit later than us, and everyone was in a good mood. I met Ariana for the first time, and she was really nice to me.

  “During the entrées and stuff, Harrison and I were just chatting. He talked about you a lot,” Maddy laughed, “like, a lot. He was telling me all about Saturday Night Live and how proud he was of you. Oh, he mentioned the sketch about you leaving him at the altar, and I thought it was super weird that he was okay with it because he was clearly mad about you.

  “I actually said that to him, and he said ‘it’s funny because nothing could ever break us apart, though,’” Heather grabbed a tissue as the tears began to flow for her, too; neither she nor Harrison would ever have predicted what had happened that night, “Are you really sure that you want me to continue?”

  Heather nodded, “Yes, I know I’m crying, and I’m going to do that a lot, I’m sure. I appreciate you being so honest with me, please don’t hold anything back.”

  “Well, then the main course came out, and we were eating it. Harrison was being really nice and asking me about what my career plans were. I remember thinking that maybe if I impressed him, Cooper might promote me and put me on the Cruise Control account,” Maddy said bitterly.

  “I’m sorry, Maddy.” Heather was sad.

  “Not your fault,” Maddy gave her a wry smile, “anyway, a bit after that, everything started to feel really weird. Sorry to have to say it, but Harrison is fucking hot, and I hadn’t really been interested in him before that, suddenly it was like I couldn’t think about anything except how hot he was.”