by M J Porter
As he’d expected, the day passed in a blur of speed. He remembered his vows; his bride was beautiful, the outdoor venue was astounding, and the weather was glorious. Rebecca cried prettily when she placed his white gold wedding band on his finger, and he gave her a lopsided smile as he fought to hold back his emotions as he reciprocated. At the end of the day, he could not remember what he’d said, or what order the service had followed, simply content to kiss his bride at the end of it all and know that she was his, forever.
He barely noticed that her elusive sister, who’d not been spoken about for three years but was an entity that hovered on the periphery of his consciousness, was noticeable by her absence. He’d not seen her in over three years, and although he’d discovered her parting gift to him only this morning, he didn’t consider it, so swept up in the seemingly unending round of events Rebecca had planned for the day.
The ceremony itself was almost a mark on the day, taking people away from the bar and the disco and the beach and the party games, ostensibly put out for the children to play with, but more often than not festooned with slightly too tipsy adults trying their hand at the oversize Jenga, jumping on the, luckily, adult size, princess castle themed bouncy castle and racing up and down the street on tiny space hoppers. It was a wonder that no legs or arms had been broken, although he was sure that come tomorrow, there would be many aches and bruises.
Even in her wedding dress, Rebecca had gleefully bounced up and down the street, her white stockings and garter in full view of all who chose to look, and her strapless wedding dress, decorated with lace and beading all down the back, slit to an almost indecent height at the side, barely containing her full breasts. He imagined that many of the pictures taken of her would need censoring, either by her or by her slightly flustered mother. He hoped none of them made it onto Facebook or Instagram, or he’d never hear the end of it. He’d have to make sure the pictures he’d taken of her were stored away where she wouldn’t find them.
The wedding cake had been a towering inferno of delicately wrought pink roses, snaking all over the five layers of painstakingly made fruit cake, which his mother had spent almost the entire last three years making after she’d discovered just how much a wedding cake cost. She’d attended evening classes to learn how to make the roses, how to ice the cake, and how to make the tiny figurines that represented him and his bride.
They’d cut the cake gracefully, Rebecca far more on the way to being slightly too drunk than he was, and then they’d had their first dance to a song Rebecca had announced was ‘their’ song, although he could think of no single occasion that they’d ever listened to it before in any sort of remotely romantic situation. Perhaps, she’d decided this would be their romantic song of choice in the future. He must find out what it was.
Now, he sat in the quiet of their honeymoon suite in a local hotel he’d never stayed in before, admiring the beams on the ceiling and the antique four poster bed, and wondering if it would survive the activity he was planning next, whilst Rebecca sat texting her mother and her friends to garner fed back on her wedding, and to make sure it had been as good as she hoped it had been.
She’d been remarkably calm all day, but on the odd occasion, he’d found her checking on the caterers, the D.J. and the behaviour of the little bridesmaids when she should have been enjoying herself. He’d let it go during the day, appreciating how much effort she’d put into making her wedding day as special as possible. What he’d not imagined was that she’d still be obsessing over it now, when really, he wanted to do nothing more than caressing her naked shoulders, and litter kisses all over her long graceful neck, on full display because her hair was tightly bound in an intricate pattern of plaits and twirls all over her head. She looked stunningly beautiful, apart from her twisted face that bore an angry grimace. Perhaps, after all, he should have continued to ply her with alcohol as opposed to telling her to rein in the consumption of champagne for fear that she’d pass out in the bed when he had other things on his mind.
Her immaculately shaped and coloured nails, tapped over the screen on her touch screen phone as her expression turned from angry to downright furious. Watching her, he sprang from the bed, hoping to avert an outburst. He sidled up beside her while she focused exclusively on the string of photos on her phone, and the comments that were flashing on someone’s Facebook account. He bent down and kissed her neck, unable to resist the temptation, and snaked his hand around her waist to cup one of her alluring breasts, so visible in her strapless dress as she hunched forwards on the magnificent antique dressing stool.
Absent-mindedly she slapped his hand away and in annoyance he reached for her phone. She stood abruptly and started to pace from one side of the room to the other. He suppressed an irritable sigh. There was nothing for it. He was about to be lambasted about something. Silently he cursed whoever had upset his bride.
“Can you believe what that arsehole Mary’s written on her Facebook page?”
Mary was one of Rebecca’s oldest and dearest friends, and also her most virulent critic.
“Look, have you seen it?”
The phone was thrust unceremoniously into his hand, and he grabbed her hand hoping to distract her with some kisses trailing up her long arms to her bare shoulder, but she walked away, to resume her pacing. He took a moment to admire her in her dress again. It was amazing and made her petite figure look curving and inviting in all the right places, her shapely right leg on full display because of the slit that extended almost to her tiny waist. He just wished he could get his hands on it, and on her.
Glancing at the phone, he looked at Mary’s Facebook page, which seemed to list an almost minute-by-minute account of what had happened during the day. It all appeared to be relatively okay stuff, and he wondered what had offended Rebecca so much. Luckily she filled him in.
“Have you seen it, the bit about the food tasting of nothing and the caterers looking like monkey’s in a zoo in their get up. I knew I shouldn’t have invited her.”
He scrolled down to the entry about the catering and suppressed a small smile. Mary was right. The catering staff had looked a little strange in their slightly too small outfits, with barely fitting bow ties, and even tinier waistcoats that had been covered in a tartan of green and red. Clearly, the staff had not been the regulars and by the end of the meal, most of the waiting staff had looked as though they were about to pass out because their collars were too tight. But how to tell his wife that?
Wife, he thought. That was a nice word to say. He wondered if he could get away with being a little blasé about the whole thing.
“Oh sod Mary and her bloody comments, will you come here. I’ve been waiting all day to get you on my own.”
Rebecca looked at him in exasperation and then abruptly burst into floods of tears, her seaming-less eye make-up leaving an immediate wave of black threatening to splash onto her three thousand pound wedding dress.
Great, he thought. Now Mary had ruined his wedding night too!
He grabbed a handful of tissues from the ornate vanity table and walked towards her, holding them out as a peace offering, and she grabbed them and delicately dabbed at her face. Only the tears didn’t stop, and before he knew it, he had a sobbing wreck of a wife who was barely coherent as she brokenly sobbed words that he couldn’t quite catch. Surely this should have been the happiest day of her life so why was she crying?
Finally, and only after he’d held her and shushed her in his arms for about an hour, did the sobbing stop and only then did he finally catch what she’d been saying all along and with her words his heart first fluttered with joy and then stopped with the idiocy of it all,
“I’ll never be a bride again.”
With determination he took her delicate face in his hands, and kissed her thoroughly and determinedly, ignoring the smell of stale alcohol on her breath and her smudged eye make-up. And I’ll never have another wedding night again, he thought, as he finally interested her in the only thing that had made it possible for h
im to get through the day. She grew silent under his caresses, and he decided that he would have to somehow lose her bloody phone on their honeymoon if he was to have any peace from the only to be expected, bitching about her wedding which would even now, be covering pages and pages on their supposed friends Facebook pages.
