Chapter 26 An Unhinged Wedding
Two years ago, the life I spent twenty years building crumbled around me.
We all know the story, so I’ll keep it brief: Man has one-night stand with Jose Cuervo.
Man enters into a drunken photo exchange with a catfish because he’s missing the boy he once loved.
Man stands in front of a mirror wearing nothing but a festive holiday sock, protecting the last of his modesty.
Man takes nude photo. Man accidentally sends nude photo to his entire company directory.
Man loses it all and moves back into his childhood home.
Man wins back the heart of the boy he’d loved and lost. Man overcomes his demons along the way.
Man says yes when I ask him to marry me like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever done.
Like I deserve his love. Like I was worthy. A tale as old as time
“I won’t forgive you for this. I hope you know that.
” Kent slammed his phone down on what I could only assume was his dresser, leaving me with a lackluster view of his childhood bedroom’s ceiling.
“When you’re alone on your deathbed, calling out my name, I want you to remember this.
Remember it well, Gray, because this is the moment you ruined us. ”
Sighing, I tried to rein him back in. “I put the cat filter on. Technically, you can’t really see me.
” I said, trying to soothe a little of his sass.
Not all of it, of course, because it was my favorite thing about him; all his sparkle and dramatic antics.
We simply didn’t have time for a full-blown Kent Fox meltdown.
He jerked his phone up and scowled into the camera. “How could you do this to me, Gray Collins? How? Is it because I wouldn’t have sex with you last night? Is that what this is? Two-liter doesn’t get his daily lay, so he ruins the first day of the rest of our lives?”
I stared down at my feet, heat rushing through my cheeks. “I just missed you, is all.” Batting my eyelashes like a sad puppy dog, I looked up at the camera and pouted. “Didn’t you miss me, baby?” His lower lip trembled, and I just knew I had this. That I’d talked him down from his ledge.
Apparently, I knew nothing, because just as quickly as the affection overtook him, it was gone. His face hardened, and he glared at me like he just caught me in bed with someone else.
“No. Well, I mean yes, I miss you, obviously, but no to all this,” he said, pointing at me, flicking his finger up and down his screen.
“I gave you instructions. Very specific instructions. What were they?” He blinked slowly at the phone.
I rolled my eyes and let out a sigh. It did nothing to tame the mighty beast on the other end of that phone, because he lifted his phone and started banging the side of it against his dresser.
“Answer,” he banged his phone, “me,” he banged it again, “babe!” He lifted the phone back to his face and scowled.
“You cracked your screen again, didn’t you?” I said, spritzing my cologne on my neck.
“No.”
“Kent.”
“Okay, fine, you’ve beaten it out of me. I cracked my screen. Are you happy now, you monster? Answer the question. What was the rule?”
“I can’t see you before the wedding. Gosh, I know.”
“Yet here you are. On my phone. Do you think putting a cat filter on your face is going to fix this?”
I sighed, setting my phone down on our kitchen table. Well, ‘kitchen’ was a bit of a stretch. In our tiny house, the kitchen was actually the living room, bedroom, and concert venue where Kent would lip-sync and perform choreography from the Spice Girls 1998 world tour.
The entire concert. Beginning to end.
He knew each move by heart, as did I, and we ran through them every single night.
During our “gigs,” as he called them, he was always Ginger Spice.
Baby Spice was always my favorite, but Kent owned this really itchy blond wig he made me wear when ever I chose her as my late-night alter ego.
Scary Spice was my choice, but after Melanie B blocked Kent on twitter after tweeting “OH MY GOD, YAS QUEEN!” to her twenty-six times in one day, he banished her name from our home.
He was distraught over it, going as far as wearing a black mourning veil for a week.
When he torched her second solo album, L.A.
State of Mind, beneath the oak tree by our lake in effigy, he demanded I join him.
We stood on the shore of Lake Isaac, my hand supportively holding his as he shouted, “Melanie, why hast thou forsaken me?” After that, I was only allowed to pretend to be Posh or Baby Spice.
I would've preferred to be Melanie C, but when I suggested it, he looked me up and down, shaking his head, telling me while he loved me with the entirety of his heart, I wasn't quote-unquote Sporty Spice material, and I never would be, quite frankly, he added for emphasis.
“Where did you go?’ he whined as I made my way over to our small bathroom, looking for my hair gel. “Come back. I miss you already.” His voice was essentially a whisper at that point, all needy and broken, just the way I liked it.
“I'm still here,” I said, reassuring him as I grabbed the bottle.
“I just need a second.” I tried to stealthily squeeze a dollop into my palm, not wanting Kent to hear.
He threatened to slash my tires if he saw me slathering it in my hair again.
Thankfully, he had yet to follow through, but I knew it was only a matter of time.
Apparently the time was now, because as I squeezed, the bottle made a loud flurping sound thanks to an airpocket in the bottle of hair gel, I guessed.
Kent's eyes locked on mine and all I could do was swallow and take a deep breath. As expected, moments later, my fiancé went into a rabid rage. Gone was the neediness, replaced by more of his sass I loved so much. “You put that goddamn hair gel down this instant. Do you hear me? It’s the reason you’re going bald, babe.
I don’t know how many times I have to say it.
I’ve printed you scientific studies. I've done actual research. Dammit, Gray, I’m a medical doctor, I know these things. ”
I loved my husband, but I couldn't stand there and allow him to flat-out lie. I lunged for my phone, my hair only half-gelled, and I balked at him once I picked it up. “Forcing me to binge watch every episode of Grey’s Anatomy three times, back-to-back, doesn't make you a medical doctor, it makes you a couch potato. I don’t know how many times I have to say that. And if by scientific research, you mean a one-page document you typed up Google Docs and printed out from my computer at work, then yeah, Kent. I read your research. All it said was, ’If you don’t stop using that,’ —and you’ll have to excuse me for not wanting to damn my eternal soul to the fiery flames of hell by saying that word with the G and the D in it, — ‘hair gel, I’m divorcing you. ’”
“Are you questioning my medical background?” he said, raising an eyebrow of his own. “You know what? You’ve been doing this for months, babe, and it’s not okay. It’s just not okay.”
No. I wasn’t getting stuck in another of his ridiculous one-sided wars.
Even if I loved every second of them. There wasn’t time.
The wedding was in two hours, and I still hadn’t even gotten dressed.
“If this is about those dadgum ice sculptures again, I’m hanging up.
” He hounded me about those sculptures since the day I proposed.
He wanted one in the shape of a measuring cup with tequila filled up to the half-pint line.
The second was supposed to be in the shape of a two-liter bottle of soda, filled with diet coke, my drink of choice.
“I’ve already told you, I’m not comfortable having hard liquor at the reception, baby. ”
He whimpered, just like he always did when I called him ‘baby.’ I picked up the trick after reading through some of the smut he had saved to his Kindle.
He had a bizarre obsession with books filled with grown men sitting in their lover’s laps, or being carried around the house on their hip like they were toddlers.
I told him in no uncertain tones that if he expected me to carry him around on my hip …
well, I’d do my best, because I liked the way he felt when he was pressed up against my chest. When I offered to pick him up and carry him to bed, he slapped my shoulder during the lift, demanding I put him down because I was, and I quote, “too delicate for such tasks.” In response, I threw him on the bed and showed him just how delicate I was.
I only lasted three minutes before filling him like an eclair.
Clearly, he had a point.
“I just thought it would be something special for us. Half-pint and Two-liter. Me and you, Gray. I know I’ve gone a bit Groomzilla since we started planning the wedding, but I just want it to be perfect.
It's for you, Gray. All this is for you. You know that, right?” He picked up his phone and smiled, tears forming in his eyes.
I reached up, wiping away a rogue teardrop of my own.
“We’re getting married.” His voice was barely a whisper, as if saying the words might jinx us. “I still can’t believe this is real.”
I grinned and tried my best to swallow the frog in my throat. “I can’t believe you waited for me,” I said, because I really couldn’t. This man … this beautiful, sassy, insane little man waited twenty years and six months for me. He forgave me for everything.
And wasn’t that just something?