Coming soon…
ONE VEGAS NIGHT
Chapter One
Lily
The waiting room in the office of the city clerk smells like a cross between antiseptic and old carpet, and it has the kind of harsh fluorescent lighting that drains all of the warmth from a person’s face.
It doesn’t feel like the sort of place where the fairy tale begins.
Instead, it feels like somewhere where dreams go to die.
I sit beside Jacob, my fiancé, on a hard plastic chair that clings stickily to the lower half of my thighs that aren’t covered by my dress.
I keep pulling at the hem, trying to pull it further along, but I’m fighting a losing battle, and I’m aware that I’m moving around too much.
Jacob hasn’t said a word in the last ten minutes since we signed in at the counter and he has already told me once to stop fidgeting.
I’m trying not to, but the heat in the room and the tackiness of the chair is making it extremely difficult. Still, I don’t want to annoy Jacob any more than I already seem to have done, so I give my dress one final tug and then I cross my arms to keep myself from worrying at it any longer.
We are here to register for our marriage. I should be excited. I should be glowing. Instead, my palms are sweating and my stomach twists like it’s trying to warn me to stop this, to run away. I ignore the feeling.
I try to smile, just in case the woman behind the desk is watching us, but my face feels stiff, like it forgot how to look happy.
Jacob checks his watch impatiently and sighs. It’s a long, theatrical outflowing of his breath like he’s being made to endure something awful. He needs to try this wait in a dress.
“This is taking forever,” he complains.
I nod in agreement. I don’t tell him I don’t mind the wait because it’s always easier to agree with Jacob, especially over the small stuff. Why start a fight over something that doesn’t make any difference in the big scheme of things.
I look down at my engagement ring, a cold band of platinum with a small emerald that used to sparkle when I moved my hand.
Now it just looks dull and cheap, but it feels like a leash tightened around my finger.
Something used to control me and keep me in place.
I used to twist it around absently when I daydreamed about the wedding, but I don’t do that anymore – not the twisting or the daydreaming.
Not since the day I told Jacob that I was thinking of a quite ceremony in a Church, and he laughed and told me it wasn’t about what I wanted.
I should have known. It’s never about what I want.
I glance around the room. There are a few other couples waiting. A woman with long red curls is leaning into her partner and giggling, her face aglow with happiness. They look like they’re in on a secret together.
I look at Jacob, sitting beside me like I’m a stranger on the bus.
Is this what our wedding will be like? There will be no affection, no inside jokes, no laughing together.
It will be clinical almost, something we have to get through rather than something for us to enjoy.
It will just be another leash around my neck rather than a celebration of our love.
My mind drifts away from the room we’re sitting in, and against my will, it goes to how I now picture my wedding day.
The music swells, something classical, something he picked.
It’s not the wedding march or anything that means anything to me.
It’s something that is all dramatic violins and heavy piano playing.
It invokes the feeling of being on edge rather than being in love.
Everyone rises as the notes ring out. I stand behind the doors, holding a bouquet of white roses.
They are not my choice. I wanted wildflowers and baby’s breath, but Jacob’s mother’s favorite flowers are white roses so that’s what I’ll be holding.
Even now, I can feel the weight of the dress, the veil, the expectations.
I feel the leash clicking tighter around my neck, squeezing the life out of me.
I take a deep breath while I still can.
Then doors opens and I take my first step down the aisle.
I see Jacob standing waiting for me. He looks handsome in his suit, but I don’t’ feel any of the things a bride is meant to feel as she walks down the aisle towards her bridegroom.
There is no joy, no butterflies, not even nervous excitement.
Instead, something icy and paralyzing settles in my stomach.
I know what that feeling is. It’s dread. Pure and absolute dread.
I want to run; to say I’ve made a mistake and just leave. But where would I go? Jacob is the only person I have in the world.
I scan the guests as if to confirm it. And it’s true, I don’t recognize most of them.
They are Jacob’s friends, his family, his coworkers.
Even his ex-girlfriend is there, the one he swears he doesn’t still talk to but, who always seems to know all our plans.
She is the last person I want here, and he knows it, yet here she is, his wants outweighing mine as always.
There’s no one here for me. I guess I could claim our neighbors, but they are mutual acquaintances, not my friends. I need someone here who is on my side, but that’s impossible, because I don’t have a side anymore.
My mother? Jacob said she was toxic. That she didn’t respect our relationship.
That she only ever made me feel bad about myself.
So, I stopped calling her and dodged her calls whenever he was around.
Over time my mother started to feel bad for me having to act like a thief in the night simply to call her and told me to ring her only when he was gone for good.
My sister? Jacob said she was jealous of me. Manipulative. Always trying to drive a wedge between us. So, I let her go too after a silly argument.
He had a problem with my father, my grandparents and every aunt, uncle and cousin he ever met.
He slowly convinced me to cut off them all, although at the time, I didn’t’ see it that way, didn’t realize what he was doing.
I believed him when he said they were all jealous of our relationship, and highlighted all the microaggressions they committed. I was better off without them.
And now it’s too late. I can’t go crawling back now. As my mom would say, I’ve made my bed and now I have to lay in those dirty sheets .
And it wasn’t just my family Jacob convinced me to cut off.
It was my friends too. He said they were selfish.
Immature. Party girls. They were a bad influence on me.
Not one of them had a steady relationship so they didn’t understand what a real relationship was and how much time we needed to invest in us.
He said they weren’t happy for me. They were all, of course, jealous of me.
So, he made sure they cut me out, one by one.
And now it’s just me and him.
Even the person giving me away is Jacob’s person, Jacob’s choice.
His father is the one walking me down the aisle.
Because I needed someone, and he offered.
Because Jacob said it would look better that way, that I couldn’t possibly walk down the aisle alone.
And because I couldn’t bring myself to argue with him, here I am, being given away by a man who is almost a stranger to me.
As I walk through the congregation of strangers, my chest tightens with every step. Not from emotion, but from suffocation. This isn’t a wedding. It’s a life sentence. I can’t do this. I can’t. I’m suffocating, dying…
In the waiting room of the registry office, panic threatens to overwhelm me. I force the horrendous vision away and blink hard. Now I’m being a drama queen. Look at me. How lucky am. Any woman would be happy to be with Jacob. Successful, good looking, loyal. What more could a woman want?
I glance at Jacob out of the corner of my eye. I definitely don’t want to embarrass him by having some sort of meltdown in public.
He’s looking at his cell phone, scrolling through something with a pinched expression. He hasn’t noticed me drifting off into a world of my own. He never does. It usually bothers me that he’s so out of touch with how I’m feeling, but right now, it feels like a blessing.
My stomach grumbles softly. I skipped breakfast. I didn’t want to be bloated in my sun dress. Jacob hears it. He looks at me and shakes his head.
"You should’ve eaten. You know how moody you get when you're hungry," he says. “I told you what would happen if you skipped breakfast.”
I nod.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I say quickly, trying to appease him before he can start shouting at me in front of these happy, loved up couples. It’s bad enough that we’re sitting here in silence without us having an argument as well.
His eyes flick up and down me.
“You know, you need to do more than skip a meal if you want to look good. You could have at least worn something flattering. That dress makes you look bigger than you already are.”
I freeze. The words hit me like a slap, even though they shouldn’t anymore.
I’ve heard worse, but I think what hurts the most isn’t so much the words, but where and when he has chosen to deliver them.
He is so matter of fact about how he berates me.
If he was mad and yelling, I could tell myself it was the heat of the moment, but this isn’t anything like that.
It makes me wonder why he even wants to marry me.
It seems as lately there nothing at all he likes about me.
He points out my flaws casually as he might point out an errant flower growing somewhere unexpected.
“I thought it looked nice,” I say softly, begging him with my eyes to take back his words.
Instead, he snorts a half laugh down his nose. “Yeah, well, maybe check with me next time.”