Chapter 33 Emma
Emma
Two Months Later
The off-white dress was snug at my hips.
It was just like I feared: even if I wasn’t showing yet, my dream wedding dress wasn’t going to fit.
None of my clothes had fit right this week.
Everything had felt too-tight; I should have rushed the dress back to the shop to be let out a little.
Now it was too late. “The back isn’t going to close.
Everything is ruined,” I lamented to Angel’s tías, who had come in from the satellite sites for the Castillo family for mine and Angel’s “do-over” wedding.
The women cooed over me. Tía Angela — who reminded me the most of my mother — rubbed her hands up and down my shoulders. “I think you have a case of cold feet, mija,” she said.
I shook my head. “My feet have never been toastier,” I said. I was already Angel’s wife, and I knew he was never going to let me go, so what did I have to be afraid of? Besides my dress not fitting, and the whole church knowing that I got knocked up.
Not that it matters, I reminded myself, not for the first time. You’re already married.
I hoped today would be perfect for Angel. He wanted so badly to do over that awkward ceremony at the courthouse. He said it was for my sake, but a lavish wedding was also a way to send a message without getting our hands dirty. We were a united front and shouldn’t be messed with.
The dress that I had chosen said all of that with just a swish of the skirt. I felt beautiful and badass in it…or I did before. Now, I felt like a sausage with a busted casing.
“You look beautiful,” Tía Angela said. “The dress is perfect. Our Angel won’t be able to resist you.”
Angel couldn’t resist me in sweatpants. Being in a dress wouldn’t matter all that much to him. “When does the ceremony start?” I asked.
“In ten minutes.”
I turned, and Lili was standing in the doorway of the ready-room. She was wearing a bridesmaid’s dress, but she would be standing beside Omar as a groom’s woman. I hadn’t asked her to stand next to me, and she hadn’t offered.
Angel had asked why I didn’t talk to her after he explained that Lili wasn’t the one to rat her out, but there wasn’t a good way to explain it.
I had forgiven Angel so easily for what he’d done to me, and yet, I held onto a resentment toward a woman who, essentially, did nothing wrong.
She’d even tried to stop David from going to Angel to begin with.
“Can we talk?” Lili asked. “Just the two of us?”
I nearly said no, but then the tías were all hustling out of the room to give us some privacy. Tía Angela touched my arm. “Give her a chance, mija,” she begged, and I couldn’t deny the woman anything. She had to truly be magical…or I missed my mom just that much.
“Say what you need to say,” I said the moment the door shut.
Lili pulled in a deep breath. “I’m sorry.” She sniffled and tried to blink back tears. When they didn’t stop, she reached into her dress and pulled out an embroidered handkerchief and blotted at her face gently so that she didn’t smudge her makeup. “I’m sorry for everything.”
I couldn’t watch her cry. I glanced down at my perfectly manicured nails; they were painted black with a delicate, lacy overlay of white.
They matched my shoes and one of the silk flowers in my bouquet.
“It wasn’t your fault, Lili,” I said, cutting into her blubbering.
“Angel told me that David was the one who told him, and that you tried to stop him.”
“He…he did?”
I looked at her, nodding. “Yeah, he did.”
“So, why have you been so mad at me?” Lili demanded. There was a touch of anger in her voice now, and I felt myself bowing up to it instinctively. “I didn’t betray you.”
“But you did,” I said. “You did every time you stepped into that room with a tray of food and refused to help.”
“What did you expect me to do? Go against my brother?”
“Yes!” The word was nearly a shout, and it took us both a minute to breathe through the anger that was thick in the air. “You didn’t agree with him, right?”
Lili shook her head. “Of course I didn’t.”
“You knew what he was doing to me was wrong?”
There was a pause, and then: “Yes.”
“I forgave Angel because he admitted that what he’d done was wrong. He might not have changed it if he could go back — for all that it was wrong, he still thinks that he made a sound choice out of a genuine fear that I would leave — but you never admitted that you hurt me too.”
Lili reached for my hands before I could think to wrench them away and squeezed. “I hurt you with my complacency,” she said, “and I am so sorry. I let my own fear and my own ability to look away from bad things be my excuse for ignoring what was happening to you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Damn her. Who could stay mad after that? I took my hands back, and when she let out a very real sob, I threw my arms around her neck and pulled her close. Her perfume was a spiced vanilla; it was lovely. “I’ve missed you,” I admitted.
Lili let out a wet laugh. “I’ve missed you too,” she said. “I am awful at making friends, you know that? I even tried reaching out to my cousin, Zara, but it wasn’t the same. I ended up hanging out with Omar most days.”
“How terrible for you,” I said. “I was stuck with Angel.”
She scoffed. “What a hardship, spending time with the love of your life.”
I released her. “I still missed the best sister-in-law that I’ve ever had.”
“So far, I’m your only sister-in-law,” she pointed out. “Omar would have to kidnap a woman if he ever hoped to get a wife.”
I laughed even though I shouldn’t — that wasn’t a nice way to describe her brother — and a weight came off my chest that I hadn’t noticed was there. I was still a little sore from the anger that had been festering in my gut, but I could get over it now. We could move on.
“Wait, who’s Zara? Why haven’t I met her yet?”
“She’s Manny’s older sister. You’ll meet her. She’s like us, but also not like us.” Lili shook her head and glanced at the clock on the wall. “I should get going,” she said. “The ceremony is about to start.”
I nodded, but then grabbed her when she tried to turn around.
“Tía Angela is my maid of honor, and I know you’re standing on your brother’s side…
but do you maybe want to give me away?” I asked.
“I went up the aisle alone during our rehearsal yesterday, and I can do it just fine…but it sucks not to have a parent to walk me up the aisle.”
“I would be honored,” Lili said, grinning so broadly that her matte lipstick began to crack.
After makeup touch-ups and last looks at our hair, the wedding planner rushed us into position for the ceremony.
She nearly fell over when we announced that Lili would be walking me down the aisle: she hated that we were lopsided when we reached the altar because Angel had more people standing up for him than me.
The wedding planner had once used the words “unseemly” and “unattractive” to describe how the photos would look of the bridal party.
But now it would be fine because someone was walking me down the aisle. I would have rolled my eyes at her, but I was happy with the development myself. Now, I could have someone to lean on when all those eyes were looking at me.
The wedding march began, and Omar escorted Tía Angela down the aisle. Then, it was Lili and my turn, and when I got a look at Angel in a tux waiting for me, I nearly let go of Lili’s hand to run to him. “Steady,” she breathed to me. “He’s not going anywhere.”
The closer we got — why did it seem like a crawl now when it was so fast at the rehearsal? — the more feral Angel’s expression became. Maybe Tía Angela was right about the dress. “Are you sure you’ll make it through the reception?” Lili murmured to me. “He looks like he’s going to eat you.”
I certainly hope so, I thought. “We’ll be fine,” I said with absolutely no certainty of that at all. “We’re adults; we can behave ourselves.”
Lili snorted and tried to cover it up like she was crying, but I knew she was teasing me. “Maybe you can control yourself,” she said, “but my brother cannot.”
“Who gives this woman?” Father Davies, the priest from the church that the Castillos irregularly attend, asked.
Lili puffed up her chest, and I nearly laughed. “I do, Father,” she said. “Her sister.”
Father Davies motioned for Lili to pass me to Angel, and the transition happened with minimal giggling on our parts. Once I was in Angel’s hands, however, the ceremony’s tone became more reverent.
He had never been more handsome than he was in his tux. “You look handsome,” I told him and enjoyed watching his face twist as he tried to figure out how to respond.
“Thank you,” he finally whispered, “but I think you stole my line.”
I hushed him just as the priest began talking about love and commitment and all of the promises that a husband and wife make to each other on their special day. I tried to listen and absorb what he was saying, but it was difficult with Angel standing beside me with our fingers threaded together.
His thumb played over my palm, and my eyes nearly rolled back in my head. Soon, he mouthed at me, and I tried to roll my eyes at him, tease him back, but I probably looked hungry and desperate because this wedding was going to take hours.
I didn’t have hours: I needed Angel as soon as I could get him, or all of these people were going to get a free show.
“Angel and Emma are here to make a vow before each other and before God —” Father Davies droned on.
“Did we have to do a full Catholic ceremony with the Nuptial Mass?” I muttered to Angel. He shushed me, but his hand squeezed mine to let me know that he was suffering too.
When it was time for the vows, Angel and I opted to do our own.
“Emma,” he said, “I promise to love you for all that you are with all that I am. I promise to love our children and to protect and guide them in our world. I promise that you will be my only love through this life and into the next.” I was still wearing Angel’s mother’s ring, but he slid a matching gold band with a large, solitaire diamond next to it.
Father Davies turned to me. My turn, I thought.
“Angel, meeting you was not something I expected,” I said, and everyone who wasn’t a Castillo was probably confused when every single one of them chuckled.
“I resented it, actually, because you flipped my world upside down, and I didn’t want that.
But then you were there for me, a constant when my world has been anything but, and I fell in love with you harder than I ever thought I was capable of.
I promise to love you for all that you are with all that I am.
” He raised an eyebrow, and I smirked. So I took a peek at his vows and stole a line or two?
He went first; no one would be confused about who stole what from whom.
“I promise that I will be your only love in this life and into the next.”
I slid a ring onto his finger. It was a new band made of the same gold as mine.
At our first wedding, he hadn’t wanted one, and I didn’t push.
But now, I needed the world to know that he was mine, and Angel, despite not liking jewelry, gave in.
He’d wanted that denotation too so that everyone knew that he belonged to someone.
“By the power invested in me, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your beautiful bride, Mr. Castillo.”
Angel didn’t have to be told twice. He swept me into his arms and dipped me, kissing me soundly to muffle the shriek.
I melted into the feeling of his lips on mine, and when he brought me back up, we were still kissing.
It took all of our guests clapping and whistling for us to stop.
I buried my face against his tux, careful with my makeup.
“How can you stand the staring?” I asked him as he directed me back up the aisle.
“I’m only thinking about you,” he said simply.
“It helps.” He put his arm around me as we walked, but his hand touched my burgeoning baby bump, and as odd as it felt to be touched like that in front of people, I relaxed.
As long as he kept touching me, I knew that both me and our baby would be fine, no matter what happened. Angel would always come to our rescue.