Epilogue
Weddings are never not boring.
I wish I could say I showed up to my sister’s wedding because I loved her.
But that wouldn’t be the whole truth.
The house where I’d grown up was an unfamiliar place to me now.
It had been almost two years since I’d set foot in the place.
I forgot how needlessly big it was. With the way the backyard opened out to a private beach, and the endless amount of room inside, Sanaa felt like it was the perfect place to get married.
I walked the halls of the old place, remembering the bodies in the dining room, the bodies in the living room, the bodies in the kitchen. This place was haunted with more ghosts than I could count. Not a perfect place to get married at all.
But when Sanaa planned an event, she planned an event.
My opinions would fall on deaf ears. At least she was smart enough to have the ceremony outside.
While guests took their seats in white chairs along the beach outside, the inside of the house was reserved for the chaos that any wedding would guarantee.
“Where THE FUCK are my shoes.”
“You told me you were a size SIX! Not my fault you got fat!”
“No you cannot wear a FUCKING waist trainer in that dress!”
“Stop drinking the champagne!”
“If any of you DRUNK BITCHES trips on your walk, I swear TO GOD.”
“Has ANYONE seen the FUCKING photographer!”
“Cierra, this is MY day. Stop posting my SHIT all over Instagram!”
I could hear Sanaa shouting throughout the house as the wedding party scrambled to meet her every whim. Blurs of yellow and white going from here to there, rushing to meet the demands of the bride-to-be who was probably going to lose her voice before she got the chance to say her vows.
It was March 3rd, 2019.
The first Sunday in March, and the first Sunday of my week long stay in Miami. I could’ve thought of about a dozen different ways I could’ve spent my first day on Spring break.
But I was here because she was here.
Not my sister.
Lauren.
A stream of yellow fabric whizzed passed my face and I held out an arm to stop and ask. “Cierra, have you seen—”
“No.” Cierra shook her head before I could get the question out. “I haven’t seen her.”
“Do you know where I might find her?”
Cierra held up her cell phone. “Okay, so there’s this really cutting edge technology called the text message. You might want to try it.”
Like I hadn’t already tried that.
“Thanks,” I replied dryly.
“If it helps,” Cierra mentioned, “She’s wearing a yellow dress.”
Cierra thought she was being funny. All of Sanaa’s bridesmaids were wearing yellow dresses. And Sanaa had about twenty-five bridesmaids. The wedding had too many guests, and was ridiculously over the top. But that was Sanaa, though. It wouldn’t have been normal for the event to be normal.
Sanaa’s wedding was the society event of the season.
Even the governor was here. Though, that wasn’t surprising.
A lesser known secret was that Governor Perez wouldn’t have won the election if not for the Montgomery family.
It wasn’t him that I liked. It was his opponent who I hated.
So he won. And for that, he owed the family an endless list of favors.
I walked around the entire first floor, checking the face of just about every yellow dress-wearing woman I found.
When I stopped in the kitchen, even though I still hadn’t found her, I saw flashbacks of her from three years ago, taking shots at the kitchen island, in that red dress.
I smiled at the memory, ambling down the halls until ultimately stopping at the staircase.
I thought about it, and figured just maybe. So I took the steps up to the second floor, moving down the hall to the last door on the right. It was already slightly ajar when I stepped through the threshold and into my old bedroom.
“BOO!”
I didn’t jump. Nor was I startled.
With a smile already forming, I turned to find her coming out from behind the door.
“I didn’t even scare you a little?”
“No,” I replied, cupping her face between my hands and drawing her in closer. Lauren filled out that dress perfectly, wearing it better than every woman I’d seen in it downstairs. All things considered, it was still ugly as shit, though. “You look like a lemon.”
She made a face. “Excuse you. A cute lemon.”
“Right,” I agreed, pulling her even closer, my lips hovering over hers when I added, “A cute lemon.”
She pulled back after the first kiss, making it perfectly clear, “I can’t have sex right before the ceremony.”
“You can’t?” I asked, sounding amazed. I brought Lauren right back. “Says who?”
Lauren tilted her head, giving me wider access to her neck, explaining as I worked, “Your batshit bridezilla sister.”
I hadn’t seen her since December. I needed her right now. The feel of her skin, the smell of her hair, the way she tasted.
“Sanaa’s harmless,” I dismissed, still carrying on with my task.
“No, she’s not,” Lauren assured, laying backwards onto my bed to give me better access. “I’m pretty sure she killed one of us. Only twenty-four bridesmaids showed up.”
“Twenty-three,” I whispered against her collarbone.
“No, I’m not skipping,” she argued. “And tread carefully, if you ruin this dress before the ceremony, Sanaa will kill you.”
“That’s fine,” I assured, then changed my mind. “Wait no, it’s best we both make it out of this wedding alive. Take the dress off.”
Her hand glided the zipper of her dress down, exposing a sheer lingerie set. Yeah, Lauren knew what time it was long before I found her in this room. She came ready. “Do you know what tomorrow is?” she asked.
“March 4th,” I whispered against her lips, slipping a finger underneath the waistband of her underwear. “How do you wanna celebrate?” I asked as I pulled them down her legs.
“I was thinking that maybe we could—mmm,” she was cut off by the surprise of me running my tongue between her folds. “Maybe we could have… uhh… date to… date to… We could do this again. This would be… ahh… just perfect.”
“At least make me take you somewhere first,” I encouraged, immediately going back to her clit. Her hips rocked between my hands, body squirming against my tongue as I tried to keep her still.
“Dinner,” she breathed. “Make me… dinner. Like how you did… when we first… started out…”
“And then?” I asked.
“We could do this again.”