Authors: Virginia Jewel
“You’re finally here, Mel. I love you.” My dad leaned down and kissed me on the cheek.
We’d opted to not do the verbal hand off, but my dad unwrapped my arm from his and placed my hand in Josh’s. He gave Josh a smile and turned to leave, giving me one last wink.
“Are you okay?” Josh mouthed the words to me before anything began.
“I’m so sorry,” I mouthed back to him and turned around to face the crowd.
The room went silent as I took a deep breath and looked up.
“I’m so sorry everyone, but I can’t go through with this.”
The silence of the room was broken by several gasps.
“This was never supposed to go this far. I should have stopped this a long time ago, but it all just got out of hand so quickly.” My voice started to get frantic and I took a deep breath to calm myself. I was absolutely sure of what I was doing. It was just doing it that was so difficult.
“The whole thing was just a joke, a prank. Josh and I were never dating, and we weren’t really engaged. It was just a stupid prank that got out of control.”
I took another deep breath.
“Please don’t blame Josh for anything, he wanted to stop it, but I told him we had to go on. I didn’t want to hurt any of you,” I waved the bouquet towards all our friends and family members. “I lied. I lied about everything, and I am so sorry. I can’t do this to Josh. He never lied. He meant everything he said. I was the one who was lying.”
I could see Sam and Nathan squirming in their seats. I took a few steps towards them and spoke directly to them, “I’m so sorry that we used you, but we never meant to. Everything you gave us was your idea. You wanted all this,” I waved the bouquet around at the ridiculously lavish set up in the store, “We never asked for anything.”
Nathan and Sam exchanged a quick glance then looked down at their feet.
“You used us for far worse than some free furniture and groceries. You wanted to use our wedding, our marriage, as a way to improve your ratings and public approval. But a marriage isn’t a ratings gimmick. It’s an agreement between two people who love each other and want to be together.”
I looked at my mom and dad, who were both too stunned to react to what was happening.
I turned back to look at Josh.
My eyes welled up with tears, “I love Josh too much as a friend to hurt him by pretending to be his wife. He deserves better than that, and someday I hope he finds it.”
I dropped the bouquet, picked up the bottom of my dress and walked as quickly as I could towards the automatic doors and to the parking lot.
A limousine was sitting out front and I jumped in the back of it. The driver turned around with a confused look on his face.
“Please just drive,” I said quickly, pushed the button to roll the partition window up, and threw my head back against the seat.
He turned back around and took off. I saw Josh running out of the store just as we sped past and I felt the heat of my tears sting my eyes.
“Ma’am?” the driver rolled the partition window down, “we’ve been driving around for over five hours.”
“I don’t care,” I groaned in response. The five hours we’d been driving around felt like forever. I had no idea where we had been, and I didn’t care.
“Unfortunately, ma’am, the car was only contracted for five hours, so I’ve got to drop you somewhere so that I can get this car back to the garage.” He gave me an apologetic smile.
“Oh,” I sat up and looked around at the scenery outside. “I guess you can just take me home then.”
“And where would that be?” he asked.
I didn’t want to go home to the apartment I shared with Josh, but I definitely didn’t want to go to my parents’ house. I chose the lesser of two evils and gave him the address. When we arrived, I let myself out of the car and walked carefully to the door. My uncomfortable heels were in my hands and I had bunched the dress up as best as I could to avoid having it rub against the dirty ground.
At the door, I bent down to retrieve the hidden key under the plant and let myself in. To my relief, the place was dark and empty. I flipped the light on and collapsed on the couch. The light on the answering machine was blinking and beeping, but I ignored it.
I had already tried to take my dress off in the limo, but I couldn’t get it unlaced. So, I sat uncomfortably in it and just thought about what I had done.
It was possible that I had managed to make things much worse than they needed to be. My little speech and exit had been broadcast live across the world. By now, I’m sure that even people who hadn’t been watching it live, had seen or heard about it. People across the world watched as Josh was humiliated and left at the altar.
The phone rang, but I didn’t answer it. Thankfully, whoever had called didn’t bother to leave a message. For a second, a panicked thought raced through my head. What if it had been my parents calling because they were trying to find me?
They were probably completely embarrassed and ashamed of me. They had believed everything about Josh and me, and had been genuinely happy for us. I imagined Josh’s dad was probably angry as well. I reached into the bodice of my dress and pulled out the gold wedding band he’d given me to give to Josh. I’d stuck it there before my dad had arrived to walk me down the aisle. I slipped my finger into the ring and spun it around mindlessly.
I looked around the room at all the furniture the boys had worked hard to put together. SuperMart was bound to take it back. Josh had gotten rid of everything he already owned, and once they took the new stuff, the apartment would be bare.
What would we do without furniture?
As soon as I thought about the furniture as ours, a new thought came to my mind, what if Josh didn’t want me to stay with him anymore?
I covered my face with my hands and started sobbing.
The phone rang again.
21.
I don’t know how long I cried, or at what point I fell asleep, but when the door opened it startled me awake and I sat up.
“Holy shit, Mel! We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Josh closed the door behind him and threw his keys on the bookcase.
My eyes were dry and itchy from all the crying and I blinked to try to relieve some of the pain. As I tried to pull myself together, I quickly shoved the gold wedding band back into my dress.
“How long have you been here?” he asked as he sat down on the couch next to me. He was still wearing his tuxedo, but his bowtie was undone and hanging from his neck.
“I don’t know. I rode around in the limo for five hours and then ended up here.”
“Everyone’s been worried about you. We called your cell like twenty times before we realized you had left it in the dressing room. We called this place too, but it went to voicemail.”
I shifted my eyes guiltily and he followed my gaze to see the busted pieces of our answering machine in the middle of the room. He turned back and gave me a raised eyebrow look.
I closed my eyes and sighed, “It was ringing off the hook when I got here. I just got tired of hanging up on people. How mad are my parents?” I changed the subject. I didn’t want to think, or talk, about the phone calls I’d dealt with before falling asleep.
“They’re not mad at you. I explained the whole thing to them.” Josh leaned back against the couch and stared up at the ceiling.
“How mad were Sam and Nathan?” I cringed just thinking about leaving Josh to deal with the whole mess.
“They were both upset at first, but then Sam got a call from one of the executives at CBS and they said the ratings were off the charts and they’d received thousands of calls and e-mails about it in just the first half hour.” Josh laughed dryly, “Nathan decided that since they still managed to come out looking like the nice guy, he wasn’t too mad.”
“Are they going to take the furniture away?” I asked timidly.
“No, he said we could keep it.” Josh sighed, “But he is taking away the free groceries offer.”
“That’s fair, I guess.”
“Sasha was so worried about you that she started having contractions.”
I sat up and turned to him, “What? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. We got her calmed down and Tommy took her to the doctor. He called me a few minutes ago when they were on their way home.” Josh opened his eyes and looked at me.
“How mad are you?” I dropped my eyes as I asked.
“I’m not mad at you, Mel. I wish you had just told me what you were going to do so that I could have helped you.” He took a deep breath. “You didn’t have to take the blame for it all.”
“It was my fault that it got that far.” I raised my eyes to meet his, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, or humiliated you, or hurt you.”
Josh sat up so that his face was just inches from mine. “Don’t take it all on yourself, Mel. You did the right thing.” He pressed his forehead against mine, “You also said that I deserved more than just someone
pretending
to be my wife.”
I let out a sigh of relief and the tears started to well up in my eyes.
He wiped a tear away from my cheek, “Do you want to know what I was thinking about the whole time you were walking down the aisle with your dad?”
I nodded my head slightly.
He pressed his cheek against mine, “You said that you would try,” he whispered softly into my ear.
I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of Josh’s face being so close to mine. His fingertips ran over my neck and shoulders.
“I was also thinking about how gorgeous you look in this dress.” He ran a hand down my back. “I’m not complaining, but why are you still wearing the dress?”
“It turns out that it’s just as impossible to take a wedding dress off by yourself, as it is to put it on by yourself.” I chuckled nervously. His fingertips and hand were causing quite a stir in me.
“Would you like my help?” he said teasingly as he pulled on the laces up my back.
I blushed and muttered, “If you could just help loosen the laces, then I think I can manage the rest.”
Josh stood up and pulled me up off the couch. I turned my back to him and he went to work on the laces. As he loosened each one, I felt myself get more and more relaxed. When the last lace was loose, I sighed and turned around.
“Can you handle the rest or can I come help you?” Josh wiggled his eyebrows at me.
“When I said I would try I didn’t mean tonight, Josh.” I held the bodice of the dress against me as I walked down the hall to my room.
“Damn!” Josh said dramatically and then laughed. “I’m going to call your parents and tell them that I found you.”
“Thanks.”
The first thing I did in my room was put the wedding band in my jewelry box. I pulled the dress off me and kicked it towards the closet. The next torturous thing to go was the ridiculous girdle and bra contraption I had to wear underneath the dress. I threw on my usual old college shirt and pair of leggings.
When I walked back into the living room Josh was nowhere to be found. I called his name and he shouted back at me from his room. I opened the door to find him standing shirtless in front of his bed.
“Sorry!” I blushed and turned away.
“What’s the big deal? I wear less than this to breakfast every morning,” he looked down at his chest as he spoke.