Congratulations Are Due, Part 2
My wedding day. She looked beautiful standing there as we waited for our friends to assemble. No family. Her daughter refused to come. Leilani slammed the phone down when Alana rang to invite her. My family I didn't even try.
I don't need them. I'm getting married, I'm successful at work; I don't need them one bit.
Exactly twenty-four hours after I proposed, we exchanged rings. I'd never seen Alana shy. I'd never felt my hands tremble this much.
She placed my wedding ring onto my finger and looked up. A horribly cheesy moment passed where we locked eyes. But we really were the only two people in the world.
Until Daniel started throwing heart shaped confetti over us (where had he got that from? We'd said no naff tat!) and Mary Sue and my boss' wife burst into noisy tears. Weddings aren't really about the two who are getting married. If there were, everyone would elope, because other people ruin them.
I found out later that Daniel and Mary Sue had eloped, precisely to avoid having disgusting pink confetti thrown at them. I am so getting him back.
It was a strange day. I stood on the beach for a long time after we'd cut the cake, done the rest of the formalities and everyone else had filed indoors. I hadn't worn this suit since my father's funeral. It was such a contrasting occasion. I was much more used to the former sort of day.
This wasn't why I'd come to this island, to have housemates and a much, much older wife and be all cosy. It would make a good cover though. Nobody suspects the family man. I'd caused enough controversy by stealing the mayor's wife already.
My legacy would be more than a homewrecker and minor miscreant. It would be pure evil. The kind you'd never see coming, the kind that was so clever and cunning you never could expect it. The kind that would make me world famous, and immortal to boot.
But if I was to have a cover story, and I was becoming convinced how necessary one was, then it'd have to be convincing. I went and joined my wedding reception, challenged my boss to shuffleboard, and won.
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The next day not very much had changed. I had a wife now, but whether you get married or not the world isn't going to take over itself. I had half a mind to make my first victim the rude bloke in the local consignment store, who was very unhelpful when I was looking for a camera for Mary Sue. In the end, I settled with writing to his wife anonymously and telling her he was seeing me behind her back.
Turned out his wife wrote for the local newspaper. It ended hilariously.
I was still causing marital trouble out in town when Mary Sue went into labour. She was crossing the front yard (field, more like, the house is still rubbish) and it just sort of started, apparently. I don't know how these things work, and I have no desire to know. So you'll have to forgive me that I don't have very much detail.
The paparazzi that has been stalking the house got more detail than he wanted to, though. He never came back. Serves him right for stalking us.
Angela Danielle Pleasant arrived within an hour. I told Mary Sue she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. She's not. She looks like the love child of caterpillar and a burrito. A particularly ugly caterpillar.
Mary Sue loves her though, and that's all that matters. And Alana was pretty taken too. She came into the house, completely ignored my story about the consignment clerk's wife, and started reminiscing about when her daughter was born. I didn't think my caterpillar comparison would go down that well with Alana either.
Angela had just been put down on a cot when the whole thing started again. Daniel, barely over the shock of the first birth, did the highly brave and very male thing and fainted. Alana ran into the kitchen and rang the doctor, assuming something was going wrong. Somehow, it was left to me to witness the birth of the second Pleasant daughter, Lilith Samantha.
I don't know what you
do with babies.
