The Disastrous Union

17

Orion Lux

I go into her room to look at the thing on her wall while she won't be using the room and while Sawyer and Indiana are out.

She talks about her dream wedding and her dream dress and even her dream ring.

She wanted a small wedding, with a green dress and if she were to get any engagement ring, she'd get an emerald, gold band claddagh ring.

That's not even expensive.

Why didn't I give that to her?

I read the thing about her dancing again and I realise how much she loves it as I see pictures of her dancing when she was younger, her practising for the wedding and her smiling as she looked at videos of other people dancing at their wedding in videos.

Her face lit up so much when she smiled and I had never seen her smile, not properly at least.

Earlier was the first time I had heard her actually laugh, she was so happy and it wasn't me she was happy with.

I look at everything again and then I go to our wedding book and look through the pictures of the reception.

She looked so sad.

She was wearing a cream dress, playing with the ring I had given her for the engagement, she never wore the wedding ring, she took it off immediately because I got the sizing wrong and had to use her engagement ring instead on the day. 

I flip to the part of the book where it says first dance but there's nothing there.

My heart freezes. I see picture of her getting up and I see her wiping her eyes. I see me dancing with my friends on the floor and I see her stare at me with that sad look in her eyes.

I look through the whole book, from the start.

I notice that when she's getting ready, there's nobody in the dressing room with her apart from my mom. Julia didn't even remember the wedding as she was so young.

Even for a while, my mom isn't there because she has to help me out.

I look at the pictures of her walking down the aisle, alone.

Oh my God.

Her tears are running down her face and she's not happy at all.

I flip back to the first dance photos and see in the background, her leaving the venue and that's the last of it.

There's nothing else there.

I know she returned the wedding ring as it was too big and I remembered the day she left to go back and study and how I had to give it back to her as I'd had it fixed and she greeted one of my flings as she left.

I go downstairs and she changes the channel of whatever she was watching when I do.

She's staring at her ring and she looks upset.

I go on my phone and look at the cameras and see what she's watching, a show about weddings and how she's absorbing every detail. She almost cries at every first dance.

I go back upstairs to my room and work but want to look at the cameras again and see a bride with a beautiful blue wedding dress and Missy is covering her mouth and when she fast forwards the show to see the girls father walking her down the aisle and she fast forwards it again and watches their first dance and she breaks.

She sobs as she watches how they dance and how, even though originally he wasn't that good at dancing, he holds his wife close and dances with her because he loves her so much that he tried.

That couple dances for hours, I'm watching the show she's watching as well and I see her start to hyperventilate when she sees the bride dancing with her parents.

She gets up, still crying and starts to try to take some deep breaths and even though she's trying, she falls to her knees and cries on the floor.

I run downstairs.

"Missy, what's wrong?" I ask but she screams at me.

"Leave me alone!" I got the message loud and clear but I can't leave her like this.

I gently pick her up and grab her blanket and put her in my bed as she cries into it.

I consider calling Indiana but I don't want to stress her out.

I sit by Missy and hold her.

I look at the wedding book and I realise that I had failed her.

Missy almost goes completely silent and she looks at me.

"It's not you." She says. "It's my parents. I had my heart set on my father walking me down the aisle when I was really young but it didn't take me long to figure out that I'd get nothing from him, or my mother. That's just the way it is for me and that's how it's been. We were both 18, getting married to people who we didn't even like, I didn't expect anyone to try and make me happy about it because I was inherently unhappy in that situation anyways so not much could've done been to change. Sometimes though, it gets a bit much to process and sometimes when watching stuff like that, I get sucked in, unaware that I'll be unable to react in a healthy way to it."

That makes a lot of sense but there are some things my parents left me to control and I didn't ask her about anything.

"I could have asked, that's the least I could've done." I say but she shakes her head.

"You wouldn't have realistically. I probably wouldn't have asked you either and that's literally just because we didn't really know each or like each other, so when we were fell into a circumstance together, we rejected the idea of that immediately." She's half correct because I do like her, a lot, an insane amount.

She doesn't know how much I missed her when she was gone.