Say You Hate Me

down the aisle

"Mommy!" I shriek, excitement radiating off my smiley face.

"yes, my love," my mother murmured, pulling my small body onto her lap.

"What was your wedding like with daddy?" I beam, leaning into her warm touch.

"I wore a big white dress and your daddy wore a suit," she started, running her hands through my hair, a wave of serenity washing over me.

"And we got married in a big barn with granny and grandad and we said I love you and we kissed!" She smiles fondly at the memory.

"Ewwww!" I roar, scrunching my nose in disgust at the concept of my parents kissing. A hearty chuckle escapes my mother's lips.

"When I get married it's going to be to Prince Charming and I'm going to wear a princess dress!" I beam, picking up my discarded piece of paper and handing it to my mother. A drawing of me in a big poofy dress with a tiara was scrawled across the page.

"I can't wait!" she grinned, pinching my cheek lightly.

"Elsie!" Lucas snaps his fingers in my face, distracting me from my thoughts, "snap out of it, bridezilla!"

Wedding day is here at last.

Honestly, I'm not biting my nails in anticipation nor is my body wracked with doubts. After yesterday's events, it's growing harder to deny the swarm of butterflies that fill my stomach whenever I see Grayson.

Fuck him and his stupidly gorgeous face.

And fuck me for falling for him.

This wasn't my ideal wedding scenario at all, but the more i contemplated it. The more I realised that the idea of being married to Grayson didn't completely horrify me.

"You look gorgeous!" Lia offers me a motherly smile as we stare at my reflection in the mirror; Val and Lucas squeal in delight from their spot collapsed on my bed.

Grayson payed for an expensive makeup artist and hairstylist for the day. Both of the ladies had transformed me from whatever I was previously to the gorgeous specimen that stood in front of me in the mirror. I fought the urge to just stare and admire myself; instead, I spun on my heel and thanked the women graciously as they begun assisting my bridesmaids/Lucas do their glam.

I smoothed out my dress, running my hands against the white fabric delicately, it felt like precious against my rough palm. A million thoughts swam through my crowded brain yet I didn't exactly feel nervous.

I barely recognised the girl who stared back at me in the mirror. With her shiny hair falling in perfect ringlets and her skin gleaming. Who was she?

She didn't look like she had lost her mother. She didn't look like she was abused by her stepmother for years. She didn't look like she had an absent father.

She looked perfect. Almost like a jewel. There was nothing wrong with her - she wasn't rough around the edges or stained with scars that polluted her skin.

She wasn't me.

But the perfect mask offered me a glimpse of comfort. An oddly warm sensation of knowing that I could disguise the pain my history held.

A shiver shot down my spine and i tossed away those thoughts.

Nila couldn't come to the wedding despite my pleading over a phone call - her aunt said the long journey was too much for a one day event. The thought made me scowl, I always pictured Nila at my wedding. My maid of honour from day one.

I also always pictured my parents at my wedding but my mother was dead and my father never even opened my invitation message. A twinge of sorrow sliced through me, my mother would roll in her grave if she saw the flimsy thread that represented my father & I's relationship.