Pillow Talk

11.

"First, I convince your father to bring you out here, then you blatantly disobey me and everything I've worked for for this wedding. What do you have to say for yourself?" Hannah's shrill voice rang throughout the room while I got my makeup done. 

"I'll be your bridesmaid. The whole thing. The speech and everything. I'll even say nice things about you and my dad. Is that what you want?" I swiveled away from the makeup artist, to her dismay, and looked over at Hannah. "Look, I'm sorry that I ditched you like that. I really am. It's just that this whole thing with my dad and him remarrying is really weighing me down. When you're little you think that your parents were invincible and this whole thing has proved to me that they aren't and I'm just taking this news a little hard, okay? I'm sorry." 

"Oh gosh, don't make me cry." Hannah started to fan her face violently and she shut her eyes really tight. "Okay, okay. So you're going to be the bridesmaid and Jared is going to be accompanying you, right? His plane just hit the ground and he's so excited. And Jasmine and her girlfriend are here too in one of the guest rooms they came in a little after you left. This is going to be amazing!" Hannah wiggled her shoulders slightly in fear of her dress falling down. 

"Wait, what do you mean Jared's plane just touched down? We're not together, I'm with Muhammad now. Jared and I broke up two months ago. How the hell did he get down here?" I shooed the make up artist away and turned back towards Hannah. "I never told you I wanted Jared here!" 

"I'm sorry, I just assumed-" 

"You assumed wrong. Muhammad is walking me down the aisle, not Jared." I interrupted. "I can't believe you wouldn't first ask me if I wanted him here. How did you even get his phone number?" The thought of seeing jared again made me want to dive into the nearest pool and disappear. It had been two months since I had seen him and I wasn't very fond of seeing him being walked down the aisle by another guy. "I can't believe you would actually do this to me."

"Look, it's already too late. You will walk down the aisle with him and then you walk up to the first spot and the Jared will break away and go seat in his seat in first pew. That's how we organized this wedding and that's how it will happen. Afterwards you can do whatever you want. You can leave, you can take off all your clothes and run around the reception. I don't care. But this is my special day and it will happen the way that I want it to. Do you understand!" Hannah screamed, her face turning beet red. "Now, get your makeup done nice and pretty, put on your expensive dress, and smile because you're in LA. Okay?"

I nodded my head slowly, "Okay."  

Hannah pulled up her strapless wedding dress and smiled down at me. "Now, Jared's probably wandering around. Why don't you be nice and show him the house. Do that after you have your makeup down and your dress." Hannah snapped her fingers and pointed to me. "Helen, the eyeliner is a bit much. Tone it down a little. She's a bridesmaid not a bartender." 

~~~

After I was all painted up and had on the pale pink dress that reached all the way to my ankles, I went into my fathers house. "Here goes nothing." I opened up the door to find Jared sitting down on one of the chairs in the foyer. His luggage was next to him and his legs were splayed out while he typed something on his phone.

"Well, look who it is. Jared Nickleby in the flesh." I walked up to him and opened up my arms in a hug. Jared's face lit up when he saw me and he stood up and took me into a hug. "I really missed you, Liz. I nearly went insane not seeing you." He smashed his lips onto mine. What used to be a small and passionate kiss that happened between teens that wanted to have the time go by was now something more hungry, more desperate.

I pushed him off and wiped my mouth of any last trace of him. "I'm seeing someone right now."

I've never been the one for crying. It was always deemed as weak in my mother's eyes. It was deemed as weak for girls to cry in my household. But to see the fallen face Jared had on was enough to make me shed a few tears. "I'm sorry. I really am. I didn't mean for this to happen. I was sulking and then this guy burst into my room thinking it was a bathroom or something and he asked me what was wrong and then-"

Jared interrupted me and took me into another hug. "It's okay, Liz. Really, I'll be fine. I just need to know one thing."

I wiped away me tears and nodded my head, "Yeah?"

"Are you happy?" 

"Surprisingly, yes. I really, really am." I didn't know how to respond to that question, did he want me to be happy? Did he want me to still be sad after these two long months without him. I didn't know if what I had said was a lie or the truth. 

"There you are. The wedding starts in 10 minutes. Also, I quit my job. So it's the same shitty apartment that I've been living in so that's always fun." Muhammad laughed. 

I quickly broke apart from Jared and looked over at Muhammad, "It isn't what it looks like." I quickly blurted out, "I was just crying and he just hugged me to calm me down, it was nothing really."

"I'm guessing you're Jared, I'm Muhammad, Elizabeth's boyfriend." Muhammad walked up to Jared and stuck his hand out for him to shake. Jared took it and shook it.  They broke away and Muhammad looked over at me. "Can I have a word with you real quick?" He took my hand and and pulled me off to one of the many rooms inside the house.

"Look, I'm sorry. He had kissed me and I had pushed him away. I didn't want him to do it, I never asked him to. He just did it. It didn't mean anything." I plopped onto my bed and tried to look everywhere but him. I liked this room a lot better than the room in my father's house. This room was a light blue and had pictures of me throughout the years strewn everywhere. I didn't know how they had found all these pictures of me, but it was really nice to see myself grow up. 

"Look Elizabeth. I knew that this was going to happen. In less than two week, I'm going back to Berkeley and you're going back home. I've had long distance relationships and they never work out the way that you want them to. They suck and people start to get their feelings hurt over little things like a missed phone call. Then when big things like cheating happen they don't seem to care." Muhammad sat down next to me on the bed and held my hand in his. 

"Her name was Laura. She was my high school girlfriend and she was probably the best thing in my life at the time. I loved her more than anything. She helped me through everything. When I moved off to Berkeley and she moved off to New York for this management company, we told each other that we would stick together and that I would fly out and see her every month." Muhammad turned my face towards his and gently slid his thumb over my cheek. He put his hand down and faced the wall.

"Of course, that never happened. There was so much for me to experience  while I was in Berkeley. I drank like crazy, did a few minor drugs, banged a few chicks, and started to fail my classes. I was on the point of expulsion, if my mother hadn't chipped in and bought the music program all new instruments, I would have been kicked out. I started missing the calls, and she would get so mad. Accuse me of cheating on her, then I would get mad and accuse her. Turns out we were both cheating on each other. I didn't really care when she had told me. That's when we both knew that it was over. We just didn't care anymore." Muhammad ran his fingers through his hair and slowly rolled his eyes shut. "We just didn't care anymore."

"But here's the thing Elizabeth. When I saw you hugging that guy I was so close to punching the lights out of him. I was scared of what I would have done if you had left us alone in the room together. That's how I know that I do care. Even that small little hug made me want to scream and cry and beg for mercy for what I thought I could do." He opened his eyes and leaned back to my bed and tugged on the back of my dress.

I fell back onto the bed and looked over at him. "Do you think we could make if work? Really make it work?" We faced each other and I was close enough to see every single little freckle that splayed very lightly on his nose.

"No. But I've never been one to listen to the rules or even to myself." Muhammad rolled over on top of me and dipped down. "But your step-mom -to-be would stab me if we show up late. And I don't enjoy getting stabbed."

"You make it sound like you've been stabbed before." 

"That's a story for another day."