Rebel

Chapter 31: Let's Get Lost

"About how sure are you that you would want to marry me?" I asked, leaning across the kitchen island. "About one hundred percent! Now sit your ass down!" Danny shouted. The two of us had randomly woke up craving pancakes. He swore that my pregnancy symptoms were wearing off on him and I swore that it was a bit too late to be picking up Couvade Syndrome. Usually I'd spend my mornings standing in the mirror, trying to examine my body for any new stretch marks that had decided to make an appearance over night. Today was totally different.

I had spent more than a few days entertaining the idea of marriage. Actually, I had become obsessed with it, but this was the first day that I grew the balls to actually open my mouth and say something to him about it. In the past, I thought, HELL NO! I would never, ever picture myself being stuck with one person for the rest of my life. Like, how fucking boring would that be? I wasn't down with honoring to obey someone. I couldn't be tamed. No one's ever been able to tame me. Not even my own parents. Dean and I fought time and time again because he wanted me to lay low and stay tied to him.

But, it was like a switch had flipped. When I drifted off to sleep, thinking that Danny was just talking out of his head, I woke up to images of lace wedding dresses dancing around my mind. I pictured standing in front of all of my friends with my mom crying like a baby as someone laced up the back of a wedding gown and placed a veil over my face. With my mom being who she was, I just knew that everything would probably be draped in the whitest tulle you could find. There would be white feathers, pearls, and flashy little rhinestones all over the place. I saw white rose petals falling all around me with my arm hooked around my dads as I tip toed down the aisle. I saw everyone from my childhood, both young and old, surrounding me, watching me walk in awe of what was about to take place. Sydney Trent, the total fucking train wreck, was getting married. I imagined Danny, all cleaned up and neatly dressed in a tuxedo, which was shocking in itself, waiting for me beside some random preacher.

"I'm just in total shock that someone would want to be stuck with me for the rest of their life," I said calmly, glancing at him from the corner of my eye. "I don't see why. You're perfect," he said nonchalantly. He turned his back to me, continuing to stir the pancake batter like I never said anything. I remained frozen as I continued to watch his every move. I was staring blankly at him, practically gawking.

He thinks I'm perfect.

Even when it looked like the new Sydney, who was the size of a beached whale, had swallowed the old, tiny Sydney, he still thought I was perfect. Even when I was almost sure that I had my own gravitational pull, he thought I was perfect. Even after months of ridiculous mind games and emotional roller coasters, he thought I was perfect. Even when I had a different mood for every single hour of the day, he thought I was perfect. He sat through almost a year of seeing me in a shitty relationship with someone that he and all of my friends would have gladly killed and he was still willing to choose me and stick with me. He took off and disappeared for an entire year, leaving me behind to think that he no longer cared about me, he thought I was perfect and he wanted to stay by my side.

As usual, there was this imaginary list of defects that I always went over when it came to someone seeing something good in me. I was unstable and I'm pretty sure I always had been. Sometimes I was like one of the guys and that was neither good nor bad. I could drink a full sized, grown ass man under the table in less than a few seconds. I took a lot of pride in ending my nights blacked out on someone's couch with my friends babysitting me. I would go toe to toe with anyone, any day of the week, and at any time, and win, lose, or draw, I would do it over and over again without even giving it a second thought or considering the consequences.

Even though I was about to become a mom and was obviously a different and more mature person, I just couldn't accept the fact that someone found me as anything other than defective.