Nice Day For A White Wedding

‘And now?’ Kit murmured sleepily against her skin.

‘Now I don’t feel scared of anything at all,’ she smiled, drifting off to sleep.

***

‘Jez has been round three times this week,’ Chelsea hissed at Ruby as she plonked herself down beside her in the form room.

‘Why?’ Ruby frowned. ‘He sorted it, didn’t he? The guy who –’

‘Yes,’ Chelsea growled through gritted teeth, looking around the room, ‘he sorted it. And now he keeps coming back.’

She looked at Ruby darkly, her overly plucked eyebrows high on her forehead. She smoothed down her high side ponytail, the dark roots almost greasy.

‘Oh. Carly.’

‘Yep. Jez is dating my mum. What’s next? The Krays turn out to be my fucking fairy godfathers?’

Ruby snorted, ‘even I’m not that good, babe. This is a gift. A gift that happened because of me, by the way.’

Chelsea’s eyes hardened. ‘None of this has been a gift. Do you even know what happened to that guy?’

‘Was it worse than someone biting off his tongue?’

Ruby’s eyes were dark, her mouth smirking with no softness around the edges. Chelsea glowered, staring straight ahead.

‘Jez being your stepdad could have a lot of advantages you know,’ Ruby laughed, ‘he’ll scare off anyone who might hurt you.’

Chelsea snorted. ‘You scare off anyone who might hurt me.’

‘Well, maybe it’ll be all happy families and he’ll make your mum a better person. Maybe he’ll end up being that dad-type person who walks you down the aisle at your wedding.’

Ruby fluttered her eyelashes, hands clasped as she stared off into the distance dreamily for a moment, the whole thing a farce. She snorted and shook her head.

‘Married?’ Chelsea hooted. ‘Who the hells shackles themselves to someone for better or worse? No one goes down with a sinking ship, babe, no matter how good a person they think they are.’

She looked old, her nose twitched up in derision, like she knew the answers about the world. She felt ancient, like she’d already seen every stupid thing that anyone could do in this stupid town. That people were essentially bad, and you just had to let it go, because they were too stupid to be better.

Ruby paused. ‘Do you wish your mum had waited for your dad? Done that whole “stand by your man” country music thing?’

Chelsea shook her head, smiling just a little. ‘The man gets arrested, gets locked up, gets out, and does it all over again. Maybe he’s happier there. Or maybe he just makes shitty decisions.’

She looked down at the scratch marks on the table, the promises of loving ‘4eva’, the ‘Tracey is a bitch’, the random phone numbers and crude drawings. Horny little stick figures that had since been scraped over in the hopes of erasing them. But you could still always see what had been underneath.

‘Either way,’ Chelsea shrugged, ‘man’s an anchor. My mum’s a bitch, but she was right to let him sink. The man invites trouble, always has.’

‘And Jez doesn’t?’ Ruby grinned, thinking about the ageing cockney gangster with the ancient trilby.

‘I think Trouble knows to only call on Jez when she’s been invited,’ Chelsea grinned and Ruby pointed, grinning, her button nose turned up in triumph.

‘I knew it! You like him!’

‘He’s sweet for a gangster,’ Chelsea said, shrugging and turning silent as the teacher walked up to the front of the room and started writing on the board. If she was going to shock them all, and get out of Badgeley in the most unbelievable way possible, she was going to have to listen.

Chapter Four (#ulink_69733083-d837-596f-a54a-5761db4bbe1f)

Kit and Chelsea woke up in the same positions they’d fallen asleep in. Which looked adorable, but hurt. A lot.

‘Why, the older I get, do the hangovers stop being those ones that hover gently in the background that can be cured by coffee and pizza?

‘Think you answered your own question there, babe.’ Chelsea laughed, then winced, stretching her arms above her head and twisting her neck. She hadn’t opened her eyes.

When she did, Kit was standing in front of her, holding out a glass of water.

‘Don’t regret saying yes now, do you?’ He stuck his hands in his pockets and bounced on his heels, a cheesy grin on his face. But his words were soft like his eyes.

‘I regret that last bottle of wine,’ she laughed, standing up to wrap her arms around his neck, still holding the glass of water in one hand, ‘and that I think I may have fallen asleep on this massive rock on my finger and indented my face forever.’ She stretched her mouth out and rubbed her cheek, laughing.

She took in the deep blue of his eyes, the light stubble around his chin and the strength of his arms around her. He seemed to glow, even with the sleep in his eyes and the creases from the pillow on his face. ‘Did you think I would regret it?’ she asked quietly, putting the glass of water on the side table, and curling her fingers around the hair at the base of his neck.

Kit looked at her, head tilted as if he wasn’t sure how to answer.

‘No, but…you tend to draw back when I get close. It’s like a dance we do.’ He shrugged, and Chelsea knew exactly what he meant, those parts of her life she didn’t share freely, like he did, those times she changed the conversation or wordlessly shrugged. A small part of her yelled, ‘then why marry me, if I’m so cold and distant?’ but she knew there was no way to get into that. At least not yet. In time she would share her history with him, the real one, not the one she’d sewn together like a shroud made from assumptions and silence.

‘Well, maybe that should be our wedding dance.’ She winked and made a face, watching as his face fluttered through emotions.

‘We’ll meet in the middle, I know we will,’ he shrugged, his arms still encircling her waist, ‘as long as you’re here, I don’t care. As long as you’re here.’

She held him tightly, suddenly afraid and overwhelmed with love at the same time, as if the idea of not being there tore at her chest. This was what it felt like, being vulnerable. Making a promise you intended to keep.

‘Yesterday was the best day of my life,’ she whispered, half to him and half into the dull room, only a shred of sunlight threatening the shutters, ‘and I could never regret it.’

Kit pulled back and stroked her cheek, smiling. ‘You say that now, you haven’t met my family.’

She stepped away to retrieve the glass of water, downing it in one and feeling no more refreshed, although the pounding in her head was receding. ‘Are you nervous?’ She laughed, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you nervous.’

‘I was nervous that first day I asked you out for breakfast,’ he grinned, dimples appearing suddenly, making him look like a naughty child.

‘Only because I’d just asked you out to dinner and you were a cheeky bastard!’ she laughed. ‘You were lucky I didn’t deck you!’

‘Ah,’ he nodded, ‘that’s right. I was scared.Scared was the word I was looking for.’

Chelsea thought back to that night, in the living room of her friend’s new flat, where they all sat round a sad fondue set because it was ‘ironically post-70s revival chic’, listening to a man with pretty eyes and a sharp jaw tell her she looked like someone who had something interesting to say. She’d told him he could stick his smooth chat-up lines up his arse, and if he wanted a real conversation, he knew where to find her. She’d waltzed out to the balcony with a bottle of wine. He’d followed with two glasses and no more stupid lines, and they sat there for the rest of the night talking about everything and nothing.

‘Who are you embarrassed of?’ she said suddenly, pausing at the door of the bathroom, toothbrush in hand. ‘Them or me?’

Kit raised an eyebrow. ‘Them, obviously. They drink too much and they’re loud and obnoxious and seem to care about pointless, trivial shit that doesn’t matter.’

Chelsea rolled her eyes. ‘I promise you, however bad they are, I’ve grown up with worse.’