Eddie's Day

I didn’t think it was a good idea for Eddie to be the best man. I told Shane as much.

“But look, he’s my best friend. He’s been my best friend for like so many years. It wouldn’t be right not to ask him.”

“I know, but…”

“He is though.”

“He’ll be wearing his trousers on backwards, and you know he’s going to forget the rings.”

“I’ll bring a couple of cheap plastic ones, just in case. It’ll be fine. And if the worst happens, we’ll laugh later.”

I swallowed the words I wanted to say. Weren’t they selfish anyway? I don’t want my wedding day to be something we look back on later and laugh. I want it to be like a dream. I wanted a day of perfect, perfumed, choreographed splendour. I fully intended it to be the only day of its kind in my life. Eddie would always be around, this was… different. More?

I didn’t know whether to feel guilty or angry.

#

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Eddie, “I got this. You can trust me with this guy.”

“My future husband.”

“Right. Right. I’m good for the whole performance. Starting with the stag do.”

“Well, look, don’t get carried away…”

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime affair. Carried away is the point.”

But- And- And yet-

I wanted my dream wedding. Did Shane want his dream stag night?

Shane shrugged.

“I’m worried that you’re going to end up naked and hand-cuffed to a lamppost, and then arrested, and… I don’t know what else…” None of what I was dredging out of my head sounded terrifying enough to be a reasonable excuse for my objections. “Maybe you’re going to end up sleeping with the stripper, or taking hard drugs, or…”

He cupped my face. He said, “I won’t.”

I didn’t believe him.

#

Long after four in the morning. Pacing the house.

The final sounds of a taxi pulling up outside and the laughter of men staggering out. Shane had a bra wrapped around his neck – red and lacy and sure-as-fuck not mine.

Eddie raised a can of beer. “To the future ball and chain!” And he yelled that across the whole neighbourhood.

“He can’t stand up straight.”

“Yeah, he was having a ball.”

“Did he sleep with the stripper?”

“No. No. I swear.” He grinned blearily.

I looked Eddie straight in the eyes. “Well, you can put him to bed. I’m not.” I walked into the kitchen and boiled the kettle. I waited for Eddie to come down, and I handed him the hot coffee. There were things I wanted to say to him about being careful with Shane, about remembering that I was going to be his wife, that we were a pair now. Dumb things about how that didn’t mean I was just going to replace him in Shane’s life, boot him out of the front seat as it were. Except, of course, that I was. I was supposed to be his soul mate, his one and only, his true love: I was supposed to be the one he partnered with in all and everything. I didn’t say these things, I leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping silently while Eddie thanked me for the coffee and praised himself for bringing Shane home to me in one soggy, drunken, slurring piece.

#

“Well, think about the hen’s night,” Shane offered.  Offered, a few days later, having crawled back out of the pit of that hangover.

“You’re advising me to have a revenge hen’s night?”

“I didn’t say that.”

But I did. Sort of. We went a bit wild that night, not just on the booze, but on the crazy dares, and the guys we were gyrating with across the dance floor. At one point I was dared to climb onto this roof and flash passers-by from above. We hung from trees by our knees like children. We made up fake names and told random men that we were illegal immigrants and urgently needed them to marry us.

It was funny at the time.

#

On the day though. The day should be everything. I was dressed in all white and crystal, shining in cut glass and imagining it was diamonds. I wondered belatedly if it was all just a bit much bling, but then I looked again in the mirror and felt like a princess, felt like a character from a fairy story – Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, on the day we don’t see, on the day they’re bound to handsome prince. They must have worn a dress like this. The prince: stunned. Wouldn’t Shane be too?

Where was Shane?

I was standing there beside my dad and my sisters, my red and yellow roses in hand. They were all gathered all around beneath the blossoms, around the fountain. But where was Shane?

When his car pulled up and he finally stepped out, he was well scrubbed up, looking good. But there was no Eddie with him.

Beneath my breath: “but what happened?”

“I don’t know where he is. I couldn’t find him. Had to hire another suit last minute.”

“It looks the same.”

“Almost.”

“So, plastic rings then?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I thought he’d forget the rings, not the whole damn wedding.”

My sister leaned over at me, “Smile, they’re all watching. You don’t want your wedding photos to have angry-face in them.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Shane.

“Yeah.”

#

I was halfway through promising to love my almost-husband for better or worse, for richer or poorer, and would have pledged to him in sickness or health, if the ceremony hadn’t been interrupted of a sudden by the revving of an engine. The car was Eddie’s, I knew that old bomb. And I cringed as I saw it come ploughing across the municipal gardens, flattening giant daisies and rare ferns with impunity. Dirt landed on the expensive skirts of distant relatives.

Eddie came tumbling out.

He wasn’t wearing the suit he was supposed to have hired, but another suit, that was a generation out of date and clearly didn’t fit him. He was holding one trouser leg up so that he could run, but finding little success since the other one had wrapped itself around his foot and threatened with ever step to send him sprawling. He had something in his free hand – a pair of maroon velvet boxes, and he was calling out loudly, “Wait for me! Wait for me! I got this!”

The assembled guests didn’t wait for later to start laughing about it, they got right down to it on the spot. Shane too. Even me, I guess, if I’m honest. But under the laughter there was something dark and dead that threatened to swamp my mind.

“What the fuck?” said Shane, but smiling.

“Today. I thought today was yesterday. I thought tomorrow was today.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“Well, look, I rehearsed the date so many times in my head that I got it confused. I overthought it.”

You underthought it. Like you underthink everything. You under-cared.

“But I got the rings!” he crowed.

“Just in time,” said Shane, and he turned back to that poor, bemused celebrant. “Shall we continue?”

#

I said “I do.” I could have said “I don’t,” but I didn’t. And I hugged everybody, and laughed and joked and drank the champagne.

And then when I could I ran out into the garden and hid amongst the trees and cried.

Shane appeared there as if by teleporting.

“What?”  It came out sharper and harder than I had planned.

“I saw you run off. What’s wrong? You can’t be regretting this already.”

“Eddie.” I sniffled.

“What? Why? It turned out okay in the end.”

“But he stole it. He stole my perfect dream wedding day. He made it all about him.”

“Just that one part.”

“It’s all anyone’s going to be talking about.”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“He never means to.”

“That’s his charm.”

“It’s not charming.”

So, this is what Shane did: he wrapped his arms over me, criss-cross from behind, slid his cheek down next to mine. “What’s mine is yours now. Even Eddie. I’m still going to have to get him out of scrapes and make excuses for him, but he’s yours now too, so you get to do the same.”

“You make him sound like our first child.”

“He could be. A little bit.”

I didn’t want to be thawed. “It was still our day.”

“It still is our day. Better: it’s the rest of our lives. And we get to spend them saving Eddie’s butt. Lots. Trust me, it’s more fun than you think it’ll be.”

There were people to get back to. Expectations to be lived up to. A smiling bride to act like. And there was the warmth of Shane’s crossed arms against the glitter of my dress. I pushed down that dead, dark feeling. Maybe things were going to be all right for us after all. Maybe they were.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work