“Obviously, marrying someone I don’t know isn’t a good idea. I’m not stupid.”
“Uh huh,” Chloe said in a way that indicated that she believed the opposite. “So if you know that it isn’t a good idea, why are you doing it?”
“Well, let’s see. Maybe I don’t want my wedding to go up in flames because I’ve spent all my money on the deposits. Or maybe it’s the fact that I spent hundreds ofhoursand over ayearplanning everything until every last detail wasperfect. My wedding is literally exquisite perfection. It’s everything that I have ever imagined for myself, and I can’t give that up without a fight.”
“But Avril, the wedding is just one day. There’s a whole marriage that comes with it. You are talking about tying yourself to some stranger because of what you have planned forone ceremony.”
“No. Listen—”
“Avril. Look. I know that this wedding is important to you, but youcan’t do this.If you let the family know what happened, we will all pitch in. We’ll help you with the deposits and planning. You can’t just marry any random guy that you meet on some dating app, no matter how important the wedding is to you. These things take time. Even if it takes a couple of years to find the right guy, at least you won’t end up marrying some psycho monster.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t listening to me. If I have to wait five or six years to find the perfect guy, and plan everything again, do you not realize that I’m going to be five or six years older? I could have wrinkles by then!” My voice ended up a bit screechy as I started borderline screaming in panic.
Okay. So, maybe talking to my bitchy sister wasn’t the best move. Was it rude to just hang up now? Maybe I could still get Cashmere to bake me some cookies. After this conversation I might end up needing one—or three of them.
“Wrinkles are natural. If you have laugh lines, that just means that you have lived a full life. Marriage is about more than just a party, it’s about finding your life partner or partners.”
Great. Now Chloe was speaking as if she were talking me off a ledge or something.
She didn’t get it. She really just didn’t get it.
Yes, finding your soulmate or life partner was important and all that, but I wasn’t going to be young and beautiful forever.
I didn’t throw down my entire life savings on a wedding, just to have to see wedding pictures with disgusting wrinkles all over my dried up and withered old hag face—not when I was so close to having everything perfect.
I was young now! The decor was planned now. I was going to have this fucking wedding while my face card was still lethal.
She didn’tunderstand. Yeah, a good life and laughing was great and all, but the only thing that was certain was that I didn’t have wrinklesnow.
“I’m young and beautiful. I need to take advantage of that while I’m still in my prime.”
“You can still find the person that you are meant to be with, even when you are older.” Chloe attempted to reassure me.
Chloe didn’t get that my problem wasn’t withfindingthe right man… she really wasn’t hearing me out on the whole inevitability of aging thing.
Was the fact that I wanted to look pretty on the most important day of my life so hard to understand? And if my own siblings didn’t get it, how would anyone understand me?
Chloe sighed deeply, as if she could sense that she wasn’t getting through to me. “Are you sure that this is what you really want? What if you met the perfect guy, but couldn’t end up with him because you’ve already planned a wedding and the timing was wrong?”
Weird.
That was almost exactly the situation that I found myself in with David.
“Well,” I swallowed, as I suddenly got choked up. Hastily, I swiped at the wetness that burned at the corner of my eyes. That was not happening. I was a mature adult, and I wasn’t going to cry over this. I took a deep breath to give me strength and whispered my confession… “Honestly, the one guy I met that I really like… I don’t think he would ever marry me.” It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. Why did I have to feel the most intense attraction I’d ever felt in my entire life for a guy that I couldn’t have? Guys as hot as David… they didn’t want to settle down and get married. At least not to a woman who wasn’t even an omega.
You know what, most of the time I didn’t mind being a beta. It seemed like omegas had things kind of rough. They had to dealwith going to the Institute. Chloe had complained about that forweeks.They had to deal with weird pheromonal stuff like scents and heats. Even though I had multiple siblings that had to deal with all of that… when it wasn’t a part of one’s day-to-day life, it all just felt kind of weird.
But I would have dealt with all of that—the Institute, the perfuming,everything—if it meant that I had a shot with David.
“Avril, I’m really sorry… but if you want to get married, and this guy doesn’t want to marry you… then the two of you aren’t compatible. You just want different things.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” My voice was a whisper as I forced the words out.
There was one thing I had gotten right—Chloe didn’t sugarcoat things for me. She told it to me straight, letting me know exactly how crazy it sounded for me to just push forward with my wedding plans. Somehow, seeing my situation more clearly just made everything feel so much worse.
“You gave me a lot to think about. Thank you.” Abruptly, I ended the call. It was bad enough that I was going from the verge of a mental breakdown to being right smack dab in the middle of breaking down. The last thing I needed was to start crying on the phone with my sister awkwardly listening.
Saying the words out loud made my reality feel unbearably true—there was one thing stopping me from going after the man my heart ached for, and that was the wedding of my dreams.
