Twenty/Twenty

Prologue

What is it that they say? Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Well, I don't know who "they" are but they're right. Looking back I am seeing things a lot more clearly and the picture that's coming into vivid detail is nauseating. Literally. My hand goes to my stomach as if pressing on it can somehow erase the churning.

Planning this wedding has been one of the highlights of my life. Some brides complain of stress but that hasn't been me. Of course, that's probably because I've been designing every detail of this day since I was eight years old. It's not exactly a hardship to put together an experience you've been thinking about for seventeen years. Every single moment has been lovingly created and that includes the menu. I don't think the prime rib will be as good coming up as it was going down.

I slide down the wall of the little room where I'm currently hiding away. Processing what I've just heard. My dress is billowing around me. Adding to the heat I'm suddenly experiencing. Sweat pouring. Chest aching. Pulse pounding. Am I having a heart attack?

Grasping around in the satin and lace I find my hem and shakily begin using my train as a makeshift fan. Doing my best to will my heart, body and brain into submission. If you're paying to read this story, it was stolen from BlueGranite. You can read it for free on Wattpad. I have to get it together. Dying at my own reception was never in any of my childhood fantasies.

Of course, finding out secrets about my brand new husband wasn't either. But here we are.

Memory after memory flickers through my mind like a reel of vignettes. Desperately, I attempt to place them in order as I try to recall every incident that helped shape my faulty thinking about this situation. My thoughts slow and latch onto the day I met his parents.