Page 14 of For Pleasure Or Worse

The hurt sliced through me like a hot knife, draining every ounce of excitement from my body. I deflated instantly. It wasthe most humiliating, demoralizing moment of my life, but it wasn’t far from expected.

“Oh, honey.” Anna laid a warm palm on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. The best I could manage was a flat smile before the dejection turned into rage and the tint of the room blurred to red like a video game alerting its player that shit was about to go fucking down.

My feet carried me like I was possessed across the room. “What the fuck are you doing, Cam?”

Finally the attention I’d anticipated was totally on me, but I was way past that. It was too late, too raw. There wasn’t a praise on the planet that would undo what had been done.

“Holy shit, Talia, that dress is amazing,” Mia buzzed. She was smiling, fuckingsmiling. As if there wasn’t a problem in the world. My eyes narrowed into slits. Bella and Mom tried to circle me encouragingly and I stuck my hands out, keeping them at arm's length.

“Take that off,” I said bluntly, glowering at Camilla in the reflection of the mirror. My tone struck a chord because she sobered in the wake of it and stepped down from the platform. “You’re supposed to be here forme.”

“We are, sweetie,” Mom piped up. “It’s harmless fun. All eyes back on you now, promise.”

A scoff rocketed out of me. The nerve of her to try and brush this off after seeing how clearly it took the wind out of my sails, as if I was the perpetual little sister and there was nothing to be upset over. I was in my dream dress waiting for the reaction that every single bride deserves from her family and instead I was hit with total duplicity. I could never get this moment back.

“You’re not even getting married,” I spat.

“She’s not even in a relationship.” Mia threw fuel on the fire, staving off a thrown elbow from Bella.

“You’re not even in a relationship,” I repeated more sternly. “How did this seem like a good idea to you? Toallof you?”

“You’re making it something it’s not, Talia.” Cami said it so nonchalantly it sounded like a joke.Oh Camilla, you’re so silly. What a funny thing to gaslight your sister about.But I knew from the disheartened look on Anna’s face, and the fact that she’d stepped away from the conversation and let it play out as a family dispute, that I wasn’t crazy.

“It is something to me,” I shot back. My voice cracked and betrayed me. “One day you’ll get married, however far in the future that may be, to whatever rich dickhead you decide to tolerate for the rest of your life, and then you can try on dresses and you won’t hear a peep out of me.”

Camilla’s face fell into a scowl.

“Let’s not bicker, girls,” Mom said. “It’s a little misunderstanding.”

“Yes,” Camilla agreed. “It’s only a dress. We’ve watched you put on about fifty already and you’ve hated every single one of them. No need to be a bitch.”

It didn’t matter how rough and tumble it got. By next week we’d all be back to the same old antics, fiasco swept under the rug and forgotten like it never even happened until it happened again. We didn’t hold grudges in our family, we just pretended our problems didn’t exist. With that being said, it didn’t occur to me at all how nail in the coffin it might sound when I stepped up to my eldest sister and said, “I’m fine with being a bitch, because you already have being an insufferable cunt in the bag.”

You could have heard a train pin dropping in that bridal salon. I might as well have kicked a baby.

“Fucking hell, Talia,” Mia purred. “You’re just throwing around the ‘C’ word like it’s nothing.”

My eyes rolled. “It’s not even that serious. It’s Australian.”

“Robert Irwinis Australian,” Bella said. “Robert Irwin does not say ‘cunt’.”

“Do you honestly think Robert Irwin hasn’t called one of those crocodiles a cunt before?”

“This is classic Natalia,” Cami interrupted. “I just think if you’re expecting us to throw showers and plan parties and take time off from our veryrealjobs,” she said pointedly, “the absolute least you could do is not take everything so personally.”

My expectations were so astronomically low for my sisters’ participation in wedding planning but this was next level. If playing a part in the happiest day of my life came with a guilt trip and an obligation to kiss their asses for the rest of eternity I would rather staple my lips to a fucking telephone pole. I didn’t need any of them to help me. I didn’t need their half-assed showers or unorganized parties. I most definitely didn’t need them to, God forbid, sacrifice a day of work for me, either.

“It’s a good thing you don’t have to worry about any of that,” I decided on a whim. “Because Ophelia is my maid of honor.”

My stomach was twisting in an uncomfortable knot, flipping over and over on itself. I was going to have to debrief Mateo and hope he could convince his mom that I only saw my family on the rarest occasion, and there was more to me than swear words and phallic paraphernalia. Though at the moment, I wasn’t sure of that fact myself.

The silence from my sisters and mom that followed my announcement spoke all the unsaid words I could already hear. There I was again, being the rebellious, defiant, black sheep Russo. Nothing was ever going to change.

I turned to May, glued to the wall by sheer panic and disbelief. “I’ll take this dress, please. And I’m paying cash.”

chapter five

Natalia

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