Page 33 of Home Body
By the time Kenyon neared the end of her sordid tale, a dozen bar patrons listened in. She’d turned around on her stool to face them and had to look from side to side to make sure everyone in her audience could hear. They homed in on her like fervid fans meeting a scintillating celebrity, which encouraged her mightily.She picked up steam and became more and more dramatic, aided considerably by the Tropical Bay Breeze she sipped as she went along.
“And then!” she reached the grand finale, lifting her glass high like a practiced thespian.
“What?” a woman who’d had a toot or two too many asked, her bleary eyes wide with wonder.
“Well, I hit him with that beautiful bouquet of flowers and stormed out. Left him standing there alone at the altar in front of all those guests…” she emphasized ‘a-a-all’ and swept out an arm to indicate a bunch of people “…like the douchebag he is.” With a dramatic flair she sucked up the last of her drink with a loud slurp.
“Bravo!” Bleary-eyes hollered and clapped. Others joined in for a rousing round of applause.
“Yeah! Just what the flaming asshole deserved,” a man declared in his gruff smoker’s voice.
“What a jerk,” an elderly woman squeaked.
The small crowd had drawn the attention of even more patrons. They started to disperse, but they came to a screeching stop when Bart spoke up.
“I have a story to match that one!” he announced loudly, grinning at Kenyon. “It seems that this lovely lady and I were meant to meet, as we’ve both experienced the same sorry fate.”
That got their attention. They all came back, plus more. An even larger crowd gathered around.
“I too came here on what was to have been my honeymoon. You see, I too was supposed to get married this summer. June first, to be exact, a day I’d looked forward to for a year. I supported my fiancée as she planned a ginormous wedding, even though I didn’t think that was necessary. It seemed like a waste of money to me. But her parents were paying for it all andthey were on board, so I did my best to stay out of the way so she could do what made her happy.”
Bleary-eyes lifted her glass in salute. “Aw. That was nice of you. You’re a sweetie.” She took a drink.
Others agreed, toasting and drinking. Although, none appeared to need an excuse to drink.
“I did push back,” Bart continued, “when she wanted me, my best man – who’s my brother – and my groomsman to wear these godawful baby blue tuxedoes.”
“Baby blue?” somebody hollered. “Like a baby wears? Yuck.”
Bart agreed. “Precisely. Worse yet, because she had a ‘pastel theme,’ we were each to wear a different color bow tie and cummerbund. She let me choose first because I was the lucky groom, after all.” He enjoyed being snide at this part. “I could wear yellow, pink, or lavender.”
“What the hell?” “That’s putrid.” “Wait. No!” “Those are little kiddie colors.” The crowd was adamant in its disapproval of the fiancée’s color choices.
“That’s insane,” Kenyon said. “With your blond hair and Scandinavian-type good looks, you’d look fabulous in a classic black-tie ensemble.”
“Yes-er-ee,” Bleary-eyes agreed, as did others.
“Why, thank you for the compliment. Alas, my bride-to-be didn’t share your sentiments. I gave in and chose lavender, my brother wore yellow, and my groomsman got the godawful pink.”
His audience made faces and shook their heads in disbelief.
“So, we’re up there at the altar ready to say our vows. I’m thrilled. The time has finally come to make our love for one another official. I could tell that Veronica – that’s my fiancée – was nervous. I thought it was just jitters from all the hoopla. Well, it comes time for her vows, and she starts to cry. Great big boo-hoo tears. She’s trying to say something, but no one canunderstand through all the blubbering. Suddenly, she points at my groomsman, the guy I thought was my best friend, and she says, “I wanna marryhim!”
Gasps and swearing rang out from the crowd that had become as surly as a crew of drunken pirates.
“She runs to him, he takes her in his arms, and they kiss! Right there in the middle ofmywedding!”
“Oh my word, I’m so sorry.” Kenyon placed a hand on his arm. He took her hand and gallantly kissed it.
“Thank you,” he said. “In my case, I’m the one who walked out. I drove around for the rest of the day in utter disbelief. The next day I boarded the plane to come on my honeymoon alone. And I haven’t gone home.”
“Sweetie,” Bleary-eyes said, coming closer and looking him in the eyes, “do you think if you’d picked the godawful pink she might’ve married you?”
Silence fell over the crowd, then a titter, then a guffaw, then full-blown raucous laughter.
Bart hugged the woman. “That I don’t know,” he told her. “But I do know I would’ve been in for a life of misery if I’d married her.”
“Yeah,” the gruff guy noted, “you’d still be wearing that goofy baby blue and lavender to try to make her happy.”
