Page 5 of The Bride
Mr. Nash ran the grocery store in town that everyone was always complaining about because he only ever had two of any one brand. If you didn’t plan your food shopping around restock day, then forget getting your hands on Kraft Mac N Cheese. You got the generic brand instead, which tasted like shit.
Shit. My dad didn’t like it when I cursed.
Anyway I’d sat on Petunia from about fifty feet away on an overhang and had watched the whole thing go down.
Oh no, gross. Not the WHOLE thing!
I meant I saw my dad open the cabin door and let Mrs. Nash inside. He patted her on the ass—I could tell she’d liked that—and then he’d closed the door.
Luckily, I was a sophomore when this happened so I didn’t have to worry about my grades being corrupted by how good or bad my dad was in bed.
Everybody seemed to know Mrs. and Mr. Nash were not a happy couple. But they had two kids, so I guess they wanted to stick it out for them. Neither Mr. Nash nor the kids were here today.
Today was for her.
She patted my shoulder and then she walked away. I could hear her hiccup a sob into her handkerchief.
See she was crying. I should be crying.
There were more comers. MoreI’m sorrys. My friends stayed on the other side of the room, all huddled together. Talking and whispering. Sometimes daring to look over at me. I felt like I had this contagious parent dying disease they were all afraid of catching. I wasn’t mad. I figured I would feel the same way if one of them had recently been made an orphan.
Ugh. That word.The sun’ll come out…
“Ellie! There you are. Oh my god, I’m so sorry. What can Jake and I do? We have to do something!”
It was Janet. She was loud and she was making me stand up to hug her. Then she was bawling and I was patting her on the back to make her feel better. Totally intense Janet.
“I mean what’s going to happen to you?” she cried.
That was actually pretty funny, because she was loud enough that almost the whole house heard her. All these people who were all thinking the same thing but no one would actually say it. Hell, I was thinking it but wouldn’t even come close to letting myself say it out loud.
Not Janet. She just let it rip. The one-million-dollar question. What was going to happen to Orphan Ellie Mason?
“Janet, I didn’t know you were here,” Jake said, coming up behind her.
Seeing them next to each other, I kind of saw what he saw in her. Objectively, Jake was hot. Tall, built in the way a man gets from working a ranch. Short dark brown hair, hazel eyes. Square jaw. It wasn’t something I thought about much because he was… well, Jake. However, there was no getting around the fact he was pretty much the biggest catch in Riverbend.
He and Janet made sense. She was pretty with long blond hair, a nice round body without being chunky. Sweet and nice. I shouldn’t have been so hard on her. Only now she was sobbing hard and it was not a good look for her. I could actually see little bubbles of snot in her nose.
She turned to him and hugged him. He patted her on the back too, and I think I saw her rub her nose on his dress shirt.
Gross.
“Why don’t you go help in the kitchen,” he told her when she came up for air.
“Okay. I can go help with dishes and stuff,” she said.
“That’s a good idea.”
And so totally sexist. His girlfriend was freaking out and his answer was to send her to the kitchen? Normally I would have taken the opportunity to point this out to him. I feel like as a new generation of women, it’s our duty to educate men every chance we get, but because I wanted her to go away I kept my mouth shut.
Sorry Gloria Steinem, I’ll get him next time.
She left and everyone got back to the business of eating beef stroganoff and three layer bean dip and not saying the thing they were all thinking.
WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME?
“I don’t want to wait,” I told Jake as soon as it was the two of us.
