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Soon after, I don’t hold the smile as Isabella walks through the door in a poofy dress that makes her look like a little cake, I’d really like to hear what she has to say about it.That kid has an opinion about everything, and at three she loves to argue.She would be a great lawyer in the future.Isabella walks in short steps, scattering flower petals wherever she goes, and the door behind her closes again.
The girl comes towards me and when she reaches the end of the corridor, a woman dressed in black reaches out to her, but she ignores her and stops in front of me.I narrow my eyes and turn my head slightly.Isabella makes a sign with her small hand, asking me to get down, I do.
“Hi, Marcos.”
“Hi, Isabella.” Her eyebrows join together, making her look confused.
“Why don’t you call me Bella?” I smile, amused by the timing of the question.
“From now on I’ll do it, what is it, Bella?” She smiles, satisfied.
“You look beautiful, Marcos!” she praises, making the smile on my face even bigger. “And Mommy too! She looks just like a princess. But not like the princess from the dragon movie... No…” she rambles with herself. “Like the glass slipper princess! I wanted to tell you… Now I’ll stay with my auntie” she says, and goes to the side of the improvised altar, where the maid of honor chosen by Antonella is.I frown, surprised that Isabella called her auntie, but the music changes and my attention is completely diverted to the doors.
I inhale deeply and when they are opened, the air gets trapped because I stop breathing.Shit!Beautiful!Absolutely and undoubtedlybeautiful. Alone, she walks up to me and no one will ever be able to say that something is missing in the image she is.
Her walk, her chin lifted, her bearing, Isabella was mistaken, her mother doesn’t look like a princess, she dominates the place like a fucking queen, and there’s no one among the more than two hundred guests who doesn’t admire her like a real subject, not even me.
The dress, so different from what I expected and at the same time everything I expected, is unconventional, it’s not white, it doesn’t make her look too young, too innocent, it doesn’t paint the submissive, sweet, invisible woman I proposed to a month ago, but the determined, fierce, sophisticated, sexy, hot woman who has been burning every single one of my neurons, leaving my body on the verge of collapse and making me increasingly obsessed with any opportunity to touch her, if only for a second.And when I find myself smiling, any doubt I might have about being screwed, is summarily exterminated, for the thousandth time, I have only certainty.
She walks up to me, my eyes meet hers, and I look for any insecurity, any fear, any hint that she wants to give up, and there’s nothing, no sign at all.I reach out my hand and Antonella takes it.Ending the last steps that separated us, next to me, she smiles at me discreetly, and my whole body seems to be hit by this simple gesture, damn it!
“We are gathered here...” the marriage officiant begins, but nothing but the warm touch of Antonella’s hand on mine gets my attention.
?
“Congratulations, my son!Congratulations!May your family be as happy as ours has always been!” My mother is the first to greet me at the end of the ceremony, and I get her tight embrace and her sweet words, while my father does exactly the same with Antonella.I don’t hear what he says, but I have no doubt it’s something very similar to what I just heard.
“Thank you, mother!” I kiss her face and she lets me go, switching places with my father, who hugs me almost immediately after releasing Antonella.
“You made a choice, my son... I hope you honor it!” I just nod my head, unable to make out loud a promise I know I won’t keep, at least not in the way he expects.
Next to greet us is the bridesmaid, Grazi is her name, I hear Antonella say before she hands over Isabella to her mother.My now stepdaughter clutches to Antonella in a way that I begin to notice is her own, with arms and legs.Her mother kisses her cheek and places her on the floor.Surprising both me and this Grazi and her own mother, she walks up to me and raises her arms.I look at Antonella, asking what to do, but it’s not like I have too many options with so many eyes on us.
I take the girl, surprisingly light, off the floor, and now I’m the one who’s squeezed by her arms and legs.Isabella doesn’t say a word as she hugs me.But also, what did I expect?That a child of almost four would congratulate me on the marriage?Don’t be stupid, Marcos!
“You can put me down now,” she asks, making me laugh.I obey and turn around, finding Antonella hugging the bridesmaid. I get suspicious of the intimacy between the two, because I’m pretty sure Antonella told me that they met recently, I don’t remember the details.Probably, I should pay more attention to the things my wife says.Which is only confirmed when, instead of greeting me cordially, the woman holds my hand in a firm grip, brings her lips close to my ear, and threatens me:
“I swear to God that if you hurt either of them, you’ll find I can be very cruel!” Then she walks away with a jerk smile on her face, as if she had not just told me something absurd.I blink, stunned, as I watch her walk away with Isabella.Lucky for me, the person standing before me to greet me now really doesn’t care about my distraction and unceremoniously hugs me, João Pedro.
“Congratulations!” he mocks in my ear and I reply, telling him to fuck off.
“I’m sorry for you, Antonella, you’ll have to raise two children,” he hums to her, and Eliza laughs, hiding her lips behind one hand.My wife looks at me confused, her eyebrows raised, and I dismiss the comment with a nod.
“Just ignore him. Maybe then he’ll go away...I’ve been trying for thirty-two years, it still hasn’t worked, but you know, hope is the last thing that dies.” She laughs, and João Pedro approaches her as Eliza walks away.
“Don’t listen to him,” my friend tellsElla. “I’m the friend, you may not have heard of me yet, but believe me, I’ve heard a lot about you and how much you’ve kept him at bay!” Wink at her, and my jaw drops with the audacity of the son of a bitch, then he hugs her and says in a fake low tone, because I listen. “Keep up the good work!”
By now, Eliza is giggling, and I want to kick his ass to the other side of the room.João walks away from Antonella, blinks at me, pinches my shoulder, wraps his wife’s waist around his arm and walks away as if he had said nothing too much.Ellalooks at me, fun spread all over her face, I open my mouth to say something, but what?I’m spared of thinking when the next in line approaches to greet me, and then the next, and the next, until I start to think the line will never end.
After what feels like hours later, it ends.We are directed by one of the many women dressed completely in black to the central table of the hall where we find my parents, Isabella, Carmen, her husband and the woman I now know to be called Grazi, already sitting.She hands Isabella, who already shows signs of drowsiness, to her mother and, again, taking advantage of Antonella’s distraction, throws me a threatening look, confirming that she was serious in the greeting line. I frown, torn between finding her funny or crazy, but determined to find out who exactly she is to my wife and stepdaughter.
I frown when I realize it must be the tenth time I’ve referred to Antonella as my wife in my own thoughts since the ceremony was over and I hadn’t even noticed.Strange, I was sure that the word would be bitter and poison me little by little, maybe it still does, maybe it is doing at this moment, after all, the best poisons are those tasteless, odorless and colorless.
I have a hard time looking away from her, I realize, when I catch my father smiling at me with the look of admiration.That’s probably the result of the poison in my system.I sigh, I let my eyes roam the room, but it’s no use, before I know it, they are already obsessed with the image of the woman next to me, as well as my hands, who insist on touching her anywhere, anytime.
“It’s time for the bride and groom’s first dance.” Another member of the black-dress women’s army approaches us, announcing, and I stand up, grateful that I have anything to do but fail miserably in the task of keeping my eyes on my wife, who talks and interacts with wedding guests as if she was made for it, in a complete reversal of our roles, I assumed that she would be feeling out of place, not me.
Although displaced is not exactly how I feel, I just think that there are too many people here, that any place that has anyone else besides Antonella and I will have too many people, even though I know that the last thing I should want is to be alone with my baby wife, because this is a terrible idea. A bad idea. A very, very, bad idea, right?
