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The wedding planner is droning on about something in the background, pushing fabric samples and pictures of iced cakes towards me, but I can’t focus on any of it. I know I’m supposed to make decisions—supposed to have an opinion, but I can’t bring myself to care. It’s been a whirlwind since the contract was signed, and all I want is for it to come to an end.
I can tell Alessio is trying to make up for my ‘disappointment’ about how he intends for our marriage to play out, as he describes it once, and I don’t know how to tell him that it’s more than disappointment. It’s the strangest kind of heartbreak I can imagine feeling because, on the one hand, Alessio agreeing to marry me is everything I wanted. But not likethis.
I wanted a real marriage. Not this half-thing that he’s proposing, something between roommates and being husband and wife. But Alessio won’t budge, and after that first conversation that we had about it after Fontana left, he shuts down whenever I try to bring it up. It’s not a topic that’s up for discussion, and he makes that abundantly clear.
“It’s a summer wedding, so brighter colors might be a good choice—” The wedding planner is opening a binder now, full of more color charts and something about seating, and I want to scream. None of this matters to me. None of it has ever mattered—I don’t know if it would even if this wedding was going to culminate in a marriage that was everything I could ever want. The day itself doesn’t matter to me—I want what comes after, and that’s the part I’m not going to get to have.
I can tell that Alessio has been trying to make me happy, nonetheless. When I mentioned that I had no one to go shopping with to choose a dress, Alessio told me he’d have it brought to me instead—which wasn’t exactly what I’d meant.
After so long cooped up in the house, I think I would have enjoyed an afternoon out in the city, but I know he feels safer with me here, rather than out where someone could get to me. Even after six weeks, the identity of who murdered my father is still a mystery. Even with Alessio’s connections and Don Fontana’s assurance that the Family is looking into it, there’s been very little headway made at all.
So I ended up choosing my wedding dress in the smaller living room downstairs, where the personal assistant who sourced the rack of dresses brings me one at a time to try on in front of the three-way mirror that’s been set up, the double doors leading into the room securely closed against any prying eyes. Not that there wouldbeany—I tried to tease Alessio that morning about watching me try on the dresses, and he told me curtly that it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride’s dress before the wedding—as if I wasn’t aware of those kinds of silly superstitions, and as if I’d really been serious in the first place.
As I tried on the dresses, though, the idea of Alessio’s eyes on me as I slipped in and out of them made me shiver.
I’m still upset with him for not telling me his plansbeforeI signed the contract. Even though he’s right—that it wouldn’t have changed anything, I still wish I’d known. It would have felt better, somehow, to make the decision knowing that, instead of finding out afterwards.
Instead of things getting more comfortable between us in the days leading up to the wedding, they’ve become more distant. I canfeelhim physically isolating himself from me. I wonder if this is how our entire marriage will be—Alessio hiding from the wife that he tried not to marry, and me rattling around this too-big mansion, without even the benefit of children to soften the blow.
The wedding planner clears her throat, looking at me expectantly, and I realize I haven’t made a single choice in the hour that we’ve been sitting here. I’m not even sure that I remember what options she gave me. I force a smile, looking at her. “I really don’t know what to choose,” I tell her. “Just pick whatever you think will make a beautiful wedding. It really doesn’t matter to me.”
There’s a look of surprise on her face that turns almost into something like pity, and I can’t stand it any longer. I get up, fleeing the room, leaving a stranger there to design my wedding for me.
—
On the morning of the wedding, I get ready by myself, glad that I picked a simple dress so that I can get dressed in peace, without anyone flitting around me doing up buttons. Oddly, I don’t feel the lack of having a mother to help me—mine has been gone for so long that I never expected to have her here when this day finally came around. The real difficulty, I know, will come when I step into that church without my father to walk me down the aisle.
With the side zip of my dress done up, I look in the full-length mirror, smoothing my hands over my skirt. I’ve lost so much weight that it had to be altered again at the last minute. However, the waist of it still nips in nicely, the A-line heavy satin skirt billowing around my legs and ending in a hemline trimmed with fragile floral lace. The sleeves are off-the-shoulder, exposing a pretty line of collarbone, the fitted satin bodice dipping down just slightly between my breasts, more of the floral lace filling in the space between them. The back of the dress has faux buttons and more of that lace spilling down the middle of the skirt to the brief train, and when I take one of my mother’s sapphire and gold hair combs and attach the finger-tip length veil edged in that same lace to it, slipping it into the back of my updo, the effect is perfectly bridal.
And Alessio, even if hedoesappreciate any of it, will likely do his best not to let me know.
That feeling of unfurling arousal that I had those first weeks that Alessio was here, that feeling of unlocking new desires that I never knew I had, the discovery of what it means to be aroused at all—all of that has turned into a frustrated inferno that makes me snappy and irritable, made all the worse by the knowledge that I’m not going to be allowed to explore it. I’ll be married to the man who made me feel all of this, the man who awakened all of these desires in the first place—and he’s refusing to come to my bed. It feels like insanity. No matter how often he explains it, it makes no sense to me. His excuses feel like just that—excuses—but at the same time, I know he wants me. I’ve seen it. And no matter how many times I lay in bed at night with my hand trapped between my thighs, imagining that last lesson in the library as he touched himself, I can’t reconcile that I’m going to have to stay in this frustrated state forever.
I don’t even want to stay this way past my wedding night. I wasn’t supposed to have to.
I was supposed to get to find out all of the things I’ve wondered about—all of the things I want to know—and it feels monumentally unfair that just when it seemed like I would get the chance to discover all of them with Alessio the way I hoped, he pulled the rug out from under me.
Slowly, I smooth my hands over the bodice of the dress, letting myself imagine for just a moment that they’re Alessio’s hands instead, tracing over the satin of my gown, luxuriating in learning the curves of my body this way before he slips the dress off and touches the bare skin beneath. A shiver runs over my arms, imagining it, thinking of his lips on the back of my neck, his fingers brushing away a stray bit of hair, and my chest aches, realizing that none of that is going to happen.
Tonight is going to be a lonely night, not one where I learn all the answers I’ve been hoping to discover.
I close my eyes as I slip my mother’s sapphire earrings on, trying not to be resentful. Alessio overstepped his own boundaries to make sure that today wouldn’t be my wedding day to a man I would have absolutely despised, who made my skin crawl, and I know I’m supposed to be more appreciative of it. But the alternative—
It doesn’t matter now,I remind myself as I go down to the waiting car.It’s done. So now you make the best of it.
I had hoped, at the very least, that if I couldn’t have a lover, marrying Alessio would at least mean I would be marrying a friend. But his frustrated desire for me that he refuses to indulge has made it feel as if he’s just running from me—and as if it’s always going to be that way.
As I expected, the grief hits me the moment I step into the nave of the church. I smell the incense and wood, the scent of old carpet that’s been cleaned again and again, and the slightly damp smell of the rainwashed stone from outside. All I want at that moment is for my father to be standing here, his arm looped through mine, joking about how it took my wedding day for him to willingly set foot in church. He’d gone a handful of times throughout the years, mostly because it was a necessary show for his position, a neutral and safe place to be seen—but he’d made as little of a priority of it as any other tradition.
He would have joked about all of this with me, the pomp and circumstance of it. He might have finally talked a little more about my mother—a topic he rarely brought up, still painful after all those years. I might have heard a story about their wedding day.
Instead, I’m standing alone, looking at the double doors as the music begins to filter through, shivering with nerves and loneliness. I reach out to push open the door, my fingers trembling, suddenly terrified of how I’ll feel when I see what’s on the other side. It feels like I’m stepping over into a different life, one that I’m not sure I want, and that I’m afraid to find out what it will be.
Alessio is standing at the end of the aisle, handsome as ever in a perfectly tailored dark charcoal suit, his green eyes fixed on me as I walk toward him. I can’t read his expression or tell what he’s thinking, not even a little. His face is utterly calm as I focus on not tripping on my way to the altar, fingers clutched around a bouquet that some wedding planner chose for me, the blood rushing in my ears until I can barely hear the music. I try to imagine my father walking next to me, steadying me, but it doesn’t help. It just brings tears to my eyes, threatening to undo my carefully done makeup. And if my father were here—
If he were here, today wouldn’t be happening at all.
I’m glad for the veil that slightly obscures my face as I step up to Alessio, holding out my hand, hoping that it will keep him from seeing the tears hanging onto the edge of my lashes. His hand feels broad and warm when it wraps around mine, and I want to feel safe like this, protected. That’s why he came back—to keep me safe.
