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EPILOGUE II (Hugo and Catherinelle)
Catherinelle
March, 2000
“Where the hell is he?” I stomped my foot into the ground and growled at Roman, who was nervously shifting from one leg to another.
“He will be here soon, Cat. He’s just running late.”
“Oh, really? Is he caught in traffic? Because the ceremony was supposed to start an hour ago! Where. Is. He?”
Roman let his head down and his shoulders slumped before answering.
“A job.”
“Excuse me?”
“Gino and Hugo were on their way here and one of the guys called to say there were some problems at the Jazz club in TriBeCa. A payment came short, ok? Gino came here and Hugo offered to go take care of it.”
I could feel my blood starting to move faster through my body.
“He went on a job? On our wedding day? What the hell was Gino thinking, letting him do such an idiotic thing?”
My brother heard his name and walked alongside his wife in the back room of the church.
“Mother said to keep your voice down, Cat. She doesn’t like you yelling in church.”
“Gino,” I inhaled through the nose and exhaled through the mouth. Most people did that to calm themselves. I was doing it to gather my strength to scream from the top of my lungs. “I don’t give a fuck about yelling in church right now! I was deserted on my own damn wedding day. It’s all your fault! Why did you let him go, Gino?”
“Calm down. He will be here.”
“Calm down? Oh, right, calm down. We were supposed to be married by now and Hugo is nowhere to be found. Gino, maybe you were happy with your wedding going the way it did, but I’m not. Today was supposed to be perfect and he’s ruining everything.”
Tears started lining my eyes, but I couldn’t say if they were from sadness or just because my blood was boiling with anger. My wedding wasn’t supposed to be a disaster. I spent months taking care of every detail, picking out every little element to make all my damn dreams come true and Hugo knew how important today was for me. Muse wanted a small wedding? Fine, she got one, but I didn’t. I wanted my damn fairytale and I had no fucking prince charming.
My dress was made for me, a princess gown designed by Zuhair Murad, and tailored from the most expensive lace and fabrics. Cinderella didn’t have shit on me in this dress. I was wearing my mother’s wedding tiara that Gino had redone and more diamonds were added and now it looked more like a crown fit for a royal head. There were dozens of people in the church waiting to see us get married and thirty-three black 1957 DeVille Cadillacs outside that were supposed to be our retinue while we drove across the city to the Plaza.
Hugo always called me his princess and the one day I was supposed to feel like one, he did this to me? Asshole!
“Catherinelle,” Gino said with a soothing voice, putting a hand on my shoulder, “this is just a delay, ok? I had to let him go and do it. He needed it.”
“You’d better translate that.”
“Learn from my wedding, sister.” Ugh, did he just call me sister? How weird was that? “Hugo was on the edge, and he needed to blow off some steam. It’s better than having him all tensed-up while you say your vows.”
“Aha, ok.” But an hour later, he was still a no-show.
Hugo and I, we were different, like water and oil. He was volcanic water – strong, bitter and dark – and I was sweet and fragrant rose oil. A lot of people couldn’t understand why we ended up together, but it didn’t matter because we were perfect. The problem was that, sometimes, Hugo was the one who tried to find a meaning in our love, and every time he ended up putting himself down. No matter how hard I tried, a part of him still felt unworthy of being part of this family and it drove me crazy. It’s what made him pull back from me the first time we got together and what stopped him from proposing for three years. I thought all of that was left behind when he finally went down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. Seems like I was wrong.
“That’s it.” I growled and grabbed my skirts, so I could march back in the church. The first person I saw was my mother. “Mom, can you take care of everybody and buy me some time? Feed them, get them drunk, whatever it takes. We’re moving the ceremony a little further.”
“Yes, my dear, I think I can manage. I have experience since your brother decided to call off the whole thing.”
“Oh, this won’t be the same, we’ll be here and we’ll get married in front of this entire damn city.”
“Don’t curse in church, young lady!”
“Sorry. Tell Grandpa to not go all crazy like he did on Gino. MY wedding is happening, it’s just going to be later than expected.” I looked over her shoulder and spotted someone to help me, Marco, one of my twin cousins. “Hey!”
