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Warningly, he took a step toward me. I shook my head. "All right. Twenty-four hours."
"If you're going to say I'm to blame for anything..."
"I get it," I spat back at him, rolling my eyes and turning on my heel. Far too roughly, I tore open the old wooden window, splintering paint from the whitewashed frame.
With jerky movements, I pulled up my skirt, billowing the fabric around my hips, and climbed out over the windowsill.
The church bells began to toll. This was supposed to be the moment I stepped out the door, settled in, and shortly thereafter walked down the aisle to a classical piece. Now I was hurrying across the lawn toward the park, while in my head I heard theWindowserror sound in a continuous loop, as if the entire system had crashed and a restart was absolutely impossible unless I pressed the hard reset button.
So much for predictability. Of course, I had known what Alexander's reaction would have been if he ever found out. I just had no expectation that he would.
Once I was in the back of the taxi, I couldn't remember how I got there in the first place. Everything seemed blurry. My vision. The last few days. All of it.
The only thing I saw clearly was Alexander's reaction. The words he had said played in an endless loop in my head. Like a scratched record that kept repeating and never found an end. No, instead it was a constant reminder that he had figured out what was an important part of me and then decided it was better to stomp on it than to offer me a shred of understanding.
A dull vibration jolted me out of my thoughts for a moment, but as soon as I realized it was just my phone, I rejected the call. By now, the assembled guests probably knew there would be no ceremony. The phone calls were no doubt from my angry parents, who no longer made sense of the world.
I squinted my eyes and pressed my fingers to the skin between my eyebrows.
A not-so-small part of me still wanted to give Alexander an explanation for why I had started presenting myself on a website in the first place. Building up a second, secret identity that delighted in showing viewers how much fun I could have with my body and thoughts. I hadn't shot any porn, supported any weird fantasies, or done anything else that could be considered reprehensible.
Not that there was anything like that there. Alexander's problem lay elsewhere. He was afraid that his name, his reputation, would suffer. That someone would ridicule him and discredit him just because his future wife had done something that was not exactly out of the ordinary.
Whereby– I probably had to drop the term "future wife" from my vocabulary because that topic was off the table. He would not marry me. It was better to sort out rotten goods than to take care of them elsewhere.
At the very beginning of our relationship, I had considered telling him. Revealing this side of me hoping he could do something with it. To understand my needs and realize how much I had conformed to the norms of my father's environment in order to fit in. Behind closed doors, I lived out something different, but in the end, I had never presented that to him because it was clear after our first sexual encounters that it would never develop in that direction.
Some people had a natural curiosity that was hard to quench. Others were satisfied with what they knew. Alexander insisted that nothing would ever change.
My phone rang again. My mother's number lit up, but in church I had already decided to accept all of Alexander's demands. He was now sharing a secret with me. A secret that he could easily use to crush me. And I was not willing to risk that.
So I'd spend the next twenty-four hours gathering myself, trying to find a plausible explanation.
As I looked out the window, I realized we were now in downtown Honolulu, fighting our way through the congested traffic. We passed one bar after another.
"Please pull over." Without further ado, I handed the driver a few bills and opened the door.
"Are you sure you want to get out? I mean..." He seemed genuinely concerned, but I didn't want to explain that I wasn't sad that the wedding was off, but disappointed that my ex-fiancé had found out what my heart was beating for.
"Thank you. Everything's fine," I assured him, lifting my skirt and hurrying across the sidewalk. I pushed the door open with my shoulder and stepped inside.
For a split second there was absolute silence, then the noise level returned. Head down, I approached the counter, climbed onto one of the barstools, and leaned a little over the wooden top.
The bartender approached me with slightly narrowed eyes. "Are you okay?"
He could hardly have been more conspicuous in his scrutiny of my appearance. I let out a heavy sigh before nodding.
"Fine. Now, I'd like some gin. Lots of it. With extra ice. And nuts." I grinned at him as he turned away.
Then I slammed my phone down on the counter, punched in the PIN, and scrolled through the call log, now longer than the vows I had written.
Who would have thought that this secret would blow up my wedding and literally catapult Alexander to another planet? I should have let someone know that I was okay. The police wouldn't be on the scene for a bride who had cold feet, but I didn't want anyone to be unnecessarily worried either.
So I dialed the number of the only man who could save my father from collapsing.
"Are you all right?" were his first words to me. Not "Where the hell are you?" or any other kind of reproach concerning my disappearance. Of course, he had already heard about my disappearance. For over ten years, my father had invited him to every family party and celebration. He had probably been sitting in the front row when the wedding cancelation was announced.
Instead of answering the question, I gave him the address of the bar. "And please don't tell anyone I called you. I will explain to you, but please don't let on that I called you."
