That had been the end of our relationship. I heard he’d recently won the lottery and moved to Hawaii with a former Playboy centerfold. Hindsight’s a bitch. I came back to town every now and then to see my parents, though not as often as I should. The guilty feeling always wore at me about that, but it wasn’t as bad as the queasy feeling I got when I passed the sign that declared WELCOME TO ABOTTSVILLE: HOME OF THE LARGEST PUMPKIN IN ONTARIO. I much preferred city living. Give me rush hour, pollution, and overpriced cappuccinos any day, thank you very much. I’d rented an economy-size car to drive into town for the wedding. Monday was filled with happy-happy, joy-joy family reunions and a highly unpleasant final dress fitting, which only proved that my new liquid “diet” hadn’t helped me lose a single pound. So damn unfair.
Bridesmaid’s gowns were supposed to be ugly, but the ones Missy had picked out were guaranteed to give me a major case of post-traumatic dress disorder. It consisted of a short, shiny skirt, a wide, sparkly waistband, and a low-cut—very low—satin top. The chosen color was called “eggplant passion.” I felt like a showgirl in a sleazy Las Vegas production. My cousin had obviously been dropping some serious acid. But it was her day, after all, and who was I to complain? The other two girls who were in the wedding party looked more miserable than I did. At least I had the coolest shoes since I’d insisted on wearing my own “special occasion only” silver mules. So, other than the dress, the day I’d spent in the town of my youth had been uneventful. I was proving to myself that I could pass quite nicely as 100 percent human. And stupid
Thierry wanted me to part ways with my old life. I was proving that I could leave things exactly the same, and nobody would ever know the difference. I stared at my barely there reflection as I tried to touch up my lip gloss in the church’s powder room. I was totally lying. The last day had been a nightmare of epic proportions. I wasn’t even exaggerating. All I wanted was to get the wedding over with so I could jump into my rented Toyota Echo and leave town. Why was it so bad? Let me count the ways. First, the whole reflection thing. It’s surprising how many reflective surfaces there are in the world. If anyone saw that I didn’t have a reflection, how was I supposed to explain it? So far I’d chosen avoidance as the best course of action.
Second, at the rehearsal dinner I felt obligated to choke down some fettuccine Alfredo and garlic bread. I then learned by throwing up in the floral centerpiece what happens when certain vampires eat solid food. Don’t even get me started on when cousin Jeremy nicked his finger on a steak knife. We almost had a repeat performance of the Ms. Saunders incident. Thank God I found a raw steak to suck on. It wasn’t pretty. Now everyone was treating me very cautiously, like I was two minutes away from falling off the narrow edge of sanity, or something. They weren’t far off.
On a more positive note, thanks to a rogue digital camera at the wedding rehearsal, I learned I did show up just fine and dandy in photographs. I just didn’t photograph very well. No big surprise there.
“Sarah!” Missy wailed for me from the back of the church. I jumped and put my current glass of champagne down on the powder room counter before making my way over to the dressing room.
“What’s wrong?” I tried to force myself to sound concerned. This was not the first time my cousin had been in tears since I’d arrived. She was either very emotional or very needy. Probably both.
Join the club.
She let out a long, shaky sigh. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see if I could pass the proverbial baton to someone else. But we were all alone in the dressing room. Well, except for the two hundred people currently seated in the church next to us. Which included the decidedly creepy Reverend Micholby. Last night at the rehearsal dinner all he did was give me the evil eye. Or maybe it was the holy eye, since he was a reverend. Whatever.
“Come on.” I plucked a tissue out of a nearby box and handed it to her. “It’ll be fine.”
“Will it? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“Richard’s a great guy. You two are going to have a fabulous life together.”
She sniffed. “We’re very different, you know. So different, it’s kind of scary.”
“Hey, vive la diff?rence. Opposites attract, and all that.”
“But what if he gets bored with me in fifty years? When I’m old?”
“He won’t. You two are meant to be together. It’ll be fine. You want some champagne?”
I poured her a glass. She took it from me and downed it in one gulp. I took a swig myself, right out of the bottle. The free booze was helping, although not as much as it used to.
“He is great, isn’t he?” she asked.
I wiped my mouth, trying not to smear my lip gloss. “Yeah, really great.”
Truth be told, I’d only spoken to Richard, the groom, for five minutes at the rehearsal dinner. He was a balding, forty-something accountant who drove a blue Volvo. He seemed fine, but I wasn’t the one who was marrying him.
Missy was in her early thirties. She’d been married once, twelve years before, but it hadn’t worked out due to her husband’s other two wives. She’d spent the interim yo-yo dieting and collecting cats. She met Richard when he did her taxes last year. Yup, romance didn’t get much more intense than that in Abottsville. The first notes of Canon in D started up outside the dressing room in the church. That was the cue for yours truly. Time to show off this bitchin‘ dress.
“Saved by the Pachelbel,” I said. “Get it? Pachel-bell?” Missy looked at me blankly. “Oh, never mind. They’re playing our song.”
Missy smiled and stood up.
“Thanks for being there for me, Sarah. I sure wish you could come to town more often.”
She hugged me lightly enough not to affect our makeup.
“Yeah, me too,” I lied, and forced a big smile as I leaned back from her.
She frowned at me. “Your teeth look a little funny.”
“They do?” I ran my tongue along them and felt pain shoot through my mouth. My heart sank. There they were. They’d finally sprouted, like tiny little needles, ahead of schedule because of Thierry’s superstrength blood.
My fangs. Terrific.
“Um”—I tried to talk without opening my mouth very wide—“I used those Whitestrips things, that’s all. I guess they’re just whiter than normal. Anyhow, showtime. See you up at the front.”
I scrambled away from her just as my uncle appeared in the doorway to accompany Missy down the aisle. I walked out to my fellow eggplant-clad bridesmaids. They were pulling at the hems of their dresses, but the more they pulled at the bottoms, the more cleavage popped out at the top.
“This sucks,” a girl named Lana said before she began her walk down the aisle. She was first. I was second. The maid of honor, who looked ready to break out in hives, came behind me. Then it was Missy all the way.
“Breathe,” I told Susan, the maid of honor. “You’ll be fine.”
“I feel like a big, fat whore,” she said.
I didn’t have a response for that, so I started down the aisle, tightly clutching my little bouquet of pink and white carnations. Okay, I finally had my vampire fangs. Just another little thing to deal with. No problem at all. Nada probl?me!
Who was I kidding? This sucked. The Whitestrips tooth excuse was weak at best. Maybe no one would notice. I’d have to spend the rest of the day smiling as little as possible. I glanced over to where my parents were sitting. I had to talk to them. Explain that I would be parting ways and wouldn’t be around much in the future. That I was moving to Australia on business. They’d accept that without asking too many questions, wouldn’t they? They both beamed back at me from their pew, looking very happy. I frowned slightly. Almost too happy. What would make them look that damn happy today? As I moved into a better angle to see them, I stopped walking right there in the middle of the aisle. My bouquet fell to the floor. Seated in between my parents, wearing dark sunglasses and a bored expression, was George.
“Holy shit!” I said aloud, and heard a gasp go through the congregation. I bent over and snatched up the bouquet, then practically ran the rest of the way up the aisle to the front of the church.
Most of the people gathered were now recovering from the shock of hearing me use the S-word in a house of God. I was recovering from the shock of seeing a gay, table-waiting vampire sitting thigh to thigh with my mother. My mother, however, didn’t appear to mind at all.
The three-piece orchestra of high-school band students started up their mostly unrehearsed version of “Here Comes the Bride,” and Missy made her way down the aisle.
I couldn’t take my eyes off George.
I mouthed to him, “What are you doing here?”
He seemed to be quite busy, intently staring at a tapestry of JESUS LOVES ME and trying as hard as possible to ignore me. A million things raced through my mind. Had something gone horribly wrong? Did Midnight Eclipse get torched? Did Thierry kill Quinn while I was gone? Did Barry find a personality? I couldn’t wait for the service to be over. In fact, I wanted to say “hurry the hell up” while Missy and Richard stumbled through their vows, but I managed to restrain myself. Just barely.
As soon as the service was over, the wedding party was swept off for some photos in the painfully bright and chilly outdoors before the reception. I didn’t want to be there. All I wanted was to get to George and find out what was going on. The only thing I remember about the photos was that the photographer and I got into a fight about removing my sunglasses. He lost. The reception was held in a banquet room at the Abottsville Golf Course. I stood uncomfortably in the receiving line, shaking a multitude of sweaty hands and trying to smile without showing off my new fangs to two hundred tired and hungry people. My father finally made his way down the line to me. He looked quite dashing, if I do say so myself. His gray suit and teal tie were impeccable, although I was pretty sure the flower he wore on his lapel was bought at the nearest joke store. One of those plastic flowers that squirted water as a funny gag. I eyed it warily.
“Sweetheart,” he said and gave me a big hug. “You look fantastic. If anyone could manage to wear that dress properly, it would be you.”
I gave him a closed-mouth smile. “Thanks, Dad.”
“I think your mother has a new boyfriend.” He winked at me. “Should I be jealous?” With that, he moved on to the next bridesmaid.
My mother had George’s arm clutched in her own as they shifted along the line toward me. He looked as if he would have preferred to be anywhere else. Him and me both.
“Look who I found,” my mother said with a chipper smile firmly on her face. “George.”