Chapter 3 Wedding crash
RORY POV
Katherine's smile was completely gone.
She stood at that altar in her white dress staring at me like I was something that had crawled in from outside. Like I was the problem here.
"Rory," she said carefully. "This is not what—“
"How long?"
"Please don't do this here."
"How long Katherine?"
She glanced at Steve. That one glance told me everything I needed to know. The kind of glance that had history in it. Comfort or maybe familiarity.
How many times had I been in the same
room as both of them and missed it completely?
God. I was such a fool.
"Six months," she said quietly.
Six months.
I stood there and let that number settle over me.
Six months of sitting across from her at lunch, six months of binge watching romcom with her.
Six months of texting her about Steve, about the engagement, about the wedding we were planning. Six months of her nodding and listening and hugging me and telling me everything was going to be fine.
"You were my best friend," I said.
"Rory I'm sorry-"
"You were my best friend."
The guests had gone completely silent. I could feel them watching. A hundred people holding their breath, phones probably already out. I could feel the heat of it on the back of my neck.
Steve hadn't said a word yet. He was just standing there with that expression I knew well, the one that meant he was calculating.
Working out the best angle.
"You need to leave," he said finally.
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me." His voice was flat. "You're
embarrassing yourself."
Something hot crawled up my chest.
"I'm embarrassing myself?" The stammer was already there but I pushed through it.
"You — you left without a word Steve. Three years and you blocked me on everything and now you're standing here with my best friend and I'm the one embarrassing myself?"
"Rory-"
"Why?" My voice cracked on that one word. I hated it. "You owe me that much. Just tell me why."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then something in his face shifted. The calculation was gone and what replaced it was something uglier. Something that had probably always been there underneath.
"You want to know why?"
"Steve," Katherine said quietly, more like a warning.
He ignored her.
"I was never with you because I wanted to be," he said. "You had money. Your parents' little money. And you were stupid enough to spend every last bit of it on me. Stupid enough to believe my stupid sympathy stories" He straightened his jacket. "Did you really think I was going to marry you? Look at you Rory. I could never marry someone like you."
The room went so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat through my hearing aids.
"Someone like me," I repeated.
"Fat." He said it simply. Like it was just a fact. Like it cost him nothing. "You're fat and you can barely speak and you're you're too much and not enough at the same time. Katherine is everything you will never be. Slim and beautiful."
My throat closed up instantly.
I heard someone gasp behind me.
I heard someone else whisper something I didn't catch.
I stood there and I felt my voice leave me completely. Just pack up and go the way it sometimes did when the pain got too big. My throat closed. My hands were shaking at my sides.
And then something else took over entirely.
I don't know what came over me. I really don't.
Maybe it was Mr. Smith. Maybe it was my father and his bottle. Maybe it was years of loving someone who had been counting my parents' money the entire time. Made sure he took every penny, Maybe it was just everything, all of it at once, looking for somewhere to go.
I looked at Steve.
And I bit him.
Hard. Right on the thigh.
The sound that came out of him was not dignified.
Not for a man standing at an altar in an expensive suit in front of a hundred guests.
He yelped and grabbed his leg and stumbled sideways and the entire room erupted.
I turned to Katherine before anyone could react.
She saw it coming and still wasn't fast enough.
I got her ear and I bit her hard.
She screamed as they tried to drag me back with my hair.
The guests lost their minds completely.
Chairs scraping, people were standing, someone shouting, someone else was laughing, actually laughing. I could hear all of it through the hearing aids, every single chaotic layer of it.
Two large men in suits appeared from nowhere and grabbed my arms.
"Fat crazy bitch!" Steve yelled, still bent over his thigh. "Get her out right now."
I didn't fight them. I had nothing left to fight with. I let them pull me back down the aisle past a hundred staring faces, past the flowers and the candles and all the careful decoration of a wedding that was never supposed to exist.
The doors swung shut behind me.
The steps outside were cold.
I sat down on them because my legs had decided they were done. The sun was out which felt deeply unfair. It was too bright and too cheerful for the kind of day I was having.
I sat there with my hands in my lap and I breathed.
No job.
A drunk father.
A mother who couldn't squeeze my hand back.
A fiancé who had been using me for years.
A best friend who had been lying to my face for six months.
I laughed. Just once, short and hollow.
I’m so fucked.
I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the noise inside to die down. Long enough for the sun to go down.