Stories from the Back of His Motorcycle

After all of that talk of marriage, the stolen conversations and the whispered promises, I found myself on somebody else’s wedding day all too soon.

I dressed slowly, my head abuzz with not just the day ahead but the weeks to come too. It was going to happen soon, that’s what the doctor had told me two weeks ago, and soon just so happened to be even sooner now. Ever since Vaughn had left the hospital we had all been alert, bags already packed by the front door. Every day passing had been a relief and a sorrow. I would call him if we weren’t together at night and hold onto the phone with both hands so I would be prepared for the news at any second.

I’d been taken off guard with Mr Hart sitting in my kitchen in the middle of a thunder storm. I was determined that this time I wouldn’t fall to my knees or cry or try to block out the entire world. I would be scared, sure, I would be bloody terrified that I would still lose him, but I was going to be in control this time. He needed someone strong for when he couldn’t be that someone.

The garish pink bridesmaid dress wasn’t any less hideous this time. I stared at myself in the long mirror, then the one to my left, then the one behind, all linked together so the monstrosity was viewable from every angle. This was El’s spare room in their new family-friendly house. It was a few streets over from us, already furnished perfectly with a nursery completed in the room adjoining theirs. It was a sweet house with a picket fence. My brother deserved nothing less.

And here their wedding was upon us, upon me, as if it was unexpected. I couldn’t explain where the last few weeks had disappeared to but I knew I didn’t care enough to try to find them. It was a kind of limbo. Another kind of limbo. A new one, the same game, different rules now. It still resulted in the same thing, though, telling me that my nightmare wasn’t quite over yet.

I smiled at my reflection, adding a layer of pale lipstick to my lips, hardly caring that they were slightly cracked. I added a necklace I couldn’t quite place, something silver with diamonds that didn’t offset the pink. The material swung around my legs but it wasn’t dangerous this time. If I squinted just right, I supposed I could look quite beautiful, but I didn’t much care for myself anyway. This was El’s big day and so I would try because she loved things to look pretty.

She was all about the furnishings.

Hearing voices, I moved to the door and peered outside. Women were bustling to and fro, squealing things I didn’t even pretend to understand at each other, but I was more focused on the two people at the bottom of the stairs. I watched, half obscured by the commotion and the banister, as the small blonde peered happily up into a stranger’s eyes.

El’s father was a large man. He was stocky and big, full of what should have been love but looked to just be discontentment instead. El hugged him tightly, small arms not quite reaching all the way around, like a small child playing dress up in her mother’s wedding dress. I could picture her as a small child around him the most. She wore the expression I knew well, the one yearning to see his heart-warming smile and hear his fond words. But he was here, and that was enough.

“So what time does this wedding kick off?” he asked, voice gruff and deep and just the way I had imagined. I hadn’t heard the term wedding and kick off in the same sentence before yet here was the father of the bride, brandishing his fat hands around like he expected it all to materialise in front of him. Watching the two of them interact from where I stood on the landing, I wondered if there was anything like a perfect family in existence. Then I wondered what this man must have looked like, making a phone call to my mother, telling her that her son couldn’t marry his baby daughter.

I pictured my wedding, in a flash of nostalgia from the past and for the future. My father wouldn’t be there, my mother would be banned, two of my brothers’ invitations probably still lying in the batch of mail left unread. And there would be Vaughn at the end of the long, unending aisle. Funny, it was always ever going to be him. Nick would take my arm and lead me to where the exchange happened, where I’d put my hand in another man’s and feel his fingers promise me forever.

I closed my eyes sharply, not wanting to think about forever.

“Now! We’re leaving now! Girls, girls, the cars are here, we’re leaving!”

El’s friends erupted into a gaggle of excitement, pulling me right along with them and out the door. I smiled. I was happy, really happy, for El and my eldest brother and for my boyfriend already waiting in the church, probably drinking from Nick’s hidden bottle somewhere the minister couldn’t see them. My sinners, just waiting for me to turn up in my pink monstrosity.

“Oh baby girl, you look so beautiful,” one of my fellow bridesmaids clasped her hands together as El made her way out of the house. We all collectively watched her in awe. There was something about a young bride draped in silky white, veil covering her pretty face that made you lose your breath. We all emptied our lungs and gave her our air. She flushed pink and smiled, a girl drunk in love.

It was still strange to me, that she was this drunk on my brother. Ross was so lucky to have her and I hoped he had enough sense to keep her close, love her good, so they never ended up like our parents. I wasn’t being fair, comparing them with our parents. Ross and El were made of tougher stuff. I had seen how much they cared whereas with Mom and Dad all I had seen was that they didn’t. Possibly that they never even had.

“What do you think, Alice?”

I was startled that El had singled me out and sought my approval, above all the other beautiful girls teetering on their heels beside me. I was her head bridesmaid, sure, but I thought that was only because she pitied me as her future husband’s abandoned sister. Her eyes were bright and encouraging as they looked right into mine and I saw that look again. The one she had worn for her father, a kind of vulnerable hope, making me take an unsure step backwards at the prospect of how much actually rested on my answer.

I could feel the girls at my elbow jostling awkwardly, telling me with their heavily made-up eyes what to tell El. Something cliché about her being the most beautiful bride in the world, or how Ross would probably walk into something with her looking like this. I opened my mouth to let them all fall but the words twisted and curled and morphed into something else.

“Thank you,” I told her. “I haven’t had the chance yet to say it – but thank you.”

“Don’t be silly Honey,” El waved her tiny arms around, the material of her dress swaying with the dismissal. “We’re family, right? You don’t have to say thank you to family.”

“Seriously El, you have no idea how much I needed someone to come into my life when you two did,” I pushed, wanting her to understand how much of an impact that she had made.

At first, their arrival had almost destroyed me – making me all spirals, falling downward because I couldn’t keep the world out anymore from my lie. I wasn’t okay. I had been alone for a long time, paying bills with what little money I had, eating dried food, curling up in my room by myself just wanting somebody to let me know they were there too. With me. So I didn’t have to be Alice Thornberry in her family house with nothing but places where family used to stand.

And it hadn’t been all perfect from then on, either, what with the hurtful looks and broken lasagne dishes.

It was the knowledge, though, that there were two people half way across town, unpacking things into their hotel room and planning out a wedding and trying to include me. It was the understanding that they were getting ready to stay, instead of preparing to leave. It was my slow, slow acceptance of my eldest brother and his pretty fiancée back into my life after being solo for a little too long.

Maybe she hadn’t changed everything or cured Vaughn or healed my wounds, but she had been there at the beginning.

“I can’t wait for you to really be my sister,” I smiled.

“Oh,” El dragged a hand quickly in front of her face, a fan batting back the tears all of us saw collecting. “Alice, you’re already a sister to me!”

Her arms opened up and she stepped into me and buried her blonde halo into my shoulder. The other girls cooed and laughed happily, one of them spluttering about the time and running make up, all behind a grin of her own. I patted El’s back. It didn’t feel awkward like it once had, I didn’t feel like she was a stranger trying to come into my life and impose on the protective circle I had drawn surrounding myself.

“And you’re the most beautiful bride in the world,” I added to the contended nods of my fellow bridesmaids.

The small blonde laughed and retreated from my shoulder, fluttering her long eyelashes to dry them out and patting her rosy cheeky. We all scattered into the car after another reminder from somewhere that the time was fast approaching for us to make our big entrance at the church. El wanted to be fashionably late, not totally late, and we were bordering right on the edge.

The cars were all white, expensive, vintage – paid for no doubt by a reluctant father with help from a nagging wife. I had only met El’s mother briefly but she was just an aged El, perfect and little and a small town girl with dreams far bigger than them. I liked her instantly.

I sandwiched my dress down so that another two girls could squeeze into the back with me. Breathing in the sweet perfume, I smiled and giggled and allowed them to engulf me in their excited conversations. They loved El, that much was plain, and they were beyond happy that their friend had finally found ‘the one.’ They used that expression a lot – ‘the one.’

I pressed my smooth forehead against the cool window, closed my eyes for a second, and thought about that number. So small and confined and limited. There was only one person who came along in your life and made you love them so much it hurt, you only got them once. I didn’t want to think about what may happen if that one was ever to be taken from me. Not on such a happy day.

The car pulled up in front of the church, stopping to let us fall over ourselves to get out. We were all a blur of light pink and white – the remaining bouquets handed out to the last bridesmaids, hair pushed up and pulled to make it perfect, smiles set in place and eyes crinkling in happiness. I was swept along on the tide of girls, towering over them all and wobbling on my heels, but somehow remaining afloat. I could feel El behind me with her father. The thought of what was about to happen – finally about to happen for her – reassured me that everything was going to be fine.

We waltzed down the aisle to a soft, acoustic song. From the look in Ross’ eyes as he stared past us all right at his fiancée, I understood this song meant something to them both. Maybe the first they danced to, the one playing on the radio when they met, their combined favourite which gave them their first leap into love. It was nice, something we could slowly move to without the ceremony seeming never ending.

I caught Nick’s eye from where he stood beside Ross at the altar. He was dressed up all smart, in a tuxedo a little too small for him and with his tie slightly skewed around his neck. I wondered who had done that for him – because I knew Nick couldn’t very well put a bow tie on himself – and then I caught his eyes drifting to a small figure waving at me from the first pew. I would have laughed if it didn’t feel like a bad cliché, and if I hadn’t been in the middle of a wedding march.

I grinned back, making sure that Delia didn’t feel the need to wave so frantically. She murmured something to the beautiful boy next to her who couldn’t seem to wipe a huge smile off his face. I rolled my eyes so the both of them could see I would be prepared for whatever they were planning. And my handsome boyfriend winked so that I could see I’d never be quite prepared.

I didn’t cry when El and Ross exchanged vows, too busy making sure the girls on either side of me could pass the box of tissues around. I laughed, though, when Ross took the ‘you may now kiss your bride’ to a whole new level, dipping her down and smothering her lips with his own with so much passion it looked like they’d barely be able to wait until they were alone. I kissed El on the cheek as they made their way back down the aisle, hand in hand as newlyweds, and hugged Ross with as much strength as I could muster.

My big brother looked fondly down at me as he detached himself from my arms. I found myself uncaring about the last few years, I found myself forgetting that they ever happened. He was just my protector and the only boy I thought I’d ever care for, my eldest brother and the one I always knew I could rely upon. I did cry then but Ross was whisked away with the crowd of well-wishers before I had the chance to let him know. To tell him that I forgave him.