It'd been radio silence from him. He didn't fix it. That was the only explanation I could think of when I thought about it. Had he fixed we would have gone back to normal already. I went through with my wedding plans everyday finding comfort in the fact that there was someone who actually loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I did my best to banish thoughts of him from my mind yet he kept coming back. I had decided that I would refrain from talking to him since the more I did the more I wanted to walk out from my man. I was so stupid to a point that my heart felt like I could settle on being a second woman to him. I knew it was the wrong thing and my brain, at least the remaining functional part of it was still telling me how much I was messing up. I kept scrolling through my phone, finding his number, typing the text and then deleting the thing all together. I felt like I was going insane. It was as if I did not love my fiancé enough since he did not bring such a reaction to me. It was a little bit like an obsession over him that no one knew about. Somehow I felt like I was almost doing the wrong thing getting married to Delvin.
"Earth to Em. We need your opinion to go ahead on this matter." The event's organizer spoke waving her hand in front of my face. Damn it. I was slowly losing it. Not just because of him but because of even the whole process with the wedding. Somehow we had found ourselves less of money and some sponsors pulled out. We were trying our best to slice our budget in order to fit into the money that we had. I felt overwhelmed and tired. I was almost calling everything off. The remembrance that the venue had been booked and ready for use, the florist was also booked as well as the cake. It felt like more of a hustle to cancel than to just slice a few things off of it. I felt like I was failing in more ways than one. I was just totally off my game and somehow everyone was noticing it. Thankfully they associated it all with the wedding, well except for my sister who knew exactly what was going on with me. I felt thankful for her. She understood that this probably felt like my first ever heartbreak.
"We don't need some of those things like the red carpet as well as all the extra pillars. Also we need just one photo and one video cameras. The only thing that I do not wish to compromise on is the rings." I answered trying to tune in to the conversation. Somehow the excitement brides had towards their wedding day was lost on me. It felt as though all the videos I had watched on weddings and the days prior were all lies. It did not feel like that at all. Instead it felt like someone was hammering the final nails to my coffin. It wasn't exciting. It was exhausting and stressful and somewhere along the way I felt like I could just let it all go and throw caution to the wind. I wanted to be done with everything, to bury my head in the sand and reemerge after the wedding but it wasn't going to happen as long as people would be attending the wedding them my opinion would be needed in everything. I wondered if Delvin was going through the same kind of stress that I was going through. He probably wasn't because he was a man and the only thing he needed was good underwear and his tux. I sighed at that thought thinking how unfair it was that things would be for us because of gender roles.
Days flew by quickly and sooner than I thought I found myself walking down the petal led isle with a ginormous ivory gown that I could barely walk in. The contrast of the blue and white against the green grass was exactly what I had envisioned. In the whole damn wedding the only thing I was proud of was the décor and the man standing at the altar waiting for me. I trailed my eyes on him willing for all the crazy thoughts to go away. I wanted to enjoy my day more than I wanted to think about all the bills we were supposed to pay right by the end of that day. It was hella crazy and it made me deviate a bit until I heard the song stop playing. I had walked all the way to the altar without even focusing on the ceremony. He had his eyes trained on me and I knew from the dullness in the windows to his soul that he was also thinking about how we were going to make do with all the money we were meant to pay. I smiled reassuringly at him before the ushers guided us to sit with our separate families until the appropriate time. Somehow things had moved too fast and we had gotten ourselves into a bit of debt trying to have a wedding. I sat silently waiting to see how the ceremony would go and how the day would end.
Gifts flowed and photos were taken and the fake smiles on our faces served the purpose but we both knew how this was going to end. It was a war we would fight later at night. We had been busy for the most part of the day when my husband received a call from an associate that added more salt to the broth. A wedding day had never been sadder than this one was going to be. I could see it from the way his face contorted with anger and his eyes shifted nervously. It had to be terrible news. I was thankful that we had decided to have a private photo shoot in a different venue. He was getting agitated and so I decided to take his phone from his hands and that was when I felt it. His hands were trembling a bit too much for my liking. It felt like a dark cloud was looming over his head and raining doom on him.
"My best friend, couldn't make it today and I have just been informed why." His voice was a low whisper. So low that I almost missed it. I could feel the cracks form in my heart as sympathy for him hit me. All the stress of the day couldn't even come close to comparing with whatever was going on with him in that moment. I could remember how he had called me in the morning bitching about how his best friend was being an asshole and not picking his calls. He claimed the man had stood him up. I put my arms around his neck and pulled him close to my form. If he was going to break it had to be in my arms. We were a team now whether we like it or not. I felt him heaving as he let it out. He had never been one to be emotional but feeling the tears on my back reminded me that Delvin was as human as any other person was. My poor husband.
"He's dead. He passed on this morning and no one told me." He felt terrible and I could tell from the pain that was there in his voice. The gruff tone told me even more that I needed to know. I rubbed a hand up and down his back hoping I could ease his pain. I may have thought that the worry we had for all the money we owed was big but as I held him I could feel the weight of the pain that he harbored within himself. He was not well at all and the memory of our memorable day would forever be tainted by the fact that his best friend died the same morning. Somehow I felt like what they were asking of him was too much. He had already sacrificed enough yet somehow the universe had opened its mouth wide wanting his happiest day as well.
We drove home in silence each of us lost in our own world. Our thoughts in different places and none of us was paying attention, not even the glaring lights that were coming out way. After that, the silence became more real.
***
I wished the pain I was feeling was just physical but it wasn't. My heart was tired and my mind could not take it anymore. There was a little fluttering in my stomach, indicating how terrible things were going for me. It felt like torture and even worse it was torture. I couldn't comprehend even the most basic things through the pounding of my head and heaving in my chest. The plain black dress that had been brought to me with the amazing pumps that felt like a never ending weight on my feet was all that I could say felt right about the situation. I sat shaking my leg, a nervous habit I had picked up as a young person while I waited for my case to be heard. My lawyer was next to me and I could smell his perfume from where he sat. Apparently a well-wisher had hired him, or at least that was what he told me when he had come into the little cell that they had been holding me in. I still had the little note folded and tucked in my brassiere.
"We find the defendant guilty." Was the only part of the whole proceeding that I had heard. All the court days, with different people testifying and worse of all was the fact that she had testified against me. My mind had reared when I saw her on the stand. I knew she was the last nail to my coffin and he testimony would be the one thing that got me buried far beneath humanly possible and I had been right. No matter how good my lawyer had been, which he was, it wasn't enough to stand up to her. The woman had a mind and a heart of her own. She had once again made a fool of me and of every person in the jury as well. She had always had her way with words and emotions. She just did it so easily that I just couldn't believe it. It seemed I had been a fool to believe her that time when she had done what she had done to me but it was too late for that.
My mind felt blank with all the thoughts being none thoughts at the same time. I was going to prison probably for the rest of my life. It was slowly weighing down on me and I found myself unable to stand on my own any longer. This was a tough situation to live in but it turned out I had no power over it. I sat back as the flattering in my stomach became almost painful. I wanted to cuss but all I could do was whimper at the pain. It felt as though I couldn't move or breath right at all. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths through it trying to clear the pain away. My lawyer looked at me and a look of horror mixed with understanding instantly reflected on his face. I bit my lip to stop myself from whimpering too loud in a court room.
"Your honor my client needs an ambulance right now." His words sounded almost like a figment of my imagination, with my mind running wild and the pain becoming too much that I had to bring both my arms around myself to hug the pain away. I couldn't stop the groan that escaped my lips. It felt as though I was slowly losing control over my own body and actions. This had to be how death happened. I was ready to welcome it. There was nothing good of the life that I was meant to have. The frequency of the sharpness of the pain kept increasing and I felt myself tumble to the ground. My lids were tightly shut to an almost painful way. I could hear the shocked reactions from all around me. From a distance I could hear the faded wail of an ambulance. I did not want it to get to me, at least not yet. There was already enough pain in my life as it was. I did not need any more life. I was feeling like a waste of money and time. My thoughts became blurry as did my vision. I could feel how much my body kept feeling feverish.
It was almost as if my body was being cut in half all of a sudden. The pain was something I had never experienced and yet there I was writhing on the floor from pain. It was hard for me to imagine that a little fluttering in the stomach was what had turned into a fully-fledged illness. For a moment I considered that maybe it was just a panic attach but that didn't feel right. I wasn't having a press in my chest like my normal pain that was there when I had a panic attack. I felt myself loose myself into the silence and the darkness became more and more inviting. I found myself willing to go deeper and deeper into that abyss that promised me no pain at all. It was more enticing than what I was almost walking into.