Our Wedding Was the Day Before you Died
By Isabel Brown
“What were you thinking of ordering?” My fiance, Wyatt, asked me. We were in one of his favorite cafes, and we wanted a break from our lives for one afternoon. He woke me up early to flapjacks, his mother’s recipe. He was a darn good cook, and taught me the ropes of the stove and such. We sat around watching reruns, and I’d taken us to the cafe; it was my idea.
“A vanilla bean frappe,” I told him, “your favorite, right?” Wyatt nodded. He always encouraged me to try his favorites, since we have different taste palettes. I looked out the window. We grabbed a really good seat that day; this older couple was eyeing the table, but we were a bit faster. It really was a great view. There was blooming wisteria falling from above the window outside, and fresh autumn leaves waving at us before touching the earth.
“What about you? What did you wanna order?” I asked Wyatt. He tilted his head and smiled. His auburn hair bounced a bit, and his silver eyeglasses shimmered in my direction. “I’ll try those disgusting americanos you have every morning. You know, if I end up regurgitating in front of all these people, it’s all your fault.” He winked at me. I rolled my eyes at his playfulness.
The waitress comes, and takes our orders. At the last minute, I requested a coffee cake for us to share. Wyatt seemed a bit excited to try it. I couldn’t help but think of the day he proposed to me. It was so embarrassing; he did it while we were visiting my parents’ house. Me and my sisters had visited for my dad’s birthday, and he suddenly got on one knee and asked for my eternal attention. My niece’s first word was “love”.
Anyway, when all our orders arrived, Wyatt didn’t even eat. “I ordered the cake for the both of us, you know,” I said, “I’d like it if you ate it.” Wyatt pouted. “It looks gross. I’ll definitely throw up,” he pushed it away. I was annoyed at his antics, to be honest with you. I crossed my arms when he offered his in reassurance. I ate the coffee cake all by myself.
I paid for everything we’d gotten on the table. Wyatt had forgotten his wallet at home that day. Then, we walked around to look for his favorite bookstore. He had good taste in date settings; the store had vines all over the railings guarding the second floor, and books you couldn’t find anywhere else.
When we got there, he pulled me along and pushed me into one of the seats. They had the squishiest chairs, and I felt as though a slimy monster was eating me for his supper. “You wait here,” Wyatt said, “I’ll find the greatest book in here for you.” I nodded along, sinking into the chair he had placed me in. Wyatt strolled around in science fiction, and then the adventure section, until he climbed up the stairs to the witchcraft area.
I was in my own world. A dystopia, even. There were days when I found myself looking forward to some kind of apocalyptic adventure, and I wouldn’t need to worry about jobs, and social status. Even the thought of money, or wealth, would be super irrelevant if I was trying to fight zombies all day.
Anyways, Wyatt came back around with a thick, textured book. It had an unfamiliar symbol right smack down on the center of the book, and the leather that made up the cover was so ancient, it would’ve felt like a sin to grasp it. “I found this in the very back of all the shelves and stuff,” he told me, he sounded very excited, “this other older lady wanted it, she looked at least 200 years old, and she was trying to make it float or something. But, I totally got it in regards to you.”
He handed the book to me as if he wrote it himself. He was silly sometimes. I took the book from him with reluctance. “I don’t know, Wyatt, what if me having this book is disrespectful?” I prodded. He gave me this look. If he wasn’t so handsome, I’d have slapped him until my handprint became a war scar.
Wyatt made a funny face as he said, “if it was haunted, why would it be in a public bookstore? Open to all sorts of people?” I guess he had a point, is what I thought as I looked in his eyes. He always said I had a very readable face, so he grinned at me when he saw in my expression that I believed he had a wicked point. He urged me to open it.
The first pages of the book were “nothing is real. There is no fakeness, either. Your perception of your lifestyle, reality, and future have every right to be judged.” I skimmed through until I settled on the final words; “but, that’s why you’re here, right? You didn’t ask to be born, yet desire something bigger than yourself. Welcome to witchcraft.”
I felt a little dizzy as I put the book down somewhere on my lap. I felt as though I had slapped myself. Wyatt’s face fell. He probably asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t hear him too well. He shook my shoulders until I confirmed I could hear him loud and clear. “We should get going. Back home, I mean.” Wyatt grabbed me by the arm and assisted me out of the store.
It was a little late by the time we left the bookstore. The temperature had dropped and we were both cold. We were walking to the train station so we could head back home. We had a pretty slow pace the entire time, discussing things along the lines of why we made the choices we needed to make. Stuff like that.
“I mean, can you believe the stupidity of children at times? Remember that one time we were at the Northern playground, and that kid dipped his ice cream in the sand, and tried to eat it right afterwards? Sometimes you really made me feel ashamed about getting sterilized back in Mexico, but those kinds of moments remind me why I did it in the first place.” I chuckled, but realized I was the only one who was entertained.
He looked at me with a stern expression. “I really wanted kids, you know.” He stopped and kicked some rubble. His words were bittersweet. I scoffed. “When we first got together, we had this big conversation where I thoroughly explained why I didn’t want to bear children.” I was still half-laughing; I wanted him to ease up more than anything.
“I thought you weren’t being serious. All my brothers and sisters have at least one child, it feels unnatural that we didn’t properly discuss this,” he said. “We did discuss it, Wyatt. I told you there was a possibility of me being infertile…” He shook his head, making his locks bounce with the wind. “You never got tested for anything, and we never tried for a baby, ever.”
“I wanted a little girl, Mary-Anne. Our own creation that we could touch with our own hands. I could’ve walked her to school, written her cute little notes in her lunch box, dance in the kitchen as you made dinner, and then, when she was yawning, I would read her your children’s books.” He was tearing up. I told him, “my mom had 4 miscarriages and I am an only child. I couldn’t pick up that phone to call my gynecologist and get that proper examination. What if the thing we wanted so badly was out of our reach because of me? What if I gained all that stupid weight, sacrificed this life my mother struggled to make, just for nothing to cherish in our hands?” I kept shaking, and I could feel the snot run down my chilly throat.
He took the deepest breath any man could take, as if he needed all the oxygen in the world to stand. “Tell me something you regret. More than anything in the world.” Wyatt grabbed my hands, but he didn’t feel very tangible to me anymore. I was sobbing and trying to grab his shirt, but even that felt distant. “Wyatt,” I attempted to say. “Tell me your biggest regret,” he said with a gentle tone.
“I wish I didn’t say yes to your stupid proposal.” He looked crushed at my words. I hardened my expression. He was fading away again. “Our wedding was the day before you died. We had this argument about adopting and you stormed out. I tried calling you so many times but you never answered me. You never came back. A policeman came to our shared apartment to announce to me that you were hit by an 18-wheeler. You were never going to be my husband.”
Wyatt’s face turned hollow. He was as empty as a dying tree. Even if I wanted to cry for him, I didn’t have the strength to. “I should get going. My train will be here any minute now.”
I told him I would see him later, but I had no intention of running into him again.
The Station by Nanesko Watson