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She looks at his car, then looks at her wedding dress. A look at his car, then back to her stupid, big, puffy wedding dress.
He has his hand on the door handle, waiting for her to get inside. She wants, she isn't sure how to do it.
„Twirl it around“, her maid of honor says, holding the ends of her dress.
She thinks he sighed. She doesn't blame him.
She listens to her cousin, and yeah, it could work. She slowly, carefully, gets in the car. He basically slams the door in her face.
Her cousin gives he ran encouraging, sympathetic smile, and then he gets inside with such a mad kind of force.
Few second. Few moments. Music and the loud noise outside is just an overwhelming background noise.
His car is turned on, he honks and starts driving, leading the way for other cars to their mansion.
The silence is defeaning. He doesn't look at her, so focused on the road. She isn't as thrilled either. She doesn't want to look down, avoiding it. She avoids looking at her hands, at her finger. At the ring on it. At his ring. Her ring. Their rings.
„Hi“ she says, glancing at him.
He furrows his face, glances quickly at her, then goes to look focusedly on the road.
„Hey…?“
She wants to say so much.
I'm sorry. I promise we'll be okay. Promise you won't hurt me. I'm so sorry. What a fucked up situation, huh? Don't hurt me. Let me run away, please.
„I'm terribly sorry.“
She settles on that.
It catches him off-guard. „What?“
„I'm sorry. I know this isn't what either of wanted…“
He is staring at the road. He let sit sink in, she guesses. He sighs, nods, and then looks at her with this expression on his face. She can't read it. After few beats of silence, he says it too.
They never got the chance to actually talk. An introduction, a rather quick one, and few minutes of awkward silence and then the wedding.
„We can talk about… this. I know neither of us wanted this. Or got a say in this.“
„What else is there to talk about?“
She shrugs, unsure. „I don't know.“ A silence. Beats of silence where she's trying to find the right words. „What now? We're married, how do you plan on going on with this? With… us?“
„Like usual?“
„You know what they expect from us, right? We play the perfect married couple, I push out few babies, you keep the business running. But… what about us?“
„What about us?“
„We can be partners. You know, solidarity and all. Like, I want to finish college and get a job, not to just be a fucking housewife. And besides, don't you think we should talk more about it all?“
„About your duties?“
„Our duties. I know what waits for us tonight, that stupid ritual from the Middle Ages.“
„What about it?“
„Make it quick. You have to cum inside me, they have to clean it up, I don't think we can really fake it, but… you can make it quick. Please. For both of us.“
„Yeah. Yeah.“
A quick, exchanged glance. It means something, she isn't sure what just yet.
„And about… the later…“
„Do what you want. I don't give a shit if we have a kid now or in five years.“
„But they do.“
„Fuck them.“ She didn't expect to hear such bitter disdain, such bitter hatred.
„Okay. Deal. And about the… I want to finish my degree.“
She's boring him. „What are you studying? Psychology?“
„Is that what they told you?
„I think so.“
She shakes her head. „Criminology.“
He snorts. Literally. He snorts. She lets out a short laughing sound.
„Yeah, I know. But it could be really useful, you know.“
„Yeah, definitely.“ A short beat of silence. „Okay, fine. Do whatever you want. I won't be around much anyway.“
„Of course. Hookers you gotta fuck, drugs you gotta sell, people you gotta kill.“
He tenses. But he doesn't say anything. Money is money, theirs is just tainted with a little more blood and a little more of something white on it.
Beats of silence. She lets it sink down, lets herself feel the feelings, like her psychology major friend once said.
„It's just so terribly sad, isn't it? This. Forced marriage, both of our lives ruined.“ It's all she can think about.
„What do you want me to tell you?“
She looks at him. Really looks at him. Huh. „I don't know if they really love you or really hate you that they had you marry me.“
„What's that supposed to mean?“
„I'm not exactly the perfect mob wife material.“
„You're better than the Russian bitches and other whores, is my guess.“
Fair enough. „Sure. If you say so.“
He looks at her. There's something unreadable about him. He goes back to being so focused on the road, beats and beats of silence filling the tension between them.
She gets the courage to look at that fucking ring.
She wants to burni t. She wants to cry and scream and burn that stupid ring and this stupid wedding dress and run away to anywhere.
God, how dumb she was. This is her price, and she has to pay the price. Well fuck this price.
She looks at him and wonders if he's regretting his life choices as much as she is right now.
What a miserable fate for them.