Don't Kiss the Bride

What the fuck.

All I want to do is pick Skylar up and carry her the hell out of this place.

“Mom, this is my friend, Jude,” Skylar says awkwardly, swatting a fly away from her face. “Jude, this is my mother, Nicole.”

Disgust coils up in me like a cobra when I realize the woman sitting on the green velour couch is only a few years older than me. She’s not the older, had-a-daughter-late-in-life, hair-starting-to-gray woman my imagination conjured up.

It’s obvious she was pretty once—an older version of her daughter, with long, blonde hair and blue eyes. But something, whether it be hard times, alcohol, drugs, or mental illness, has made her look rough and tired. Her hair and skin are dull, her nails way too long. On a small table next to her is a pail of sand that she’s using as an ashtray. I spy two roaches in the pail. Not the bug kind, the joint kind.

“Sit…” Nicole motions to her right, pushing bags of Cheetos and pretzels off the couch and onto the floor.

Skylar grabs my arm before I can move. “No,” she says. “We’ll stand. We won’t be here long.”

Skylar’s discomfort is palpable, and I don’t blame her. This is like standing in the middle of a hazardous waste dump site.

I ignore her and sit on the couch next to her mother. I’m sure I sat in worse places when I was younger and partied in seedy motel rooms with strangers.

Crossing her arms, Skylar remains standing, her eyes dark with impatience, her lips mashed together. I’m pretty sure she’s biting her tongue.

The old couch cushion caves under my weight, and the back of my head smacks into something hard. I turn to find myself face-to-face with a four-foot giraffe statue with its neck stretching over the back of the couch.

“What is this, exactly?” I ask, running my hand over its black felt nose.

“It’s a giraffe,” Nicole says.

“Why is it here, though?”

I need some kind of glimpse into this woman’s rationale. Maybe she has a good reason for collecting all these things. Who knows—there could be a master plan brewing in her mind that Skylar isn’t aware of.

Nicole gazes at the statue with so much admiration I feel like I’m spying on an intimate moment. “Because it’s pretty, and it was only two hundred dollars, and I don’t have any other giraffes,” she replies.

Nope. There’s no rationale here. At least not a logical one.

Nodding, I give the giraffe one more glance, and try to come up with the right words to tell this woman why I’ve asked her daughter to marry me, so I can get the hell out of here.

“Mom, we came here to tell you we’re getting married, and I’m moving out,” Skylar blurts out, beating me to it.

“Are you pregnant?” Nicole asks in an accusatory tone, her gaze zeroing in on her daughter’s midsection.

“No,” we both say at the same time.

“Then why are you getting married?” she says to Skylar, then turns to me. “To you?”

I nod. “Because—”

“How old are you?” Nicole interrupts.

“I’m thirty-four, but—”

“You’re thirty-four?” Skylar squeaks with bulging eyes. “I didn’t know you were that old.”

“Hey, it’s not that old,” I say defensively. I’ve got a fuckin’ six-pack under my shirt, not a dad bod.

“Well, I’m thirty-eight,” her mother states, matter-of-factly. “You’re old enough to be her father…”

Yeah, if I was dumb enough to get someone pregnant when I was sixteen. Which I wasn’t.

I put my hands up. “Can we back it up for a sec?”

“It doesn’t matter how old you are. It’s not a real marriage, Mom,” Skylar interjects.

“Yes,” I correct. “It is a real, legal, marriage. But we’re not together. I’m not sleeping with your kid.”

Nicole presses her fingers to her temples and closes her eyes as if this conversation is giving her a headache. It’s definitely giving me one. “This is very confusing,” she says.

“I didn’t want it to be,” I reply. “We’re only getting married so I can put her on my health insurance plan and give her a place to live. She’s sick, and she needs to see a doctor. She needs therapy and medication.”

My blood boils when Nicole rolls her eyes. I kid you not, she rolls her eyes, and leans back into the couch with a big, dramatic sigh. “This one’s always been a whiner. Her stomach, her head, her throat. Her this, her that. She’s been doing it since she was five years old.”

“Because I’m sick, Mom. What the fuck?” Skylar’s cheeks redden, and she smacks the giraffe’s snout in anger. Its neck tweaks from the blow, and now it’s staring at us dementedly with its glass eyes. “You’re stuck in your crazy fantasy world and I’m getting out of it!”

“Okay, calm down.” I reach for Skylar’s hand but she pulls away with a scowl, almost tripping over a crockpot box that’s in the middle of the floor.