It was supposed to be the wedding of the decade, and from my point of view, it certainly was. For the groom?
Well, let's start from the beginning.
Shelly and I dated for five years, starting in high school and all through college. We were really close, and most of our friends assumed we would end up getting married and live happily ever after.
And that was our plan too, at least before she was accepted in a post-graduate program. In Europe.
I had just taken a job at a good law firm in DC, where we grew up and went to school and planned to spend the rest of our lives. Shelly was torn about the opportunity to study abroad, but I knew she had to go.
So we made a pact to write each other and Skype each other and continue our relationship the best we could.
Of course, it was a fool's plan. Shelly and I were crazy in love and one of the most important things to both of us was sex. Mind-blowing sex. Almost nothing was off limits to us, and we pushed our boundaries and explored our fantasies, almost to the point of some dangerous dark places.
But we loved it. We lived for it. And once Shelly left, it was over just like that.
To stop cold turkey drinking or smoking is difficult. For two sexually addicted nymphos stopping cold turkey was impossible. We both knew it, but neither of us knew how to address it.
So she left DC, and I stayed home and we made the best of it. Of course, it didn't last. We drifted apart. Talking about sex and having sex are two different things, and I sensed probably before she realized it that neither of us could do without it.
For me, I just started to having meaningless sex with prostitutes and whores, cheating wives and office workers, girls I met in bars or online or wherever. For Shelly, she just started fucking her professors.
We told each other everything, and for a while it was hot. But I could sense her drifting, and she wasn't really into me fucking street sluts. We decided to end the relationship, virtually and literally.
And just like that, it was over.
I was a 25-year-old single man living in my hometown, a lawyer, an eligible bachelor and a support group that offered me a lifestyle fit for a politician. Shelly, on the other hand, was a 25-year-old single woman living in a strange country with no friends, no means of support other than the scholarship and no idea what her future held.
So she just kept studying, fucking her professors and hoping to survive two years abroad before entering the real world. Of course, it came to her.
She met a guy, an American living in Europe, rich and good looking, urbane and classy and everything a woman could ever want. Except he had a five-inch cock.
Shelly convinced herself it would work. After all, she would live like a fairy tale princess in an old mansion on a river with old money and a new world for her and her Prince Charming.
She ended her studies just months from her degree, forgetting all about the plans for a doctorate and the life she planned from the time she was a little girl. A wedding date was set, the guests were all invited and the fairy tale ensued. Or so the new plan became.
It was an expensive wedding. Family and friends from all over the world were coming. Royalty was coming. And little did Prince Charming know, so was a 25-year-old ex-boyfriend from America.
Shelly called me late one night, trying to sound happy, trying to put on a good face. The call lasted two hours and it ended with her crying so hard she couldn't complete a sentence.
"You have to come," said said sobbing. "You have to be here for me."
I protested then relented. I missed her. I wanted to be happy for her, but most of all I just wanted to support her as she rode off in a gilded chariot, or whatever it was they had planned.
It was a spring wedding in the country, miles from London where they would reside.
Now I've been to weddings before. Big weddings for very rich and powerful people, weddings in chapels the size of coliseums, weddings in exotic islands and even one on an ocean liner.
But nothing compared to this.
I arrived week before the wedding and checked into a hotel room reserved by Shelly. When I checked in, there was an envelope waiting for me.
I opened it in the room.
Mark, it said. I am so glad you're here. Don't move. Don't make any plans. I have seven days on my own. I'll see you tonight.
Shell.
I smiled and started getting ready for a shower, thinking about long it had been since I'd seen her. Wondering if she'd changed. Wondering what we would say to each other.
I was down to my boxers when I heard the door lock open. Shelly was standing in the doorway, her back to me as she leaned over and started pulling luggage into the room. I immediately came to help her, both of us beaming as I looked at the stacks of luggage.
"Are you moving in?" I asked.
"More like moving out," she said. "He's gone for a week, something about a tradition in the family."
We huffed and puffed, bringing large, vintage crates and stand-up storage cases like something off the Titanic.
After the last one was hauled in, she collapsed onto the bed and held her arms out.
"Come here baby," she said.
I fell into her arms.