Thank you to everyone for their patience for this latest chapter, and for those who dropped a kind word to make sure I was ok in these pandemic times. I am, life just got very hectic. I hope you enjoy it and that it was worth the wait.
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(Kitten, approximately five months since Chapter 11. Wedding Day)
"I'm too young to die, Meg," I said, feeling like I was about to pass out.
Meg gave an exasperated sigh. She'd been putting up with a lot of melodrama from me in the last 24 hours....everyone had. This was just the latest chapter in it. However, this time, I really did feel like I was about to die.
I was in Meg's hotel with the morning light coming in through the balcony. The room was old, but everything in Venice was old. However, it was well kept, classic, and I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. I was in her room with the balcony door open and there was a fan spinning overhead but no air conditioning of any kind. Most of the buildings in Venice didn't have any sort of AC. Daddy warned me that while getting married in Venice would be memorable and romantic, the downsides would be the massive crowds, the heat, and the humidity.
"Venice used to be a swamp, Kitten," he told me. "The swamp has spent the last millennia trying to reclaim it. Which means you better be ready for 150% humidity."
I laughed, thinking there was my Daddy being silly and exaggerating things. I've lived in Southern Ontario in the summer for the last couple of years. I could handle some heat and humidity.
Wrong. So very, very, very wrong. I thought the two months in Prague had prepared me for insane heat and humidity, but Venice was otherworldly. The heat was pushing towards 40 C. It felt like moving through soup. My corset seemed like a good idea in the design stage, but now it felt like it might kill me. And, oh yeah, I was getting married. To my Daddy. Forever.
When you're 22, thinking about 30 seems like forever. Thinking about being with someone for the rest of your life... well, realizing what that meant hit me a little late in the proceedings.
I flopped on the bed, the dress spreading out around me and tried to remember to breathe. I ran my fingers across the pearl choker that Daddy had sent over as a 'surprise' wedding gift this morning. The note said it would be a more appropriate collar than my usual heart lock chain on our wedding day.
"Such a good Daddy," I thought to myself and managed to breathe a little easier.
Meg sat next to me and looked a little more sympathetic to my situation. Perhaps looking like I might pass out will do that. Or maybe she was enjoying watching me suffer as some small payback for all the teasing and mocking I'd inflicted on her the last couple of years.
"You should drink something," she said.
"I'm in a wedding dress. You know what a pain in the ass it is to go to the bathroom to pee in this thing," I said.
"Who said anything about water?" she said, opening her small handbag to reveal a small flask. Since Daddy and I got together, we hadn't had anything alcoholic. Originally it was to support Daddy after losing his wife to a drunk driver, but it evolved. I drank too much as a teen and was scared of what might happen if I started again. So Daddy told me he didn't think his little girl should drink; it wasn't appropriate. And that's all it took to make it stick.
When I tell people, they think it's nuts, but it has been easy. I'd been relieved to have an excuse to stop. Even the non-stop drinking on the movie set had been easy to handle. But for the first time in almost three years, I was deeply tempted. Still, it wouldn't do to have Daddy taste booze on my breath for our first kiss as husband and wife, so I shook my head.
"Your loss," Meg said and took a quick sip. "I got bombed during my second wedding. Which probably explains why things didn't work out. But I maintain that being drunk is the only sane way to get through one of these things."
I laughed, which centered me a bit more. This wasn't a panic attack, but just an above-average freakout. I bet most brides have them. Today, I just happened to be the bride in question.
'Bride.' Me. I am a bride. Oh, holy fuck.
Meg must have seen me swing back from calming down to freaking out again.
"You're going to be fine, Kitten," she said. I glanced at her. She rarely called me anything other than Kit. Well, there were other words, but she usually stuck to Kit. Hearing her say Kitten worked at easing the anxiety.
"I don't feel ok."
"You're a nauseatingly beautiful bride, and you're about to marry one of the few decent men I've known in my life. Which you are never to tell him. Plus, the two of you are perfect for each other, which I will never repeat outside of this room," she said, reaching out to rest her hand on mine. I looked over at her. "So yeah, you're ok."
I took some more deep breaths and, for some reason, Dory from "Finding Nemo" started talking in my head and said, "Just keep swimming," which made me giggle. Ok, now I felt better. I walked over to the massive, weathered mirror along the room wall. Yeah, ok, even I had to admit this worked, and I looked good. Maybe even sexy for a bride. One more deep breath, and then I stood up a little straighter. Meg came up behind me and adjusted my cat ears tiara with a smirk on her face.
"You ready now?"
I nodded. She held out her arm and I looped mine into it. We started walking towards the door.
"Well, let's go. We've got a gondola to catch. Time for you to get chained down for the rest of your life," she said. I glanced up at her with a horrified look. She was smirking.
"I would cheerfully murder you right now, but it would get blood on this gorgeous dress," I snarled at her.
"There's my girl. You're all feisty and pissed off. Now you're in the perfect mindset to get married," she said.
I shook my head and laughed.
"Ok, let's go do this," I said. One last deep breath as we headed downstairs.