“Aren’t you going to eat anything?” my mother asked as I took a break from working the room.

“Nope. I’m just moving around to avoid Carver. He’s over there trying to look like Humphrey Bogart in the fedora and failing. Did you see the look on his face? This is clearly not the wedding he envisioned for me.”

“Why not?” my mom asked huffily. From the pictures I’d seen, her wedding was very similar to what Fletch and I had planned.

“He thinks I’m a badass, and this is entirely too wholesome.”

She huffed again. “Why would he think that about my daughter?”

I smiled. “I’m about to explain it to everybody.” We had been moseying along, greeting people on the way to talk to Ethan. I stopped to talk to anyone who looked at me.

They said things like, “You’re holding up well!”

Like I wouldn’t hold up well!

“You look so beautiful!”

I always looked beautiful.

I got to Ethan. “Have you got a microphone ready for me?”

“You’re going to talk more?” he gawked. “No one likes listening to you talk.”

“I know,” I laughed like he had just given me a compliment. He was right though. He knew me well enough to know my insides did not match my outsides. My mouth was how my insides came out. But today was the day to let it all hang out. “Can I have the microphone, please? It’s my day.”

“You’re always such a glutton for public humiliation. Should we get grandma out of the room?”

“Why would we bother with that? Someone will just tell her after the fact what I did or show her the evidence. Are the live streams ready?”

He groaned. “You are out of your mind.”

Nevertheless, he handed me the microphone, got out of the way of the cameras, and I took it. “Is everybody having a good time?” I asked the crowd.

I got a few random cheers from the tables with my siblings at them.

I glanced at Ethan to make sure he was still live streaming it. When I got the thumbs up from him, I continued.

“Great. Normally, at this point in a wedding, we would have actually had a wedding and so it would be customary to toast the bride and the happy couple, but this is not a normal wedding. I want to tell you the story of how Fletch and I met. The thing is, I kidnapped him.”

Only the fiddle player from Fletch’s orchestra made a sound.

“I put a toy gun to his back and ordered him into a car. I bet some of you are wondering why I did that. It was a case of mistaken identity. I thought Fletch was someone else. I had a friend, who isn’t here tonight, who wanted to get the attention of a certain man in the music industry. She asked for my help and as some of you know, I can’t say no to a prank. Except this didn’t turn out to be a very good one. Even though we successfully kidnapped Fletch and handcuffed him to a stove in a camp kitchen, he wasn’t who we thought he was. We were trying to kidnap Carver Criche.” Our eyes met across the hall.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

His jaw clenched and he pulled his fedora further down his forehead, but he didn’t leave his chair.

I went on. “My friend and I fought and she hit me over the head with a brick. I was unconscious and she panicked because she didn’t know what to do. Fletch, however, had a cool head and had her bring me into the camp kitchen. Seeing me on the floor, he recognized me. He had never met me, but he knew who I was from the trail of broken hearts I left behind me. I’d hurt someone important to him and he didn’t want to miss the opportunity to let me have it. When I woke up, I was handcuffed to him through the stove and I couldn’t get away. So, he told me what he thought of me.” I smiled at everyone. “I know, the romance is almost too much.”

I got a couple of laughs at that, aside from the owl-like attention I got from every adult in the room.

“So, we fought about what I had done, who was wrong, and what a rat I was. At the end of the night, he said he wanted one more thing before he unlocked the cuffs. He told me he wanted to go on a date with me, just to see what I looked like when I ruined a man’s life. I thought that sounded like great fun and agreed to go. Our first date was magical. I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. I could say what I really felt and thought.”

I hadn’t meant to cry, but I felt myself tearing up. “I don’t know if any of you understand how it feels when you think that no one could love you, really love you, because your insides are filled with confetti crumbs labeled with your faults. I have always sought to be understood on a level that kept people as far away from me as possible. Communicate with others so they can never communicate back, but they would know I was here, that I thought things, and did things. Fletch changed all that because I could be me, and it was clear that he loved me anyway. Insecurities, fears, fake battle armor and all.”

I started playing with the strap of my wedding gown. “Except, there was a problem. I was supposed to kidnap Carver Criche that night and he knew it. He was upset that I didn’t kidnap him. He got a fake gun and came after me, wondering why I didn’t do what I was supposed to. When he didn’t get what he wanted, he came to my work. When that didn’t work, he went after Fletch, and through other people, offered him a job that would take him far away from me. When that didn’t work out, he broke into my apartment with a real gun and left me handcuffed to my bed.”

“How did you get out?” someone from the back yelled. It might have been Carver himself who asked.

“Bolt cutters under the bed. I’m not twelve.”

“Is that why you have bolt cutters under the bed? In case you get handcuffed to your bed?” someone else called.

I waved my hand airly at the accusation. “Actually, it isn’t. The bolt cutters are for my art. I am an artist and I need proper cutters for thick wire and other hardware. You see, I’m so shy that my family doesn’t even know about my art projects. I have felt the need to keep myself so hidden that no one even knows what food I like.”

I smiled. That was some championship PR spinning.

“After the handcuffing thing, I received a dress in the mail that I thought was from Fletch, but wasn’t.” I turned around to see the picture Ethan had projected on the wall. The projector was meant for a slide show of the pictures I had taken of Fletch and me when we were on dates, but instead, it was one of the pictures Officer Todd had taken of me in the bathroom of the Eloquent Spider. It was the most pitiful one, where I had been crying and there were mascara smears down my face. The words ‘I want Carver’ were plainly seen across my chest, as well as the ink smear around my neck.

“This is a picture the police took of me that night,” I said, looking straight at the spot Carver had been a moment ago. He was gone.

I peered over the crowd. Had he left the building completely?

I brought the microphone to my lips. “I don’t think Fletch is missing out on our wedding because he wants to stand me up. I think he’s been kidnapped to keep him from getting here. Isn’t it amazing how a prank with an orange water pistol can elevate so quickly? In case some of you don’t know, my little confession has been filmed and posted to every social media outlet that can support it. I want off this carousel.” I looked directly into the camera. “Please repost and help my fiance make it to our wedding.”