Unmuted

Unmuted- Chapter 21

"This is more weird than I expected."

"Yeah," David grumbled from beside me.

We stood in line together awkwardly, waiting for our que. Around us the rest of the wedding party waited, less awkwardly and much more cheerful than we did. I studied David's face trying to gage how he truly felt about the whole occasion, but all I saw was the familiar mask.

"What?" he snapped, not bothering to turn towards me.

I jumped back a bit startled. "Nothing," I said shakily. All I wanted to do was to go home and hang out with Jordan, or even better go back in time and tell my past self not to agree to walking in the wedding with David. What had I been thinking?

A sudden commotion came from behind us and I turned and saw the bride. Her maid of honour was fussing over her, while it seemed like her mother was lecturing her about something. I shook my head at the bizarre similarities between the woman and my own mother. Even on what should to be the happiest day of her daughter's life, she still found the time to be unhappy about something that probably did not matter.

I sighed and faced forward. "She looks beautiful," I told David.

"Hmmm?" he asked absentmindedly.

"Your mother," I told him, peeking at him at the corner of my eyes. "She looks beautiful."

"She's not my mother," he responded quickly.

"That is what you say about your actually mother."

"She's not my mother either."

I finally turned towards him. "Then who is your mother."

Our identical eyes met as he turned towards me as well. "No one."

I shook my head and studied his face, taking in his neatly kept beard and disheveled eyebrows. His lips formed his normal frown and his light eyes had their same, if not more, level of intensity. I had to fight the urge to reach up and fix his eyebrows as well as urge to slap him. I shook my head again and turned away. "Must be nice."

"What?"

"Having two mothers. Especially having one as wonderful as Farrah."

He chuckled humorlessly. "Oh, please be my guest, have her. I'm sure she'll take you in as well."

I turned around and watched as Farrah tried to ward her mother away without any success. I tried to push away the thoughts of how it might be at my wedding. The scene between the two was so much like me and my mother that my heart constricted as I felt her distraught all the way from my spot near the double door entrance of the church.

"No," I started. "I'm okay with her just being my aunt." Thinking that having to deal with my grandmother more often than I had to, would most likely be worst than having to deal with my mother on the daily.

Someone at the front of the line started to loudly shush us, and everyone began to settle down. David took my arm and brought me closer to him. I shuffled uncomfortably in my barely high, high heels and felt the nerves begin to creep in.

Suddenly David's hands were on my head, and I felt him push a couple strands away from my face. "Thank you," I whispered when he finished. I saw him nod from my peripheral. I wanted to repay the favor, by fixing his eyebrows, but I was much too frightened by him to even touch him uninvited.

"You look nice." The words bursted out from between his lips so suddenly that I knew that he did not mean to say them aloud.

"Really?" I asked, surprised, looking down at the flowy dress that hung onto my awkward, underdeveloped form.