Out of the Blue

Chapter 4: Loose Seams (Orchid's POV)

I was starving.

Literally, starving.

After six months of marriage, I had dwindled down to barely anything. I swear, I must have been anorexic but the thing is, I didn't try to be. I tried to eat, but whenever I got a plate of food in front of me, I felt like vomiting.

My weight loss was so extreme that I didn't even fit in my pathetic excuse for wedding dress anymore. I tried it on the other day, and it hung loosely around my body.

It was fitted cream against my curves, an eye catching number is what my mother had called it, but now it was just some gangly thing that only caught the wrong type of attention if I ever dared to wear it again.

Nikolai, however, failed to notice it even when it fit me properly. He failed to notice much of anything that concerned me if I was being honest.

Tonight, for instance. He didn't notice that I hadn't eaten at all, and instead of encouraging me to mingle with him and his friends, he dismissed me as if I was nothing.

In theory, I probably was nothing to him. I'm not sure what I did to make him hate me so much. I mean, at this point, existing was probably his number one reason why, but that didn't suffice for me.

Okay, I had somewhat of a clue. He had to break up with his girlfriend to marry me. This whole thing is my fault!

I mean, it's my fault for seeing something in Charlie, and for not being strong enough to stand up to him. For not being big enough to fight off his advances. I was fifteen for God's sakes though. And it wasn't my fault that my parents sided with that bastard! In spite of that, they'd decided that I wasn't smart enough to make my own decisions. Well, damn them!

I went to business school even after all of the shít that happened. I got my degree. I am more than capable of not only taking care of myself, but also of making life changing decisions for myself. I didn't need this... this thing to happen. I didn't ask for it!

Still, they don't see that. All they see is the little fifteen year old who put all her eggs in the wrong basket, and dropped them all in one blow.

It was one mistake when I was little, that shouldn't have had to define the rest of my life.

Or Nikolai's, for that matter.

But tonight, I didn't even do anything and he still got mad. I swear, he's got some bipolar disorder going for him if he could go from liking me to hating me so terribly over the course of one night. Even tonight.

I mean, earlier on in the evening, it seemed like he might actually be attempting to tolerate me for a moment. He had come up to me once I had finished making all the snacks, calmly. Or as calm as he could be I guessed. He'd simply asked me, nicely without being a complete ass, if I could just wear something nice tonight. A dress or nice outfit. I'd said okay, and he'd said good.

Like really, it was the nicest conversation we had had in six months. Yeah, I should have figured that getting too comfortable with that idea would be a waste of time since he still got mad at me. All for what? Talking to somebody. Just for having a conversation with somebody.

I didn't even know who the man who approached me was, he just came up, referring to me as Mrs. Daniels.

It took everything in me not to roll my eyes at the formality. Yep, that's me, a miserable, married twenty year old, what's it to you?

"Please, call me Orchid." I'd said with a plastered on smile.

Yes, please, call me Orchid! I cannot take that "Mrs. Daniels" crap!