Strings Attached

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Get yourselves ready, darlings, because we are going to a wedding!" announced Mom one day after we were done having lunch.

"Whose?" asked Brianna, curious.

"Aunt Delilah's," said Mom, grinning.

"You don't even like her," I said, scoffing.

Mom shrugged. "I do now."

"Really?" I asked, raising one of my eyebrows.

Mom sighed. "Yeah. Really. Now, go get ready. We're leaving in three hours."

"Do we have to?" I asked, groaning.

"Don't be a party pooper, Chris," said Teddy as he finished his enchilada. "It'll be fun."

"See? Theo gets me," said Mom, smiling brightly. "Now go get ready, the three of you."

I sighed. "Fine."

I got up from my seat and made my way towards the bathroom.

***

The truth is that I hated to go out on Sundays. I liked to think of them as the official day of resting and not changing your pajamas the whole day. Teddy and I agreed that it was a tradition that should not be broken, but he sometimes liked to go out instead. He was weird like that. Sometimes, he wanted to stay on bed the whole day, and other times he wanted to go out and do fun stuff.

Once we were in the wedding, though, the beauty of it all made me forget how much I hated the fact that I had been forced to put on a white dress and go out of the house. I hated white dresses so much because I would always get them stained, but seeing how beautiful the wedding ceremony was made me forget about it.

Aunt Delilah, the bride, looked beautiful in her white dress. She looked like the happiest woman alive, and though I could not help rolling my eyes at my mom's insistence that she actually liked Aunt Delilah, I really was enjoying the ceremony a lot.

Teddy also seemed to be enjoying himself because the whole day he had not mentioned his dad at all, and I decided to take this as a good sign.

Maybe the best days were still to come. Maybe nothing could go wrong anymore.

I smiled as I saw Brianna and Mom criticizing the groom's suit. It was a brown one, and it was the same color of poop, or at least that was what we all thought. We were really having fun in that moment.

A couple of tears streamed down my face as they told each other their vows, but I tried to keep it cool. It was not like it was my wedding, anyway.

As soon as the ceremony was over, we all made our way to the reception, where Mom and Brianna sat at one table and Teddy and I sat at another one because of the lack of chairs. It was very full in there, and we had really struggled to get those seats in the first place, so we did not argue when Mom told us to sit by ourselves on that table.

Not that we would have argued if there had been more empty chairs, anyway.

"This is very cool," Teddy said as he saw the decoration of the place.

"They should've hired you to build a wire sculpture instead of that ugly ice sculpture," I said.

Teddy grinned. "Don't be mean, Chris. The sculpture isn't that bad."

I wrinkled my nose. "It looks like a fetus," I said.

Teddy shook his head. "You have no appreciation of art whatsoever."

I smiled. "You're the one who doesn't have it," I teased. "You have no taste, Teddy. You wouldn't recognize beauty even if it hit you on the head."