AQUIVER || Award-winning short stories about love won and lost

Hell hath no fury

I've been staring at this cream envelope holding the wedding invitation for the past hour, and I've come up with five perfectly reasonable options to deal with the dilemma it poses.

1. Tell my brother to man up and deal with my absence on his wedding. After all, he's the bastard who introduced me to Otis and then decided to marry Otis' sister, so this is all his fault to begin with.

2. Be rational and fierce and show up alone, head held high. Otis can go screw himself.

3. Find myself the perfect boyfriend within a month and drag him to the wedding in a rented tux to meet my parents (I pity the man before even meeting him).

4. Hire a man for the day like they do in the all-goes-to-hell-but-ends-happily-ever-after movies I keep watching with my big bucket of ice cream. No, I swear I wasn't crying last night. I have allergies.

5. Make a deal with the devil to solve this mess, even if it costs me my soul.

I've gone as far as jotting down my options on a notepad, and I'm considering writing a pros-and-cons-list. In the end, I decide on tequila instead.

Not the first time I've been making questionable choices since I heard the man who I thought was The One brag to his best friend about his extra-curricular activities.

Falling back into an armchair, I nudge my pumps off with my toes and sink into the soft leather. The television blares its usual nonsense at me while I nurse my glass.

By the time my third glass is empty, I'm drinking from the bottle while eyeing my list.

One is out. My brother is the only person I'd do anything for. I'd prefer walking on broken glass over seeing Otis parade his latest girlfriend around, but that's not a trade-off I can make unfortunately.

Unless the gorgeous males I can find on-line accept payment in the forms of sarcasm and cat memes, option four is out. I'm broke enough to buy the white-label brand of tequila, which I'll regret with all my being tomorrow morning.

I can't even face option three while drunk. Otis broke me to the point I can't look at a man without feeling stabby. My brother is the one exception to the rule, but I can hardly date him, can I?

Actually—

No, never mind, it's his wedding.

I put the bottle away and bury my head in my hands, scared by the unholy twist my thoughts have taken.

The broken part of me is quivering in a corner of my buzzing body, doubled over while holding the big ball of sadness I've been nursing in her lap. The old me, the confident girl I used to be, is shouting, raging, pounding against my skin until every nerve ending in my body is alive.

Why am I the one to agonize over my own brother's wedding?

Why should I suffer when Otis was the one who betrayed me? Not once, not twice, but for three long years. He told his best friend he found a girl on-line a week after we moved in together. I still remember the glee in his voice as he did.

Fury burns at the bottom of my stomach.

I stare at the last option on my list until the words blur. When I swipe at the itch on my cheek, my fingers come away warm and wet.

"Come and get me! I'll give you whatever the hell you want. All I want is for Otis to suffer as much as I do," I scream at whoever cares to listen.