When Ollie came home the day of Cora’s interview, I was already half asleep in bed. The moment I noticed he was home I decided to pretend to be asleep. I suppose I was just too tired to deal with everything that happened that day and I knew we could have a better conversation in the morning. I briefly remember him gently crawling up beside me and hugging me into his chest. He kissed my cheek and then whispered something about how it will be fine, more than that, our wedding will be perfect. Even in my dazed state of near sleep I had enough thinking capability to work out that his statement was completely ridiculous. At best our wedding will be bearable. I remind myself to view this wedding as a joke because it makes things easier to cope with and it infuriates Cora. That's not a perfect wedding at all. Speaking of Cora, that is another good thing about the wedding, it means I get to cut her out of my life. So when I woke up the next day I pretended that nothing was the matter. I also pretended that I hadn’t heard Ollie’s assertion that our wedding was going to be perfect. I think it’s for the best because Ollie has suddenly been acting very strange. I can only hope that it’s just guilt because he can’t give me the perfect wedding he wants to give me.
The thing is I care very little about the wedding now. I gave up hope on getting the perfect wedding a very long time ago and I have learnt to deal with that. What is really bothering me right now is that my husband to be has been avoiding me recently. He’s never in the house anymore and I have no idea where he is running off to all the time. He looks exhausted. When I try and talk to him to tell him I don’t care about the wedding and there is no need to panic he says he’s busy and disappears to do something. Most concerning of all I caught him having a hushed decision with Emmie, Mandy and Kate in the living room the other day. They abruptly stopped talking when I walked in the room and they made out they were hear to see me. But the conversation seemed far too serious to have been polite conversation while waiting for me. I can’t help but suspect they had been there talking about me for a lot longer than I had realised. For the first few days I thought I was just being paranoid but ever since I walked into that conversation I have realised that its not paranoia, something is definitely going on behind my back.
This begs the question what exactly is going on behind my back. My mind has a bad habit of jumping to conclusions that are actually nonsense when the real truth is revealed. So I have tired to reason this one out. At first all I had were the crazy, nonsense ideas but when I thought about it longer I eventually found the most reasonable explanation. It took me a while but eventually I recalled the conversation I had with Ollie just before they released me from hospital. Maybe we should cancel the wedding. Not that I don’t want to marry you. I just think it would be better for you if we postponed it. So you could enjoy it better. It made sense. With that interview with Cora, Ollie probably got scared that I was going to relapse so he had decided to cancel the wedding and was trying to find the best way to tell me. But then it got closer and closer to the wedding and still Ollie didn’t say a word so the idea became less and less likely.
Considering that today is the day of the wedding I find it highly unlikely that the reason for all this secrecy is a cancellation and now I have no logical ideas left. If it was hard enough to feel excited about the wedding before it is impossible now because at any moment Ollie is going to tell me what was so awful that he couldn’t share with me. If it’s not a rational explanation then what if it is one of the crazy explanations? What if Ollie is getting cold feet and Emmie, Kate and Mandy were begging him not to leave me? I tried to be rational but it looks like my only option is the same over exaggerated Izzie craziness. The worst thing is I can’t help but fear that Ollie has grown sick of putting up with the Izzie craziness.
So here I am, on the morning of my wedding day, waking up with a sigh. I wake up and actually sigh. And no, not out of happiness as in a content sigh, I mean a sigh of disappointment. This is my wedding day. Not only that but the day I marry the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with and all I can do is sigh in disappointment. I could deal with the wedding from hell. I could deal with it knowing that the love of my life was going to be by my side to ridicule it with me. But the fear of going up that aisle and knowing that there is a chance that the love of my life won’t be there is making me not want to get up at all. I think of all the time I have jumped to conclusions and been wrong in the past. My first impression of Ollie should be evidence enough. I think of all the times Ollie has said or done things which prove without a doubt that he loves me and that should definitely be enough. But the lack of a reasonable explanation as to why my fiancé has been ignoring me for the past week is making all that evidence hard to believe. If I had any sense I would have talked about all this to Ollie last night and got the truth from him before he left. But he disappeared off to Dom’s so quickly last night that I barely had chance to say goodbye to him. Now the next time I am going to see him is hopefully at the end of an aisle.
“Miss. Not-for-long Emerson, get up right this second!” Mandy yells at the top of her voice flouncing into the room and throwing open the curtains. “Happy Wedding Day!” adds Emmie, Georgie and Kate in unison as they follow Mandy in. I muster a faint smile. “Well, Miss. Not-for-long Emerson that doesn’t seem to be an all to enthused smile,” Mandy observes.
“Could it possibly have something to do with the god-awful-marshmallow dress?” Georgie adds. They’re acting very weird. They’ve obviously rehearsed this little conversation. But the optimism in their voice means they can’t possibly be trying to find a way to tell me that Ollie has panicked and ran. “Well what if I told you that you don’t have to wear the god-awful-marshmallow dress?” Emmie delivers her line. “Oh yeah, I can just go up the aisle in my pyjamas. I’m sure Cora would love that. With a bit of luck she might even publish another one of my humiliating secrets in a tacky newspaper because there are plenty to chose from,” I reply sarcastically while tipping my head to the side with a fake smile. “Shut up,” Mandy comments while chucking a pillow in my direction.
“We’re serious you don’t have to wear the god-awful-marshmallow dress,” Kate continues this time with a straight face. “So you’re not joking?” I ask slowly whilst suddenly sitting up straight and throwing off my quilt which had been previously shutting out the rest of the world. “Get up, take a shower and then meet us in the living room where all will be revealed,” Emmie instructs and then like that the three of them disappear in a flash. I guess I have nothing else to do but follow their instructions.
In the shower things are beginning to rationalise in my head. There is no way that Emmie, Kate and Mandy’s conversation with Ollie was about him getting cold feet. If it had of been they would have told me so I would have some warning. They would have protected me as much as possible and not have built me up for a fall. Anyway, Ollie loves me. I know he does. So whatever it is that is worrying him and stopping him from communicating with me, it must be to protect me. There has to be a reasonable explanation. Finally I begin to feel like a bride. I am going to be Mrs. Daniels by the end of the day and that is all that matters. And if that’s not enough to get excited about the fact that I don’t have to wear Cora’s wedding dress is enough to be ecstatic over.
So once done showering I dash into the living room. “Okay what?” I question at my four bridesmaids who are now sipping tea casually on the couch. Kate points to the curtain where a dress in a bag is waiting. I reach the bag and slowly unzip it with my breath held and shaking hands. It takes me a while to be unable to undo the zip because my hands are shaking more than I anticipated because I think I know what this is. As I carefully pull the zip down I catch a glimpse of lace and my hope jumps up even higher. I lift the dress out and then gasp. It’s the dress from the shop. My dress. My eyes hungrily zip over every aspect of the dress taking in every detail right down to the gorgeous little buttons at the back. It really is my dream dress from before, in my size and everything. I whip around with tears in my eyes. “You got me the dress,” I whimper behind tears. It occurs to me that I may be overreacting a little here but it’s my wedding day so I figure I am allowed to be just a little overemotional. “Not us, Ollie,” Emmie replies quietly her eyes brimming up to. I wipe away a tear and stare at the dress. I knew that I shouldn’t have let the paranoia take over. “Is this what he has been doing? Negotiating with Cora to get me the dress?” I ask. Things suddenly fall into place. Of course he's been busy lately. It must have taken a lot of effort to reason with Cora and convince her to let me have the dress I want. I don't know what Ollie could have possibly done but he has pulled off a miracle.
“So you’ve noticed something was up?” Emmie asks, biting her lip.
“Well yeah, he has barely talked to me in a week,” I answer while looking in confusion at the looks of concern on all the faces of my bridesmaids. “I warned him not to do that,” Georgie mutters under her breath.
“So that’s all it was, right? Nothing is wrong?” I ask, feeling the panic rise within me.
“Nothing is wrong,” repeats Kate with a smile of reassurance. Exactly. Shut up crazy Izzie brain, nothing is wrong.
“So get those tears out know because you are not allowed to cry once we have the make up on you,” Kate informs me.
“I’ll go get the champagne and you wait here. The make-up artist should be here at any moment so we can get started,” Georgie instructs.
A few minutes later and sipping champagne while going over the make-up artist the neutral but glowing look she is going to create, I am so delighted that I can barely keep the beaming smile off my face. I think of the beautiful dress waiting in my bedroom which will reduce my humiliation today to a minimum all because of my wonderful husband-to-be and then I realise something. Ollie is right. This day is going to be perfect just like he promised because no matter what I am marrying this amazing man who always finds a way to make my problems melt away. And even if he is an idiot for accidentally ignoring me in the process and instilling severe panic within me, nobody can be perfect. But a person can be perfect for another person which is what Ollie is. Ollie Daniels is perfect for me and in a few hours I am going to be his wife. What can be more perfect than that?