could see right through me with their supernatural x-ray goggles. I gave every attempt not to look them square in the face for very long, because I knew they were on to me. I still wanted to pretend that I was swimming in a pool of bridal bliss. I felt ashamed in a fragmented and emotional way. I could not convey anything to them without completely breaking down. My eyes were screaming, " Help me," yet the words failed to transpire. I had become a stranger to myself—unrecognizable. My wedding plans were everything that I thought I had always wanted. By then all I truly wished to do was to hide underneath the comforter in my hotel room. My family and friends spent money and time to come thousands of miles away from home for our wedding. They came bearing gifts and well wishes. Although I was surrounded by loving people, I was standing on a sandy mirage totally alone.
Trent had secrets—dark ones. I had previously witnessed Trent's well-disguised skeletons long before our big steel bird ever touched its wheels down on Lady Luck’s infamous runway.
5). Veronica
I knew Trent had had a dirty laundry list of indiscretions from his past in the "Lifestyle." That means "swinging" for any good-girl-types that may not be following my rhinestone breadcrumbs. I did not even know what in the heckfire that word meant until I met Trent. Better yet, I seriously though it described people who were into nudity and hung their fleshy appendages out on nude beaches in seemingly exotic locales. I genuinely thought the "Lifestyle" was all about naturalists who got their kicks by tanning their white butt cheeks in public places. In my mind, they were a modern-day tribe of like-minded souls who roamed the earth in search of perfect-wide open spaces to gloriously spread eagle. It was my naive belief that their only goal was to show off their flesh-colored hardware. Well, boy was I ever wrong about that one! Apparently, I must have lived under a giant coral rock a thousand feet below sea level? How could a swanky Florida native like me not have known the code words for swinging?
Trent's swinging buck naked from the chandeliers past was old news, or so I thought. I was a foolish girl who tricked my heart into believing that I would be his shiny new future. Nothing like a good sprinkling of denial to get a fabulous relationship off the ground! My cheap, plastic magic wand was apparently cracked and broken. I couldn't seem to get the fairy glitter to evenly dispense all over my nonsensical life. Where is a delightful fairy godmother when you need her, anyway? Maybe, I should have been trolling around online looking for fairy godmothers instead of husbands? Seriously, I forgot to ponder the crucial piece of Trent that must have really gotten his rocks off by swinging in the first place. That chunk of him did not vanish into thin air because he wanted an instant family. If big, smoking sex stacks of humans made Trent's one-eyed worm wink, then how could I ever compete? I was only one person with two ta-ta’s, and one kitty, for that matter. I was spray painting outrageous amounts of denial all over my life with a ten foot pressure washer. Just call me the ultimate queen of pick-and-choose reality.
So, flashing back to Reno now and our wedding-day drama. My mom and I were in the hotel spa having our hair glamorized—in true bridal fashion. The pretty stylist that worked on my hair was named Veronica. She had immense chocolate-brown eyes and the most mesmerizing voice I’d ever heard. Veronica must have moonlighted on the psychic girl’s channel. Not only did she blow out my hair, but she thoroughly blew my mind. She was halfway through giving me the most rocking style of my life, when she blurted out of nowhere, "You don't have to go through with the wedding." I could have levitated right out of her chair and knocked myself out on the hairspray-covered ceiling.
I looked at her and turned as grey as her hot rollers. Holy, golden