Nothing screams "I don't" like walking in on your fiancé and his lopsided dick making fuck-fuck-fuck sounds inside his cousin...on the morning of your wedding day.
You'd think the world would stop. That you'd freeze in time at the sight of the abominable act.
It doesn't.
Instead, you remember things in excruciating details.
Like the final thrust he gives her after he's seen you. The one he takes before pulling out his weirdly curved, lubed-up, below-average cock from her bushy lady bits.
The way it glistens, dripping with her juice in the brightly lit bathroom.
That... that plays on repeat.
"I can explain. It's not what you think, Precious." His face twisted, as if he was fighting off some mediocre orgasm.
Precious? Is now the time for pet names, Preston!
"I sure hope not" My voice is dangerously calm. Like I walked in on my sister Lark helping herself to my perfume Calm not I caught my fiance plumbing his family member calm.
"I swear, I can explain, Emmy"
And so, I waited for the explanation.
"Go on because where l come from, cousins don't typically cum in each other unless it's the Game of Thrones. And this, you gross asshole, is not Westeros."
I ripped the mirror from the wall and hurled it at him, it barely missed his head and shattered at his feet. Damn my lack of eye to hand coordination!
"Emmy! Emmy, don't jump to
conclusions! I can explain, baby, just let me explain!" He fumbles with his zipper, his thing swaying in the air like a dying fish.
Fuck! I can't believe he was inside me seven hours ago! I can't believe I slept with his tabood ass twelve times in the past five years.
I lost my virginity to him!
I need a shower... preferably with acid.
I didn't wait around for the excuses. Not when there was more fun to be had-like trying my damndest to draw blood from him and the redhead cowering behind him.
"You didn't really see anything, right Emmy! You wouldn't spread disgusting rumors that would ruin our lives, would you? And nothing happened, I was just helping Clara with..."
"...an orgasm, Preston. You were helping your cousin to an orgasm, you stupid loaf of bread!"
"It happened just this time. Just once!"
He offers this like it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. Like it makes any of this better.
"Oh,really?" I quip, ripping the soap dispenser from the wall. "I feel so much better! Thank you for clarifying, you asshole!"
I turn my rage to the 'cousin'.
"And you... you were fucking him while I was forced to eat kale and cabbage to fit into the size-zero Vera Wang I bought with my own money!"
"Lower your voice Emilia. There are press everywhere and you are being dramatic" She forced out from behind him.
Dramatic. Did she just call me Dramatic?
Dramatic would be walking into the kitchen to borrow hot boiling water from the stove and douzing them in it.
Dramatic would be stabbing her with her Louis Vuitton heels she carelessly dropped right over there.
Maybe, it's exactly what I needed to do.
Maybe, I should —
My outburst is cut short by a voice from the doorway.
"What the hell happened to the bathroom?"
It's Lark. My baby sister. Sixteen, slightly drunk, barefoot and swimming in our father's old jacket.
I stopped and turned my back on the carnage and walk toward her. There was no need to give her nightmares.
"Come on, Lark."
"Emmy! Wait!" Preston shouts after
me. "It was a mistake!"
**
I came face to face with my grandmother in the foyer. Her sharp eyes flickering over me, and I know she's dissecting every tremor in my hands, every flicker of panic in my gaze. She doesn't need words to confirm it. She could always see right through me.
Lark might be oblivious, but Grandmother? She's a bloodhound.
She sends Lark away with a wave of her jeweled hand.
The moment the front door clicks shut, Grandmother corners me in the hallway.
Her cane slams sideways, blocking the exit. "The York Times has their headline, Emilia: America's Royal Wedding" she says, her voice cold.
I look at her.
I don't think I have ever heard warmth in her voice.
Marcy Vanderbilt is everything a grandmother shouldn't be — cold, judgemental, critical and an overall old bat but she is the head of the New York Vanderbilt family and it is a lifelong dream of hers to have one of us wed an Astor. Even if that Astor is a cousin-fucking cunt like Preston Eugene Astor.
"The Archbishop is en route from Rome. You will walk that aisle."
"He was fucking his cousin," I whisper.
"And you'll smile through your vows." She steps closer to me, her tiny frame just as intimidating as a two hundred pound bear wrestler named Chad.
"He was fucking his cousin!" I say louder now.
She comes closer and pulls me by my arm, until I lower my head enough for her to whisper in my ear.
"Listen to me!" Her grip tighten on me "Your trust fund is quite sizable, Missy. No wedding… No inheritance. No home"
Her gaze drops to my stomach. Fuck! She knows.
How did she know?
"I know" She told me. "That bastard in your belly will starve in a gutter and so, will you, you stupid child if you humiliate me by not going through with this wedding"
I held her gaze, daring her to make more threats about my baby.
"No Vanderbilt is allowed to have a child out of wedlock, do you hear me?!" She said through her gritted teeth. "There will be a wedding today, Emilia Vanderbilt. Do you understand me?"