Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Wedding Night

Behind his smiling face and eyes, was a man struggling with the urge to shout at the top of his lungs. He shook hands with relatives, nodded and thanked everyone in the receiving line. He continued to fight the urge to rip the bow tie and comer bun from his body while posing for pictures and leaning in to kiss his new wife. While dipping her during the first dance he imagined himself letting her go to fall to the floor, while he took off running stripping along the way. He missed his best man’s speech imagining the chase that would ensue if he bolted out the door. While cutting the cake and feeding it to her gently he thought of his bachelor party and doing body shots off Kandie and Destiny. Before he knew it the wedding and reception was over. They were standing in front of their honeymoon suite hotel room his bride waiting to be lifted across the threshold. He giggled to himself after lifting her imagining slamming her head into the doorframe. He assumed that she wrote off his giggle as drunkenness.

He spent the night twisting the platinum band around his thick finger while she snored beside him. He got up an hour before the wakeup call she had set up and went into the bathroom. He splashed water on his face and stared at the bags beneath his eyes. He gripped the sink until his knuckles turned white. Again he felt the urge to scream, but didn’t want to wake her up. He splashed water on his face again and hung his bald head in the sink with the warm water running. He pondered the idea of having made a mistake. He thought about the possibility of starting a family with Jessie. He opened the bathroom door, leaned against the frame, and watched her sleep. The covers raised and fell in a sleep rhythm. She was a great woman. She saw more in him than any person he had met. She had hopes, dreams, and aspirations. She was ambitious and extremely successful. He looked down at the ring on his finger, the commitment he had made to that wonderful woman sleeping in that bed.

He walked over to the window and looked out at the world. The golden tinge of the rising sun began to glow from the horizon. A new day was about to begin and with it a new life for him. He turned and looked over his shoulder with the sound of blankets rustling and a sleep sigh escaped her perfectly pink lips. He thought of the day he asked her to be his wife, and how he had planned for this very thing. He thought of how hopeful he was while sliding the ring across her knuckle. He remembered the nights they spent talking about the house they were going to guy and the children they were going to have. He thought happily ever after. He turned back to the window to the world with the golden sky. Was he trading the world for a white picket fenced in area?

He crawled back into the bed with her and she rolled over again pulling the blankets with her leaving him uncovered. He lay on his back with his calloused hands clasped over his soft belly. He mindlessly twisted his ring and slid it over his bulbous knuckle and off. What difference did a ring make anyway? He let out his own sigh, slid the ring back on his finger, and covered both of his brown eyes with his hands.

Jessie was ripped from her sleep by the shriek of the phone. She answered her wakeup call with a moan, and rolled over toward the other side of the bed. She reached out with her hand and found the bed empty. She sat up with a jolt and looked around the room. She pulled her legs up to her chest feeling her heart rise up into her throat, “Rob?” She called. There was no answer. She stepped out of the bed and walked toward the closed bathroom door, “Rob?” she knocked on the door and did not get an answer. There had been something wrong with him the night before but with all the festivities she had not had a chance to address it with him. She had been so tired at the end of the night she had passed out. She turned the knob of the bathroom door and pushed it open slowly. Her eyes fell on the ring on the counter and her heart leapt into her throat.

“It was such a rough night we didn’t get a chance to relax.”

She ran over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed him as hard as she could without choking him.

“Whoa,” he laughed, “It’s just a bath.”

She pulled back and looked him in the eyes, “I probably shouldn’t say this, but last night, during the ceremony and the reception, all I could think about was running away.”

His soft brown eyes stared into hers and he reached up to push some of her wavy hair from her hazel eyes. He took her face in his hands and a smile grew on his face before pulling her face to his and kissing her forehead, “The waters going to get cold, get in here with me.”

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