My Big Fat Low-Fat Wedding (37 page)

I guess not everyone had run screaming from the room after all.

“Who are you?” Thomas rushes over to help Fiona up. “You’re bleeding! Here! Let me help!” He leads her out of the room and I’m left sitting on my butt utterly flabbergasted. I’m grateful that the boy has suddenly turned his attentions away from me. I’ll have to deal with helping Fiona avoid his stalkery habits later. Right now I’ve got a huge mess on my hands that my confused mind can’t seem to process adequately.

I can hear shouts and screaming fading away from outside. Slowly, I reach forward and retrieve my crushed bouquet of white roses from the floor.

Somehow I just don’t think I’ll be getting married today.

Chapter 24

Rays of warm light brighten the flowers in my hand. I lift my head and the sun’s warm beams absorb into my skin. I’m standing on a calm beach where the ocean has no visible high waves. The sun continues to shine down onto the top of my head and my exposed shoulders.

I’ve been here in Spain for a few days now. I’m holding a completely non-crushed bouquet of flowers. I’m wearing the beach wedding dress I’d wanted from Lara’s bridal shop all those weeks ago. It’s a white gown that flows lightly to my ankles and I’m not wearing a stitch of control underwear underneath. As a matter of fact, I’m not even wearing shoes.

My toes sink into the sand and I bump feet with the bare ones of my fiancé.

Callum is here with me. He’s wearing a button down white shirt that flaps in the breeze. His legs are clad in touristy floral print surfer shorts. We’re getting married on a beach and I couldn’t be happier.

“You’re husband and wife. You may now kiss.” The presiding registrar says the final words of the ceremony.

Callum takes me into his arms, bends his knee and drops me onto it. Grandly, he presses his lips to mine and for the first time ever I kiss the mouth of my official husband.

“If you don’t stop soon your mum’s face is going to wash clean off.”

Callum lifts me into a standing position. We both stare at my parents as they walk forward. Dad’s right. Mum is crying so many happy tears of joy she might indeed succeed in washing her facial features right off her head.

“Oh stop it, Richard. Can’t a mum just be happy for her newly wedded daughter?” She backhands my father in his slightly paunched belly.

“If you’re so happy for her you should stop crying, woman!” Dad rolls his eyes.

“I can’t help it, darling.” Mum squeezes my hand and I’m grateful she does so with the hand that isn’t holding her snot filled tissue. “You just look so beautiful!”

“She does. Just like every day.” Callum (my husband!) smiles at me.

He was amazing at our catastrophic wedding. Little had I known that my then intuitive fiancé had spoken with the police straight after we’d seen Oliver’s underground lair. Callum knew Oliver was up to something, but until everyone had revealed all their secrets on that abysmal day, no one had quite known what was really going on.

As we walk away from the low lapping waves now, Mum whimpers quietly into Dad’s shoulder. Callum and I follow them arm in arm.

“It’s hard to believe we actually live in a town where a man has been arrested for attempted murder.”

My husband (I love being able to mentally refer to him thusly) scowls. “It’s rubbish living in a town where the attempted murder was upon my wife!”

I know his statement was an angry one, but I only heard wonderfulness from it. “Say that last word again.”

Callum frowns at me, but then his face lights up with a smile. “My wife.” He stops walking and so do I. “My beautiful, amazing, stunning, gorgeous—”

“Say the word, Cal!”

“Wife!” He blurts. “My wife.” He kisses me grandly and by the time we raise our heads Mum and Dad have already wandered back towards the hotel veranda.

“And you’re my husband.” I giggle and poke his exposed neck gently.

“I am indeed.”

“Not to mention the fact that you’re also my hero?”

“How so?”

“You’re the one who had Oliver arrested. If you hadn’t called the police in, I don’t know if we’d be standing here—”

“Ssshhh.” Callum shushes me with a finger he’s placed over my lips. “Let’s not spoil the moment with bad memories.”

He’s right. As far as I’m concerned the past year of my life has been nothing but bad memories. Apart from looking forward to getting married this entire time, I’ve been a crazy woman obsessed with her weight. Now that we’re finally married and this day has turned out wonderfully, I don’t think my mind can quite believe it.

“I was starting to think I was born unlucky.” I mumble behind Callum’s finger. He removes it and replaces it with his lips for a few quick kisses.

“Are you saying you were unlucky when we met?”

“Well, no, obviously not.”

“Do you mean you’ve been unluckily getting recently wed on a beautiful beach like this?”

“All right, that’s enough. I get it.”

And I do. I really, truly, honestly understand what my husband is saying. I’m not unlucky at all. And I’m certainly no longer going to think that way about my life ever again. It only leads to Maniacal Diet Woman rearing her ugly head from within me.

I don’t know what I was thinking with all the over the top exercising I’ve been obsessed with just to end up perfectly happy in a subdued yet gorgeous wedding dress after all.

I’m finally married. I’m not stuffed into a tight gown that makes my body look a ridiculous shape. I’m happy. I’m an eleven stone woman and I’m the wife of an adoring husband. What more could a woman of my curvy size ask for?

I take my husband’s hand and together we walk towards the hotel veranda. “Come on,” I say, pulling him along a little bit faster. “I want a slice of wedding cake!”

*

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank Ryan Hunter for inspiring the bug eating and potato scenes, without which readers would probably be a lot less grossed-out, but hey ho there you go.

I’d also like to thank Katie Louise Nicholson for her catastrophic wedding disaster tales. I know these things happened to you in real life, which sucks, but thanks for the novel fodder, hun!

And my thanks once again to Cally Taylor for literally saving my novel writing career by sending me your old netbook when mine crashed and burned. You’re a star.

You’re all shining stars in my writing life. To everyone in my life. To everyone on my private Facebook and public FB page. To followers of my blogs and everyone on Twitter. Cheers, kind peeps!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katya Starkey loves writing Chick Lit because it brings back memories of her own shenanigan stories of the heart. In other words, she writes romantic comedy. For more books and stories by Kat please visit her website.

www.katyastarkey.com