“You’re not gonna run away, are you?”
“No! God no! I love Patrick! I want to get married.”
“Then what? You’re not sure you want kids?”
Cheryl was struck by how easily Sal said it, with zero judgment and obvious compassion. Again, it spurred her to honesty.
“I didn’t once, but I do now.”
Unlike the wedding budget, she and Patrick were on the same page about babies. They’d agreed to start trying as soon as the wedding was over. Cheryl had promised to take her last birth control pill that morning. The prospect was terrifying, but at thirty-four, she needed to get cracking. Patrick seemed nothing but delighted by the idea of being a young dad, but all of his brothers and most of his friends and teammates were parents. Probably because they also had shitloads of money and, thus,zero stress about renting or sacrificing an entire income for childcare.
“I wish he wasn’t rich,” Cheryl burst out. “Or I wishIwas rich. I’m sick of this Cinderella shit.”
“Oh,” Sal squinted at her. “He’s knobby because you don’t have family money? Like condescending?”
“No! He wants the wedding to be all picture-perfect and expensive, and I want things to be simple.”
“Like, you want to elope, and he won’t let you?”
“No,” Cheryl said, nettled. It felt like she was making out that Patrick was some controlling asshole, and he wasn’t. He was the kindest, most generous person she’d ever met, and after a lifetime of looking after herself and her mum, she loved the leadership role he took in their relationship. Making her life easier by calling the shots. He didn’t understand she wasn’t being all cute and bashful about how expensive the wedding was getting—she was genuinely uncomfortable.
“I like that he wants us to have a big day,” she told Sal. “And I want it to be nice or whatever, but I don’t want two billion chocolate fountains or a surprise parachute ride or whatever crazy wedding crap Patrick’s cooking up with his mum.”
“I see.” Sal pulled their plastic sword from their belt and began swishing it through the air. “Actually, I don’t. I think you might need to start at the beginning with the aid of another smoke, m’hearty.”
It took two cigarettes for Cheryl to explain the Vera Wang dress and six-course Michelin star meal and the horse-drawn carriage that would be pulling her to the largest historically preserved Catholic Church in the state of Victoria.
“Fuck,” Sal said when she was done. “You’re right about the Cinderella thing. It’s all a bit serious, hey?”
“I reckon,” Cheryl said gloomily. “I know he’s just being nice, and he wants me to… feel like a princess or whatever, but I don’t want to feel like a princess.”
“I get you. I only want to feel like a girl some of the time.”
Sal's voice had a clear note of pain, and Cheryl put her arm around theirs. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nah. Sometimes I do, but not right now. I wanna be the one giving advice; it makes me feel better about myself.” They grinned. “Besides, you’re just deflecting.”
“Busted.” Cheryl returned the smile. “So, what’s your advice?”
“Fuck him senseless.”
Cheryl had been expecting something more along the lines of ‘try open communication.’ She gaped at Sal. “What?”
“Fuck him sideways, then tell him this wedding makes you want to cringe yourself into another dimension. He loves you and shit, so he’ll promise to make it all better. Then all you have to do is hold him to it.”
“Isn’t that a bit… underhanded?”
“Isn’t getting your mum to pay for someone’s wedding dress without telling them?”
“Touché. I mean, I guess I could try.”
Sal laughed. “You don’t have to try. You’re hot as balls. Everyone knows you’ve got Psycho wrapped around your little finger. As if you haven’t already done something like this.”
“I dunno.”
Sal gave her a look.
Cheryl remembered when Patrick wanted to spend a week renting the same Bali Airbnb as his footy mates. The possibility of spending six nights and seven days living with the kind of people you didn’t want to grab a coffee with—and their wives—had wrecked Cheryl’s head. But she’d only made her case to Patrick after she’d invited him to fuck her ass on their balconyunder cover of darkness, and in that warm, giddy state, she’d found he’d been a lot more willing to compromise. In fact, he’d gotten right on his phone and started Googling hotels.
