My eyes cracked open, and I could see the shadows and light of the early morning. The glow of the twilight crept out of the cracks in our curtains, and the birds were chirping wildly. I heard clinking and clanking from the other room; I pulled the covers over my head.

I'm not a morning person.

Rae peeked her head in room — she looked like but a blurry blob to me — and smiled like she had been awake for hours.

"Good! You're up. Did you sleep well? Did you have another dream about tiny glowing clowns disorganizing your comic books?" She was infuriatingly chipper. She went back into the other room and continued clanking and clinking stuff assumably without cause.

"Yeah, I did sleep well. Until now. And, no, I only have that dream when that stray cat fallows me all the way to work. What are you doing up?"

"Well, I figured I'd get ready for today as early as possible," Rae said. "Dorene told me a story about her wedding. She woke up too late and had no time to apply her makeup and pick up her mum from the asylum. One thing led to another, she ended up driving her Porsche off a cliff. She survived, obviously, but now she has a bad back and her cousin George won't talk her."

"That doesn't sound right."

"Yeah, you might be right. She had just snorted a fuck-ton of cocaine. Dorene's a wild card."

I blinked twice. "O-kay then."

Rae came in and leaned on the doorframe. "You gonna be okay here by yourself?" She said this as if I were a baby — though, in retrospect, I may have been sucking my thumb.

"I'm a grown-ass woman!"

"If you say so." She leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. I murmured indistinctly and smacked my lips groggily.

Did I mention I'm not a morning person?

* * * * *

Later that day, finally out of my coma, I stood on the bustling sidewalk, waiting for Willa to pick me up. She had recommended a friend of hers to makeup my face, as I had a rather prominent scar under my eye. (Let's just say it had something to do with falling asleep with a book on my face.)

I saw Willa's spunk-mobile turn the corner wildly. I waved her down. She stopped and I climbed in the vehicle, connected my seatbelt and held the grab handle with one hand.

"How you doin', Msz. Watters?" Willa asked. She turned back momentarily and then zoomed down the road.

"Hi — uh, 'Msz'?"

"Mrs. is oppressive to women — never mind that there isn't even a Mr. in this situation. So I came up with a completely new suffix! Ya like it?"

She jerked the steering wheel to the left, and the car swerved accordingly.

"GAAAHa haha" — I cleared my throat — "ok, uh, yeah." I wondered why I ever accepted her offer to pick me up. Willa wasn't a great driver. But I guess it wouldn't have been much better if Charlie and Dominique drove me to my house, where, yes, Rae and I were getting hitched. Dominique is, let's say, a cautious person, who doesn't like other people — even more than I don't like other people. She and Charlie had been together since they busted a dirty principle who was selling drugs to his own students. Charlie gushed about how smart and cool she was, but she'd never showed that side of her personality to me. From my perspective, she's just a psychopath.

"You excited? It's the big day! I'm definitely excited, though I'm still bitter you didn't let me officiate. Who's doing the honours again?"

"I don't know, but she's a crazy weird Latina girl, that's for sure." I looked knowingly into the camera. I cleared my throat. "Hey, Willa, do you think you could read the guest list again?"

"Sure, sure, Jack, NP, for sure!" Willa said. She pulled a bejewelled clipboard from shotgun. "Um, well, there's you — obvi — Rae, me, Charlie, Phil, Dominique, Ariel, Rae's mom, your mom, annnnnd that's it."

"Good," I said. "I wanna keep it small. Less chance of people... being there." My anti-social was showing.

"While I was listing, I noticed that Rae's dad wasn't on on the board. And the board knows everything. Is he coming?" Willa stared at me inquisitively in the rear-view mirror.

"Uh, I left that up to Rae."

"Haven't they been in contact recently?"

"Yeah, they've been talking for a while now. She said she felt weird inviting him to our wedding. She said it was ironic."

Willa parked across the road from my mom's house, and we exited the vehicle. Willa waved me over to the trunk, and she opened it wide to reveal two flats of glass jars filled to the brim with rich strawberry jam.

"Whoa," I said at the sheer amount of preserves.

As Rae and I are unequivocally not normal people, our wedding would definitely be not normal either. We knew from our combined knowledge of '90 sitcoms what weddings typically are, and with much consideration, we decided to tweak it to our liking.

Instead of having our wedding in a church or on a beach; we decided to hold the occasion at my mom's house. Not just because it was cheap, but also because it was free.

Where other people would make a day out of their wedding, we figured we would keep the event confined to the ceremony. Then the invitees would be milling around awkwardly, pretending they didn't hate this, for a shorter amount of time.

We declared that we would not be getting a cake — not just because we thought another Gay Wedding Cake Debacle (look it up) would put a damper on the day, but also because my mom was intent on contributing something, and her signature Russian Mennonite zwieback would do just fine. That's where Willa's homemade 'Wowza' jam came in.

"Yeah," she said, in response to my 'whoa.' "This stuff is gonna taste boss on your mom's delicious buns."

"Please don't ever say that ever." I picked up the top flat and carried it to the house. "Seriously, Willa, this is a lot of jam. I'm not sure it'll get eaten."

"Sheesh, you're welcome for staying up for four days straight to make all this jam, Wilhelmina!" Willa closed the trunk — another flat of jam resting precariously on her knee. "Besides, people can take home, I dunno, seven jars home with them after the ceremony, right?"

"Right, and, uh, thanks," I said, feeling bad for not being more grateful...

Wait, four days to make jam?

I opened the front door for Willa, and she went in. She turned around to speak to me.

"Let me take that Jacky, you have to get ready!" She forcibly took the flat I was holding and awkwardly carried it to the kitchen. I grimaced at the thought of all that jam hitting the floor and shattering-splattering all over everything. Someone poked me on the shoulder. I spun around. It was Rae with a weird look on her face.

"Hey! You okay?" I asked.

"Ha! What? I'm fine... Why wouldn't I be? I mean, I'm marrying you, and everything is definitely not going to shit!"

"Okay, you're flip-flopping, what's going on?"

"Look, don't be mad or upset or sad because it kills me whenever you are any one of those things, but... my mum ran her mouth all over town and ended up inviting some of her friends to this glorious and magical day and, hey, did I mention that I love you and think you're the most unusual, funny, beautiful, sexy person I've ever met...?"

I blinked twice. I wrung my hands together. "Okay."

"'Okay'?" Rae inquired, somewhat pell-mell.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, I'm fine. I'm a grown-ass woman and I can get over this... Even though I'll have to shake people's hands... and people will be within ten feet of me... and they'll all probably be old fogeys with pearls around their necks and boats in a dock somewhere... but yeah, I'm good."

"I'm sorry, donut," Rae said, taking my hands in hers. "What can I do?"

"Nothing — 'cause I'm good!" I exclaimed. "You just go do... whatever needs doing. I'm fine."

"If you say so. I'm gonna help Willa with her abundance of jam." Rae kissed me and spun around, walked into the kitchen. I sighed and sighed for aeons.

"Hey, Kiki!" someone yelled.

I whirled around. "Charlie!" I jumped into his hug.

"You small lug, I'm so happy you're here!" I said. Charlie was one of the only people in this dimension that I felt completely comfortable conversing with. We didn't see each other nearly as much as we did when we were teenagers.

"Me, too! Do you even realize how amazing this is?"

He moved to the side and revealed Dominique standing stoic, as always, behind him. She was dressed nicer than usual — she even wore tinfoil earrings instead of the usual tinfoil hat.

"Hi, Dominique," I said. I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't want her there. She was such a certifiable loon it was hard to have a simple interaction with her.

"Your mother's house is earthquake proof," Dominique said, shaking my hand violently.

"Uh, yeah," I said. "She did that maybe th—"

"You have something in your teeth," she interrupted, pointing at my mouth.

"What?" is all I could mutter.

"Love is beautiful," Dominique said, clenching her hand into a convulsing fist. "My feet hurt."

"Dom, let's sit down, right?" Charlie said, putting an aloof arm around her and walking off to sit on a couch.

I cupped my face in my hands for a second, and then ran up the stairs to my room. I sat down on my ottoman and leaned uncomfortably close to my own reflection, picking a piece of bacon out of my two front teeth.

A sinister creeeak echoed through the walls. I felt nostalgic for my teenage years spent in that room. Talking to myself as if I were two different people, pacing back and forth for hours, and, of course, that stupidly useful creak in the walls.

Phil bursted in the room, sending the door flying wide open. He quickly closed it.

"What the fuck are you doing in here, Phil?" I asked, pissed off at his presence.

"Jacky, it's killing me. I can't keep it in anymore. It's eating me alive." He rocked forward and back slightly. I pondered the crazy idea that he was actually here for a reason. "Jacky, I-I-I'm going outa my mind. I haven't eaten since breakfast."

"Okay, one — it's, like, eleven in the morning. Two, just spill it. I'm getting bored."

He leaned forward slowly, made real eye contact with me. I began to worry. His lips wrenched up into a hard line under his nose.

"Jacky... I think I'm in love with Rae."

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Hello!

Sorry this chapter took so long! I thought this one was gonna be the last, but it was so long already that I split this one and the next one into two. I'm still working on chapter 27 - epilogue 4 but I have lots of free time in the coming week, so I'll probably be able to get it done. Yay!! 

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