Oh, Keep Your Shirt On - Michelle Pennington Page 0,41
breathe naturally.
As we headed inside, I didn’t bother with a fake smile because Damien hadn’t brought me here to look friendly and approachable. My usual expression would probably have exactly the effect he wanted.
But it didn’t even matter because introductions would have to wait. Right as we walked through the door, an usher practically shooed us into two seats at the very back of the room against the wall at the end of a long row of seats.
“It’s time to start,” the man said, either in explanation or condemnation.
As we scooted awkwardly past the others in the row, Damien kept hold of my hand and cleared the way ahead. Right as we sat down, the first strains of the traditional wedding march flooded the room through the speakers overhead. As I glanced back toward the doorway, two bridesmaids stepped through the doorway, one after another. Then came an adorable toddler girl in a fluffy white cloud of a skirt, dropping whole handfuls of pink rose petals instead of scattering them.
Damien bent to my ear again. “That’s my niece. Isn’t she adorable?”
“So sweet,” I whispered back to him.
Then I saw the hint of a full-skirted satin wedding dress crossing the threshold and hurried to stand with everyone else.
The bride’s dress was a perfect combination of glossy fabric, tailored lines, and simple embellishments. The pearl clasps in her gleaming black hair, her mile-long eyelashes, and the diamonds glinting in her ears and on her wrist all added to the overall effect. She was beautiful. And expensive. A quick glance around had me realizing that everyone here was rich and fancy…and here I was in a leftover bridesmaid’s gown from three years ago, earrings from the clearance rack at Target, and drugstore makeup. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might feel self-conscious like this—like a low-class intruder at a high society function.
Maybe since I’d always seen Damien in casual clothes—or nothing but gym shorts—I hadn’t connected the dots that he came from wealth. But that changed when I looked him over now with his tailored suit, silk tie, and designer watch. He wore luxury as easily as a hoodie.
What had I gotten myself into?
As we sat down again and the ceremony began, I felt a familiar hardening of my expression. The sensation of turning to stone edged through me, cold and protective. At the restaurant, I’d been able to pick out the money-snobs with one glance. My robotic stoicism had seemed professional, but really it had shielded me from the judgment in their eyes. My mom’s reaction to her current husband’s wealthy lifestyle and friends had been two boob jobs, a face lift, and regular Botox injections. Everything else could be had with my stepdad’s credit card. But me? I was the one thing she hadn’t been able to fix—the skinny, awkward ugly duckling who refused to be changed into a swan.
Even now, I didn’t regret my staunch refusal to twist myself into someone else just for an image, but that meant I had to face judgment and ridicule in other women’s eyes and the swift dismissal in men’s.
“Krista?” Damien whispered.
“What?”
“You’re about to break my hand.”
I shot a glance down to our hands, locked together and resting on Damien’s knee with my hand on top. The tips of his fingers had turned white from my grip. Letting go and jerking my hand back, I watched—appalled—as Damien shook some blood back into his fingers.
“What’s wrong?” he asked once he’d assured himself that he could bend them all normally.
“Nothing.” It wasn’t like I could explain right here with everyone around us listening intently to the exchange of vows taking place across the room. “Later.”
He didn’t press me further, just nodding in his calm way and turning his attention back to the ceremony. For the next ten minutes, I sat like fissured stone next to him, throwing up the old defensive walls around my self-esteem again. Between him and Tessa, I’d become too vulnerable.
I barely heard a word of the ceremony but automatically stood to applaud as the groom snogged his perfect bride for an uncomfortably long time. Because Damien and I had seats in the back corner of the room, we had to wait, trapped, until the rest of the guests followed the happy couple out of the room before we could move.
“Ah, there’s my family,” Damien said, pointing them out where they stood about thirty yards away. He waved and smiled his boyish, unrepentant smile while his mom chastised him with an