Chapter 3

Wherein Jason attempts to describe the indescribable.

My wedding day. That whole 'travelling technician' thing, that was supposed to keep me out of trouble like this. There I was bopping along from job to job, making darned good money, really having fun (for the most part) doing it, and then I ended up in Tennessee. It was like a big, stupid moth falling into a spiderweb.

Except I fell in love with the spider. Susan. MY Susan. My blonde, supremely beautiful funny intelligent Susan with the blue eyes and soft, rounded body that had me going home after our dates, laying in my bed and beating myself to death.

God, I wanted her. Those eyes dancing with laughter? I wanted them to be MINE. The silly little titter of a giggle? Wanted it to be mine. Those dreamy sighs? Should be mine.

And here I am, staying in Tina and Alan's trailer and it's THE day and I'm shaving one last time as a single guy and I'm getting dressed and I'm looking at my watch and calling Mom and Dad. They're staying at the same hotel as everybody else from out of town. That would be Dan Richards and his Cindy, and Dan Granger and his Nikki, all here for my wedding.

"Hi, Mom," I said.

"Hello, son," she replied. "Are you still in Tennessee?"

"Yes, ma'am," I answered. "You know Susan. I made a better choice this time."

"I think so, son. She makes so much more sense than THING!"

Inside, I was finally laughing. My divorce was a painful thing to Mom. Actually, the truth of the matter was that my marriage, first one, that is, was a painful thing to Mom and Dad both. They just never saw a match there.

Mom had talked to Susan. Mom and DAD had talked to Susan. I set my technologically inept parents up with a computer and shamed them into entering the world of digital communications and they saw Susan and me on Skype a few times and then Mom and Susan got together several times and then we did that fly-in visit with Tina and Alan, and Susan just sort of slid into Mom's idea of a daughter-in-law, even if Susan's a bit younger than me.

I get to meet Mom and Dad and the rest of the gang (minus Susan and her folks) for breakfast.

"Son, you're remarkably calm," Dad says.

"Numb," Alan laughed. "In a few short hours he's gonna be Susan's accessory."

"Now, baby," Tina said, "he's been Susan's accessory for MONTHS now."

Dad is still shaking his head about me going back to college. "I like THIS bunch of advisors a whole lot better than the ones that talked you out of your engineering degree in the first place," he'd said.

Okay, let me tell you that this breakfast's conversation was a little bit more ribald. I sort of deduced that a lot of our group conversations were a little muted because Susan was not only not married, but oddly for this day and age, we weren't sleeping together, either.

That was a surprise to me. Susan did NOT want to move in with me. I know a lot of women who'd've been packing their bags, like my first wife, but Susan wasn't one of them. Another surprise was that Susan, pretty, eighteen, was still a virgin.

I'd never been with a virgin. I mean, I'm not exactly a classic playboy in the first place, but I was virgin until I met my first wife. She wasn't and I was. That was an early revelation when Susan and I got to the point that we kissed and snuggled and got all hot and bothered.

"Jason baby," she'd said. "You KNOW I love you, but we have to stop. We're both about to lose control and go a lot further than I intend to go until my wedding night." She explained to me exactly why and for me, a boy raised in Sunday School at a Southern Baptist church, it made perfect sense. It was something I understood. It was something I could live with.

There were certainly times that our common resolve was sorely tested. I mean, the girl's beautiful. She won't grace the cover of Vogue for about a million reasons, all of which are Vogue's problem, not mine. Okay, I'm not a chiseled Adonis myself. I carry a few pounds that I've gathered along the way, you know, one too many fast food joints, that sort of thing, and honestly, Susan's a few pounds over ideal, but it makes her look like a retro starlet out of the 1940's instead of one of those poster kids for anorexia that seem to populate the fashion world today.

Susan was sweet and blonde and curvy in ways that made me DREAM. Okay, sometimes those dreams ended up kind of sticky...

Good breakfast. Go home. Try to relax. Shower again. Shave again. I'm not gonna have ANY stubble, not for the expected festivities of the evening.

Lunch. There's a package of ramen noodles waiting on me, 'Purina Dorm Chow', but I'm doing a light lunch. Festivities planned, you know. Time to suit up. Nice neutral gray suit. Fits good. Multi-purpose. Church. Business. And now, this one wedding.

Phone rang. I didn't even have to look. The ring tone belongs to only one. THE one.

"Tell me you're not backing out," I answered.

"I'm not," Susan said. "No way, nohow. And there's not a place deep enough and dark enough for you to hide in if YOU are."

"Nope," I said, "But if you KNOW that place, we can go there after we're married."

"Are you dressed?" she asked.

"Is this one of THOSE phone calls?" I returned.

Giggle. (Oh, God, the giggle is still there. And it's almost mine.) "IN a few hours you won't NEED those phone calls."

"I suppose," I said, doing my best Eeyore impression.

"I shall pay extra attention to your tender sensibilities," she said, playing along. Then she paused, sighed, and said, "May be the last time we talk to each other as two singles, sweet boy."

"I know, princess," I said. "But I quit being single when I decided to ask you to marry me."

"Me too." Giggle. Yep! It's there!

"So, Miss Susan Carter, I shall see you at the appointed time?"

"Why, yes, Mister Jason Ellerbee! I look forward to our meeting!" Giggle. I heard her speak to somebody in the room with her, "I will NOT tell 'im to take Vitamin E!" and then to me, "See you in a bit, love!"

I sat the phone down and eased back onto the sofa, closing my eyes. It's like a dream. And I am hoping I don't wake up. Finally I got tired of watching the numbers change on my watch. Time to go.

In the church. There's Mom and Dad. Dad has never looked right in a suit. Mom looks good in her dress. My buddies, Dan, Dan and Alan are all spiffy in their 'respectable engineer' togs. I shake a few hands and it's time. I'm standing in front of this church and the church pianist is doing some light, lilting things. I notice that the pastor's wife is going to the back of the church with Mike, Susan's dad.

I wasn't this nervous the first time. Maybe I just didn't know. Maybe it's because I had nothing to compare it to. Mom was dabbing at her eye with a delicate handkerchief. I think that for the first wedding she was checking her purse for a straight razor.

The music changed and I almost lost it. I told you that I find Susan to meet my ideals of attractiveness. The creature, no, make that the ANGEL coming up the aisle on her father's arm, that creature took my breath away.

I've been to enough weddings to know that it's not uncommon to take a perfectly pretty, neat girl and primp and pompadour and make her up to where she looks like a refugee from the courts of Versailles.

Not my Susan. Her hair, that soft, shining, sweet blonde hair was just like I liked it, held back from her face, this time by combs. She had a spray of little while flowers on one side of her head. Her dress wasn't one of those Princess Di extravaganzas. It was white(!), simple in lines, and showed me this perfect creature.

Somebody said some words that forever escape my mind and I found her standing beside me in front of the pastor of the church, our assembled friends and families, and God.

I looked at this vision.

"Do you take this man..."

Blue eyes were looking into mine. "I do."

And some more words, "Do you take this woman..."

"I do. Forever."

Alan's daughter Terri, seven years old and almost a miniature Susan herself, was holding a velvet pillow with two gold rings on it. That little bit of simple gold was nothing compared to my heart right now.

"You may kiss the bride."

I brushed my lips against hers.

"Allow me to present to all present, Mister and Missus Ellerbee, Jason and Susan!"

The recessional was Beethoven. We stopped on the church steps for pictures.

Our reception was held in the church multipurpose hall and it was a blur.

My blushing (yes, really!) bride. Her sisters made sure that some whispered comments had Susan blushing well past the pink stage. I know she danced with her dad and I danced with my mom and Mom and Dad hugged their new daughter-in-law but I honestly don't know how much of it Susan remembers.

Cake. We cut it. Fed each other a bite. That's another bit of Susanat work. "We're NOT doing that business about pushing cake all over each other's faces. That's gross." And we didn't.

Then it was her time to toss the bouquet. One of her teenaged cousins elbowed her Aunt Mimi out of the way for the catch. Everybody has a branch on the family tree like her Aunt Mimi, a little too flashy, a little too loud, a little too made up, and just possibly a little loose in the virtue department. I danced with Aunt Mimi. Got my ass grabbed. Sure, she laughed, like it was a joke. Still got my ass grabbed.

And we disappeared chastely into two separate dressing rooms and came out in travel togs, and we're off TOGETHER on our honeymoon. At least they didn't tie a hundred inflated condoms on my truck. I've seen THAT done. Gotta love redneck weddings.

Susan and I had discussed honeymoon destinations and we figured that we could probably make it to Nashville without stopping on the side of the road and creating a spectacle.

Chapter 4 »