Nuptials for Sale (2 page)

I rolled my eyes.  “No I don’t think you need to go up a cup size, those look completely natural on you.” 

An older couple walked past us and gave us a dirty look.  I smiled sweetly at them.

“I find it very disturbing that you refer to your ex-girlfriend as ‘that redhead’.  Don’t you think you should at least call her by her name?”  I put the shirt I was looking at back on the rack. 

“She wasn’t my girlfriend, so therefore she isn’t my ex-girlfriend.”  Josh followed me and wiggled out of his bra.

“You were with her for like two months, weren’t you?  How was she not your girlfriend?”  I laughed at him trying to get out of the bra.  “I hope you’re better at taking those off of others than you are at taking them off yourself.”

Josh pulled the bra off and tossed it into an empty basket as we walked. 

“First of all, I wasn’t with her for two months.  We spent some nights together over the course of two months, but we weren’t together.” 

Josh grabbed my arm and stopped me from moving past him.

“As for that second thing, I’d be happy to demonstrate my skills on you anytime.  You just say the word and I’ll have it off of you in a heartbeat.”  He wiggled his eyebrows at me and grinned.

I rolled my eyes and kept walking.

Josh was always saying things like that, but he didn’t actually mean them.  For a few months, back in high school, I’d actually thought he’d liked me.  He’d been so nice to me when we’d first met and he was always trying to make me laugh.  Unlike any other high school boy, Josh had never tried anything with me.  After months of waiting for him to make a move, I finally gave up and realized he was never interested in anything but friendship.

After that, things with Josh seemed much easier.  I laughed it off when he flirted, it would never lead to anything, so it was harmless.  In college, several of my girl friends had tried to get things going between us, but I knew that if Josh had felt something he would have already made it clear.  Eventually, we just settled into our comfortable friendship with no danger of it crossing over into anything else.

            We spent the next hour at the store playing with the toys in the toy department.  He chased me through the aisles pretending to shoot me with the toy guns that were still in their boxes.  He tossed bouncy balls at me and knocked me over.  We both hopped onto the toddler bikes and rode them up the aisle until an employee caught us and gave us a look.

Tired from our recess in the toy department, we sat on the floor in front of the wall of televisions for thirty minutes and watched an episode of friends that was playing on the store’s DVD player.

            “Are you ready to go?” Josh asked as I fidgeted on the floor.

“Sure, I just need to go to the bathroom first.”  I stood up and wiped my pants off.

“I’ll meet you up front, Trip.” 

As I made my way towards the front of the store, and towards Josh, I thought about how he had really turned the night around.  A few hours ago, I was sitting on our couch complaining, and now I was in a great mood and ready to head home. 

Hanging out with Josh was always an adventure.  When he got it into his mind to be funny, there was no stopping him.  It was common practice when we went out to eat for him to arrange for someone at the table to be serenaded for their birthday, even if it wasn’t.  For my twentieth birthday he arranged a surprise water balloon fight in my honor, so that as I walked out of the English building after class I was bombarded with a hundred water balloons. 

Nothing surprised me about Josh.   

“Attention SuperMart customers,” a familiar voice called out from the speakers above.  “There is something that I need to say.”

A smile widened across my face. 

“There’s a beautiful woman walking around this store right now looking for me, and I’d like to tell her that she can stop looking.  You’ve found me, but more importantly, I’ve found you.  I know we’ve only been dating for a few months, but Mel, we’ve known each other for almost ten years.”

Everyone in the store seemed to have stopped to listen. 

I picked up my pace.  I pushed past an older woman and saw Josh standing at a register with the phone in his hand. 

He turned and caught my eye, a smile spread across his face.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.  We may not have much money, and I can’t give you a ring right now, but I promise that we’ll always have each other and we don’t need anything else to have a good time.”

Several of the women around me started to sigh, sniff, or giggle. 

Josh dropped to one knee and looked up at me from across the store.  “Mel, will you marry me?”

I tried hard to suppress the laugh that was building up inside me.  I stopped being embarrassed by Josh’s antics years ago, but this one felt a little sillier than usual. 

“Well, honey, don’t leave us hanging!  Are you gonna marry the boy or not?” a pajama clad woman beside me yelled out. 

Several other customers clapped and laughed. 

There was no other choice but to play along, so I stepped forward and nodded.  Josh dropped the phone and leapt off the floor.  He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off the ground as everyone around us cheered. 

“You are insane,” I whispered into his ear as he spun me around.

“Come on, are you going to deny that you’re having fun?” he whispered back.  He put me down and leaned his forehead against mine, staring into my eyes with a very convincing look of adoration. 

We spent the next few minutes receiving well wishes and congratulations from all the other shoppers.  We walked out of the store as several people whistled and giggled at us. 

Josh played it up by smacking my ass.

“That was fun!” Josh said with a laugh as we pulled out of the parking lot.

“Yes, but I think the smack to the ass might have been a little much.”

He grinned at me.

“I told you we could have fun without spending any money.” 

At the apartment, I headed to my bedroom, but was stopped as Josh called out from the living room.

“What?  No goodnight kiss for your future husband?”

“I’m saving myself for our wedding night,” I called back. 

“It’s a little too late to play the virgin with me, Trip!”

I picked up one of his shoes from the hallway and tossed it towards the living room. 

I heard him laugh as the shoe thudded against the floor.

3.

The next week was just as boring as usual.  Wake up at five a.m., sit in a cubicle all day pretending to work, and come home to a tiny apartment with no good food.  Josh kept up the husband and wife jokes for awhile, but eventually they died out. 

By Friday, my bank account was in serious danger of being empty, and I was looking at another boring and penniless weekend.  I sat behind my desk staring at the clock on the computer.  There were still two more hours until the end of the day, and it felt like time was standing still.  The buzz of my cell phone brought hope to life in me.  I was hopeful it was someone asking me to go out with them, even if I didn’t have any money to go out with.

Hope died when I saw the name that was flashing on the screen.

“Hi Mom,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could find in me.

“Hi Mom?  That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?”

I sat up straighter at the sound of my mom’s scolding voice.  She hadn’t spoken to me that way in years.  I ran through all the possibilities in my head.  What could I have forgotten?  Mom’s Day? Her birthday?

“Well, Melody?  You don’t have anything else to say to me?” she hadn’t loosened her tone any.

I couldn’t think of what she wanted from me, so I gave up trying.  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

She sighed loudly into her phone.  “I can’t believe you, Melody.  I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me about this.  Imagine having to find out about something like this on the television.”

Clearly, I had not missed a holiday.  Other than that, I was clueless what she was going on about.

“Mom, I don’t know what you’re talking about.  What did you see on television?”

There was a long pause.  She was probably standing in the kitchen, wearing her apron, and leaning against the sink.  I had seen that many times before in my youth, but all those times I had known why she was upset.

“I saw your video on the news today,” she said sharply.

My eyes widened and my face reddened.  My mind was flooded with the memory of the time Stephen, my ex, had set up a camera in the bedroom.  My whole body seemed to be simultaneously frozen and on fire.  How in hell had that video made it onto the news?

“I didn’t even know that you and Josh were dating, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw him proposing to you on the news today!” She was practically shouting at me.

Relief washed over me.  I didn’t want to think about my mom watching a sex tape, especially one starring me. 

I flopped back in my chair and sighed loudly. 

“Wait! What?”

I sat up and shouted into my phone. 

Someone from another cubicle shushed me and Bobby, the nosiest person in our office, stuck her head out from around her cubicle to stare at me. 

I lowered myself in my seat and leaned closer to my desk so that my face couldn’t be seen.

“I saw Josh proposing to you on the news, and I must say that I am extremely disappointed that you didn’t even bother to call me and your father to share the good news.” Her voice had changed from anger to disappointment. 

Normally I would have preferred the anger, but I was too busy wrapping my mind around what she had said.

“Hold on.  Can you explain to me again exactly what you saw on the news?” I had lowered my voice, but it still had an air of panic. 

She groaned, but obliged.  “You know how at the end of the news they always show a feel good story?”

I tried to hide my increasing frustration and impatience, “Yes.”

“Well today they showed a video that they said was a virus hit.”

“You mean viral, not virus.”

“Right, viral.  Anyway, they showed a heartwarming video that someone had captured on their cell phone.  It was a young man proposing to his girlfriend in a SuperMart of all places.  It really was cute, but then they zoomed in on the people and there you were!  I couldn’t believe it!  Josh was spinning you around and people were cheering.”

“Someone caught that on camera?” I scanned my memory of that night for cameras or phones, but couldn’t picture any.

“So it was you?” the disappointed tone in her voice was back.  “Why wouldn’t you call us and tell us?  The news said that the video had been seen over a million times, and yet, your own mother didn’t know about it.  It’s not as if it’s a big surprise.  We always thought you and Josh would make a great couple, but we always assumed you’d tell us when it finally happened.” 

My fingers were typing keywords into a search engine as she tried her hardest to lay a guilt trip on me.  SuperMart proposal gave me over a thousand hits, but the most popular one was our video.