A Bad Bride's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

They’d met two or three times, bris- tling encounters in which Jez had found opportunities to boast— about his job, the excessiveness of the last restaurant bill, and so on—in a fit of macho bravado. Sam made Jez nervous. Jez made Sam uneasy.
    “Fucking uptight, the Lewises,” Neil mumbled through the cor- ner of his mouth, like a ventriloquist. “Make Jez and Stevie sleep in separate bedrooms.”
    “Neil . . .” Stevie sighed. Was nothing sacred in this household? “Let’s hope he didn’t go home after the bachelor party last week- end. Colin would have loved that. Oh, man . . .” Neil let a chuckle
    whistle between the gap in his two front teeth.
    “What happened?” asked Sam, eyes widening. “Shut up, Neil.” Stevie shook her head. Poor Jez.
    Neil, always keen to impress Sam—a real dude in his eyes, hav- ing a groovy and vague kind of non-job as a photographer— ignored his sister’s pleas for dignity. “We went out in Brighton, dosed Jez up on Viagra, man. He was walking around with this big . . .”
    “Please, Neil. Totally tragic,” Stevie said, wondering why being in the company of her younger brother made her regress to her childhood vernacular. “Let’s not relive it.”
    “Get him in training for the honeymoon!” Neil quipped. Stevie fired a withering look at her brother. “Oh, please.”
    “Don’t overreact to, like, everything, Stevie. Aren’t you meant to be loved up or something? I keep forgetting. It’s like having a hor- monal pit bull in the house.” Neil picked out a cherry tomato from the salad with the yellow-stained index finger and thumb normally reserved for rolling joints. “Anyhow, I’m sure Rita—monster-in- law—didn’t figure it out.”
    “ Neil! Would you stop winding your sister up,” said Patti. “It’s a stressful enough time for Stevie. And let’s not be nasty about the Lewis family. It’s not . . . not cool.”
    Stevie looked at her mother, surprised. Yes, she really was trying hard. She thought her mother still hadn’t gotten over the Christ- mas when the Lewises had come to stay, embracing the household like a bout of flu. Rita had complained that the turkey was under- cooked and that the music—Sinatra!—made her head hurt. Colin had taken refuge in a bottle of port and an ancient book on WWII warships, talking only to chastise Jez for his bad language or lack of success in becoming the next Tory prime minister, or at the very least, a doctor or lawyer.
    “Jez is all right.” Patti put an arm over her daughter’s shoulder and squeezed. “Stevie’s chosen well.”
    Chris put down his fork, rearing up a little as a mouthful of over- spiced stew settled in his stomach. “Jez better be more than all right,” he said, turning to Sam, green eyes twinkling. “This wed- ding is taking over our lives , Sam. It’s like a strange virus has en- tered the household, turning sensible people into jibbering buffoons and my wallet to mulch.”
    Stevie felt a pang of guilt. For all the blustering and joking, she knew her parents were really feeling the pinch of this wedding. (“There goes our vacation fund,” she’d heard her mother say shortly after their engagement was announced.) She’d wanted to put money in the wedding pot herself, Jez and her salary combined being larger than that of her parents’. But her mother had refused and said she’d just take on more counseling work or add a bit to the mortgage. (Stevie knew that this refusal meant a no-frills wedding.)
    Neil blew his bangs off his face. “It’s totally, like, unfair, Dad, being a boy. All Mum’s talk about equality, I don’t see me getting thrown, like, shitloads of money, for basically a party .”
    Patti raised an eyebrow and smiled coyly. “If you like, sweetie, you can invite some of those nice boys from the squat.”
    “No, he will not!” said Stevie. “Or a nice girl.”
    Neil, who hadn’t had a girlfriend since college, glared at his mother.
    “All I can say is