LJ Idol Exhibit B: Week 8: The Heart of Time (Part 1 of 2)

This is part one in a two-part installment for week 8 of LJ Idol. Part is a direct sequel to this one, so please make sure you've read this first, and then you can read it here!

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I have waited for this day all of my life.

Hands fluttering nervously at my sides, I think of the little girl awash in a sea of her mother's makeup, lying on her stomach and flipping through glossy back issues of wedding magazines from when she was marrying my daddy. I would spend countless hours there, licking my index finger between each turn of the page because that's what the adults did on television. My mother would come sweeping through the door with a martini glass in one hand and laugh at me, flicking her cigarette out the nearest window.

"Haven," she would laugh. "let's get your cleaned up." And she would put out the cigarette, pick me up and dust me off, and we'd stand at the sink in her bathroom. She'd let me dip my fingers into her vat of eucalyptus-scented face wash and I'd clean the garish blue eyeshadow off my cheeks, humming the songs from the old turntable we used to sing in the kitchen.

"Mama, I'm gonna get married one day," I had always said, standing on my tip-toes so I could see the crown of my head in the mirror. "And he's gonna be tall and handsome like a prince!" My mother would nod and smile and agree, brushing my hair out of her face, her decorative rings clacking against the metal clip on the hair elastic as she pulled my rat's nest of a brunette mane into a submissive ponytail.

"You sure are, baby doll." She'd say, giving my hair one final yank into position. I'd gallop off, the magazine re-pinned into the crook of my arm.

The day that I brought home Rhett Metcalfe to meet my mother, I knew. We stood arm in arm on the doorstep, his college football hoodie hanging limply on my frame like a dressmaker's dummy. I looked from his face to the doorbell, mentally willing everything to go well. Mom told me that when she opened the door I was beaming wider than Christmas, and that was when she knew, too.

He made his pleasantries between slices of wafer-thin pot roast: twenty-one, an architect, yes ma'am, no ma'am, my mother is a fifth grade teacher and my father is unemployed, a twin brother named Ashley, yes just like Gone With the Wind, no we don't resent it, we are at different universities, we are identical. I kept my gaze glued to my salad bowl, and when I gave Rhett a kiss goodbye at the doorstep and turned back to my mother, she was standing with her back to the doorframe that led to the living room.

"Got you something," she said, flicking a cigarette lighter with one thumb and shooting me a knowing look above the rims of her cats-eye glasses. "for an old time's sake. You're gonna need it." While I loaded dishes into the sink, lovesick and giddy, my mother pressed a freshly-minted copy of The Knot into my side and walked away, light on her feet as ever. I spent that night smoking mentholated cigarettes in bed beside my mother, flipping pages and dog-earing things: dresses, color palettes. We both knew. We just did.

And now? Here I was, standing in a little chapel by the water in New Jersey, half an hour from becoming Mrs. Haven Metcalfe. My mother drifted into the room, quiet as a secret.

"Have you seen him today?" she drawled, dropping a cigarette into an ash tray by the door as I smoothed a wrinkle from my crinoline and shook my head no.

"He's been busy since the bachelor party, but I told him he's twenty five and can take care of himself. If that man has taught me one thing about himself, it's that Rhett Metcalfe can damn well take care of himself." My mother stifled a laugh with her arm and nodded.

"You've gotten your prince now, baby," she said, squinting at my face in the mirror behind me and approaching at last to adjust my veil. "enjoy this ceremony, because it's all so fast. Soon you'll be in bed with him and he's not just Rhetty Spaghetti, your college boyfriend and post-graduate lover, but Your Husband, with capitol letters. It's the big leagues now. I didn't know that, I still played like we were in tee-ball, and well ..." she gestured with her left hand to showcase her bare ring finger, saying all she needed to say and letting my mind complete the story.

Before I knew it, I was being escorted down the aisle, drifting as if I were on a cloud. My feet hurt - these shoes pinched - and I could see Rhett's fuzzy outline up there at the altar. Suddenly, his mother was gone from my side and it was just me, Rhett, and the pastor, murmuring some reassuring words about Jesus' love that I wasn't paying attention to because it was hot in here and my God did my feet hurt.

The words came spilling out of my mouth in a torrent of anxiety and before I knew it, the pastor said something about kissing and Rhett tilted back my veil. I peered up into his eyes with the love I'd held for the past three years, and as he held me in the warm amber pools of his gaze, I felt the faintest flicker of uncertainty. Shrugging it off, I pressed myself into his arms. What could possibly be wrong? This was my Rhett ... right?

LJ Idol Exhibit B: Week 8: Design Flaw (Part 2 of 2)

STOP! This is part 2 of a two-part piece for week 8 of LJ Idol. If you haven't read part 1, please read it first, here! Thank you.

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Let the record state that I was simply trying to read a book at the time. No more, no less. I was lying in bed with my old childhood copy of Redwall flopped open across my knees, a whiskey-on-the-rocks at the table by my arm.

"Ashley!" I heard him scream it from downstairs, and I squeezed my eyes shut, counting to ten, wishing, waiting for him to go away. His footsteps echoed up the stairs and eventually he swung into our bedroom, sweat slicking his bangs to his face as he beamed like a six year old. "Ash, guess what!" Using my finger as a bookmark, I closed the cover and leveled my brother a glare. I have never hated him as much as I did right at that moment.

"What, Rhett?" He didn't detect my annoyance as he launched into his explanation of how he'd been asked to try out for professional football, he was going to play in the big leagues, how he was going to make it big! Just wait! Rhett dug through the bag that had been slung across his back, pulling out papers and notes and letting them flutter to the floor, an autumnal rain of white, crisp sheets. A stray football wobbled across the carpeted floor and I locked eyes with my brother, breathing hard in time with him to keep from socking him.

"Great!" I managed, as Rhett thrust a piece of paper at me. A thick slab of cardstock, pasted painstakingly onto a softer, creamy yellow piece, proclaiming the blessed union between himself and the girl he'd been dating for three years: Haven Sanderson. My brother knelt on the floor, a knight proclaiming fealty, and squinted up at the ceiling fan, his lips moving in some odd formation of a prayer, minus the vocals.

"I can't look," he finally said dramatically, peering up at me through those nasty, sweaty bangs. "So you have to look for me, Ash. What day is my wedding?"

"You don't know the day of your own wedding?" I asked, incredulity slipping its way into my voice.

"Just tell me, brother," Rhett asked, his voice laden with desperation. I glanced down at the cardstock, and back up at Rhett.

"March 20th."

Rhett rolled over on the floor like he was being exorcised for a demon that had taken him over mind, body and soul. He writhed there on the carpet of our childhood bedroom, moaning to himself about how he was too young and this wasn't fair, it just wasn't fair. I, awkwardly comforting him, the very picture of the "little" (by two minutes) brother.

That night, with a twenty-four pack of beer having been consumed between the two of us, Rhett confessed to me his hare-brained idea. And thirteen of those beers explain why I thought it was a good idea, a great idea, a foolproof idea.

"... and then we'll switch back that night, at the reception! Nobody will have to know, Ashley." I was red-faced with laughter, the apples of my cheeks flaming hot against my pale skin as I chucked the empty can across the living room into the gaping maw of the trash bag.

"That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard! You think she can't tell the difference?" but the look on Rhett's face said that he wasn't kidding, he had to go try out and keep his girl and then we'd all be happy and set for life, just wait and see!

"It's just for like two hours, man," Rhett slurred, stumbling his way to the bathroom. "and she's a good kisser anyway, teach you a thing or two at the altar!" I looked down at my arms, self-conscious: I had always had a bit of a crush on Haven, but this just wasn't right.

And all this goes to explain how that evening, when I tilted my brother's fiance's veil away from her face, I saw the faintest flicker of distrust dance across her face. I smoothed her brow with my thumb, smiled deeply, and swept her into a kiss that was the stuff of fairy tales. Cameras snapped, and I grinned, beaming ear to ear.

We took photos in the hallways, at the altar again, beside a tree shaped vaguely like a bird of prey. And as we were ushered into the limo to go to the reception, I watched as Haven bustled her skirts up and shimmied in beside me, the slick leather sending her sprawling into my side. I laughed, offered her some champagne from the mini bar, which she politely declined.

"You know I don't like champagne!" she protested, wrinkling her nose in distaste. Of course I knew that, honey, I was teasing, you know how I get.

We pulled into the venue for the reception, and could hear the screaming and stamping of feet outside the limo. Haven turned to me, eyes shining, resplendent in her white dress. "I love you," she said, leaning over and kissing me butter soft. "I always have, and I always will," she kissed me again, the sweetest look of love on her face. "Ashley."

I felt like I had been punched in the gut, and laughed it off, making dismissive hand gestures and murmuring about how silly that was, she knew it was her fiance, her Rhett. Haven made a face and pressed a finger to my lips, quieting me as she took my other hand in hers.

"You're identical," she said, the look on her face rapidly moving from excitement to hysterics, "but my fiance has a birthmark on his wrist." Haven flipped my wrist over, indicating the lack of a mole that Rhett did indeed have, an anomaly from birth that we had always hated: as children we'd pressed our wrists together over and over, hoping that part would rub off on me so we could be the same again.

I opened and closed my mouth like a fish, unsure of what to say, as Haven gathered up her skirts and threw open the door to the limousine, the bright lights from the venue shining out, making her a martyr.

"Let's go," she hissed under her breath, clenching my hand in hers. "and when your brother gets back, you best go into witness protection." Haven pressed her lips to mine and waved to the cameras, and we grinned and nodded and ducked rice on our way into the reception hall, fear cold as an iron nail in my belly.