Seven Years Earlier
Prinny had a sip of Chardonnay. Leif had announced to the table at large that it was something extremely expensive. He never could let an opportunity like that pass. Chateau Montelena, whatever. He seemed to be the only one who really cared about the prestige of it.
He was red in the face at the head of the table, being loud, commanding the room, and telling raunchy jokes.
Two men are out fishing when one decides to have a smoke. He asks the other guy if he has a lighter. Other guy says, “Yes I do!” and hands his buddy a very long Bic lighter. Surprised, the first guy asks, “Where did you get this?” The second guy says, “Well, I have a personal genie.” The first man asks, “Can I make a wish?” “Sure,” his friend tells him, “but make damn sure you speak clearly, because he is a little hard of hearing.” “Okay, I will,” says the other as he rubs the lamp and a genie appears. “What is your wish?” the genie asks. The guy says, “I want a million bucks.” The genie waves his hand, and immediately a million ducks fly overhead. So the other guy says to his pal, “Your genie really sucks at hearing, doesn’t he?” His friend says, “I know. Do you really think I asked for a ten-inch Bic?”
How was that poor woman going to marry him?
Prinny didn’t know Diana. She was pretty and seemed nice, but all she could imagine was that she must be stupid. How could any smart woman marry him?
Maybe it was unfair of her to ask that question, since she’d spent her entire life hoping that just once he would act like a brother to her. When she was little and she’d asked him time and time again to play, he would respond either by destroying one of her toys or by pushing her to the ground. How long had it taken her to learn that his version of playing had a lot more to do with destruction and a lot less to do with sitting calmly and pretending there was real tea in the teacups?
He wouldn’t even play tag with her when she was that age. Well, he would, but when he caught her he would push her to the ground. Tag stopped being a chasing game and turned into the reality it mimicked: running from the enemy.
How about when she was older, and he couldn’t do what she needed from him then? She asked for help with homework, and he refused. Except for the one time she’d frantically asked him for help with a take-home test at the end of a semester, and he’d reluctantly done the work for her. He’d done it all wrong. On purpose. And she’d had to repeat the class in summer school.
And what about when she went out on her first date and had called him desperately from the pizza place asking for a ride? She’d snuck out for the date and didn’t want to call home because she might get in trouble. The guy she was on the date with had started to give her the creeps (and made her pay, because she was “rich as hell anyway”), and Leif was in town, not near enough to walk, but close enough to not be a huge inconvenience.
She’d told him she was afraid of the guy. When he asked why (Should he have had to ask? Or should he have just shown up, for once?), she had told him she wasn’t quite sure. Just a weird vibe. He hung up on her. She ended up walking three miles home in the middle of the night. Then he told on her anyway.
It was impossible to explain to anyone. First of all, everyone loved him. For whatever reason, everyone fell for all of his crap. Whenever she tried to explain it to anyone, all they did was laugh politely or roll their eyes, as if this were just normal sibling stuff. He was just being an older brother. He was just being a teenager. He was just being a good brother, telling their parents about her sneaking out.
Right.
And now she sat here at his rehearsal dinner, drinking Who-Cares-How-Expensive Chardonnay, wishing she could crack the bottle over his stupid head. She knew she was being childish, but that’s what he turned her into. He treated her like a bratty, precocious child, and she got as angry as one.
All of his friends looked like complete jerks, too, she noted. And if her intuition meant anything, she could see where they were all headed. She could see what kind of people they were.
Best Man: Looks at gay porn in the bathroom at work, then pretends to be “just not that sexual” with his wife at home.
Best Man’s Wife: Cheating on him with no one in particular, but whomever she wants, whenever she wants.
Groomsman #1: Leif’s longtime best friend. They buried a rabbit in the ground once. A live rabbit.
Groomsman #2: Kicked a homeless man on a dare—but would have done it without the dare.
Groomsman #3: Is only friends with Leif for the money.
Disgusting. Everything about Leif and the world he had created was horrific.
Diana. Prinny stared at her.
Diana was good. Diana loved Leif and saw nothing beyond what he wanted her to. But she would.
Prinny got uncomfortable chills thinking about it. She hoped to God it wouldn’t be bad. Hopefully he was just a regular jerk, and she’d pick up on it and leave him high and dry when she realized it.
It won’t be like that. It’ll be bad for a long time. And then it’ll be worse. Then it will be over.
She took another swig of wine and stood up from the table. They had taken a limo to the restaurant, which he had rented out, so she couldn’t escape yet. But she could at least get some fresh air while that awful, disjointed party sat around getting too drunk and talking about nothing.
At least nothing good.
Prinny wasn’t outside more than five minutes before the hairs stood up on her neck. She felt him before she heard the door open.
Lo and behold, preceded by the stench of Marcassin Pinot Noir and Lagavulin, Leif had arrived on the front porch.
Why? Why did he always have to follow her? Poking her, prodding her when they were kids; finding a way to do it now, too.
“Good evening, Princess.” He walked over to her on the top step and leaned on the opposite post. Smiling at her, he pulled a cigar from one inside pocket and an expensive lighter from another.
When the air wafted toward her, she could smell that it wasn’t, in fact, just a cigar.
“Are you smoking pot right now? Seriously?”
Gripping it between his teeth, he put out his arms. “What?”
“You’re a grown man, and this is your rehearsal dinner! You’re going to get high, like it’s some, what, basement frat party?”
“Fuck off,” he said, still with the thing between his teeth. He lit the end.
“Me? I was out here first.”
See? He always made her sound like an impatient little kid.
He inhaled, holding his breath, squinting, and then coughing the deep, unhealthy coughs she’d heard so many times through their walls. In fact, that’s why she knew the smell so well. It used to creep like noxious gas from his window into hers. That was one of the deeply inherent differences between the two of them: She might open her window in the summertime to let a breeze in, or in the wintertime to look out and smell the coming snow, and he opened the window so that he could blow smoke outside.
“So, you having a good night?” he asked, as if he hadn’t just been a dick.
“Yes, it’s very nice, Leif. A seriously wonderful night you’ve put on for us all.”
He didn’t miss the sarcasm. At least he wasn’t too stupid to miss her jabs completely. That would be less satisfying.
“You like Diana?”
“She seems nice.” This time she meant it. “I don’t really know her that well, of course.”
“She is nice. She’s a good cook. She wants to be June Cleaver. And I’m just the guy to let her do it. Though ol’ Mrs. Cleaver didn’t seem like she had much NC-17 in her.”
“Oh, ew, Leif. God.” Prinny had a gulp of her wine.
“She’s not really my type, though.”
“No? I thought your type was ‘willing.’”
He laughed. “Good one, Princess.”
She hated it when he called her that. It had a sick, poisonous undertone when he did. So different from when her father said it. Even though she could do without the nickname all together.
Then she got the vibe. She might have expected it. He was marrying Diana because she was good. Not too good. She didn’t outshine him in any ways. She wasn’t even prettier than he was. But she was good, and the longer he had a history with a good woman, the better that was going to make him look as he got older.
Many men just wanted arm candy, someone to look hot and make them look like they must be good with the ladies. Not Leif. His ambitions were far reaching.
Poor Diana was playing checkers, and Leif was playing chess.
“If she’s not your type, you shouldn’t marry her,” Prinny said. “Let her off the hook.”
He ignored her and continued his thought. “My type is more blond hair, blue eyes.”
“Creative.” Prinny looked out on the lawn, already wishing there was more wine in her glass. She could escape and go in to get more, but then he’d just follow her there, too. All she wanted was for him to lose interest in the fresh air he was decreasing and to go back inside to the party on his own.
“That sort of old-time movie star look, you know?”
She made a face. “What does that even mean?”
“Your mom had what I’m talking about.” He inhaled again, the next part of his sentence coming out from a tight, held breath. “Your mom was smokin’ hot.”
Ew didn’t even begin to cover it.
With an icy, nauseating chill, she felt something coming off of him.
He wants you.
She felt like a bag of slimy, wet, diseased, dirty rats had just been dumped on her head. She wanted to throw up, run away, scream, something, anything.
“Yeah, your mom was good.” He dragged out the word in a way that made her feel even sicker. “You look just like her, you know. I’ve seen pictures. In fact, I’ve seen a few pictures you probably haven’t.”
She shot a look at him. He winked at her and then looked her up and down quickly.
That couldn’t be true. How … No, she had to believe he was making that up.
“Yeah, you two look just alike.”
His implication made her take a step forward and smack him hard in the face. The cigar, joint, blunt, whatever it was called, fell from his mouth to the ground. He looked at it and then at her in stunned silence for a second before picking it up and putting it back in his mouth.
She was frozen as she watched him. In the blink of an eye, he grabbed her by her shoulders and threw her down the three steps into the grass.
Prinny was so surprised that for a moment she didn’t react at all. Then suddenly, like a child who’d skinned her knee, she wished she could burst into embarrassed tears. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
All he did was inhale again and then give a nod at the ground next to her. “That wineglass break? Too bad. Riedel crystal. And good wine. Damn.” He shook his head as if his team had just missed a field goal. “What a waste.”
Another moment passed of Prinny just hoping to God he’d go inside.
And then he put out his cigar and gestured at the glass again. “You should really clean that up. Someone could get hurt.”