My Big Fat Low-Fat Wedding

chapter 17



Today’s cloudy weather doesn’t really do anything to improve my spirits on this hazy morning. Although, the news Brenda has brought with her might just be the cheering I need.

“I think it will do the both of you some good. You deserve a break from all this wedding planning anyway.”

“Yes but, Mum.” Callum sort of whines across the breakfast countertop. “Isn’t couples orienteering for people who have problem relationships?”

Brenda isn’t very quick to answer her son and I’m wondering if her lingering tactics are a way of making me think that she thinks we are having relationship problems. Of course this is absolutely ludicrous. Callum and I are about to be married for chrisake. We couldn’t be f*cking happier, thank you very much.

I don’t know why I let my thoughts run away with me so easily lately. When I look at Brenda again I’m pretty sure she wasn’t just thinking all of that in the slightest.

“Not at all, son. It’s an aggressive course that will give the both of you some much needed exercise.”

“But it rained last night. It will be so muddy at Eastnor.” Callum seems quite whingey even to me now.

“Come on, honey,” I boast. “It will be fun. And what’s a little mud anyway? We both have wellies.”

“I don’t think you know just how muddy it is in the back woods out there. Don’t you remember how muddy Vince’s four-by-four gets after those annual off-roading events he does?”

Vince is my fiancé’s mate. He’s not just any mate though, they’ve been friends since nursery when one of the two pushed the other down a miniscule foot long baby slide. Neither Callum or Vince can remember the incident properly and they constantly bicker over who pushed whom, to this very day. Vince is going to be Callum’s best man at our wedding. When Vince had suggested hiring a stripper for my fiancé’s stag do, I’d said no. I still haven’t told Callum about the fact that “my stripper” had turned out to be my cousin’s boyfriend, because I haven’t even told him about the incident at all. It was a surprise from Lara, the stripper thing, so I’m not to be held responsible for any body parts that may or may not have been shaken into my face.

As for any titty shaking being done in my fiancé’s face. No way is that happening. Vince had even suggested hiring a midget stripper, which might make me a little less jealous, in which I had even more stringently denied him of even thinking about booking.

In the end, Vince and I had agreed that a barge overnighter with the lads would be the best sort of stag-do for my Callum. I was being honest. My fiancé likes hanging out with his mates and he’s always wanted to do that boat thing ever since going on a similar break with his mates while at college, all those years ago.

“That’s Vince though, honey.” I whinge back at my fiancé now. “We’re not going to be grinding wheels into any mud, now are we?”

“Exactly!” Brenda smiles hugely. “Emily is on board. You’ll love it, son.”

“Aw mum, you’re right. Of course I’ll love it.” Callum gives his mum a kiss on the cheek. It figures she’s been able to convince him so easily. All it ever takes is a bit of persistence on Brenda’s part and my fiancé readily agrees, as per.

Oh well. It’s not like I’m complaining. I really want to do this couples orienteering thing. It sounds like great fun and it will enable me to keep up my strict exercise regime of late. I was feeling a bit down after yesterday’s bridal fitting disaster, but with this mountain hiking opportunity I get to pick myself right back up again.

“Thanks, Brenda.” I too give Callum’s mum a peck on the cheek. “This is exactly what we need.”

My fiancé smiles at me and so does his mum who’s face has gone a bright shade of red. “Well, if I had known I’d get this much love I would have signed you two up for orienteering ages ago!”

After my soon-to-be-mother-in-law has gone, Callum and I get ready for our day outdoors together.

“Have you worn these recently, honey?” Turning away from the wardrobe in our bedroom, I glance at my fiancé who’s holding up his rather stretched out pair of old school socks.

“Errm.” I reply hesitantly. “I did, yes.”

Callum frowns. “Either you’ve got longer legs than I remember, or these things went up past your knees when you had them on.”

I’m simply not going to tell my fiancé the real reason for the new length his socks have become. He never believes me when I tell him I’m being stalked anyway. If I did confess to nearly breaking my wrist weights over a teenage boy’s head, by use of the very socks he’s now holding, he’d think he was engaged to an absolute lunatic.

“Well,” I say, opening my dressing gown. “Are you sure you know the length of my legs, lover?”

That’s done the trick of changing the subject. Callum has dropped his old school socks onto the floor. He closes the distance between us and runs his capable hand up my thigh. Just when I think he’s about to quip snarkily about his wrongness in my leg length, my fiancé surprises me by looking quite frowny faced in concentration.

“You really are losing weight, Em.”

“Thanks!”

“I didn’t mean that as a compliment.”

He didn’t? “Well, I take it as a compliment anyway.”

I’m starting to think I know why all the wedding dresses at Lara’s bridal shop hadn’t fit me right. They were mostly all too big. Although, a lot of them were also too small. I really need to have a word with Lara when I see her again. It doesn’t look like I’ll be going in for a dress fitting today though. It also doesn’t seem like I’m going to be getting any orienteering done if my randy fiancé has his way.

“Stop.” I playfully bat his groping hands away. “We have to get ready for couples orienteering.”

“I’ll orienteer you straight into bed!”

Despite the badness of my fiancé’s recent pun, I give in. So we’ll be a bit late for our outdoor experience. It’s not too important considering myself and my affianced have more important orienteering of our own to do right about now.

I blame Callum for my mind wandering towards bad punnery, but he blitzes silly thoughts from my mind as he whisks me back into bed for the second time in one morning.

***

“I can’t believe they wouldn’t let us keep our phones.” I grumble as Callum and I make our way in hiking boots over rugged, hilly terrain.

“Surely that would be defeating of the purpose, my darling.”

Rolling my eyes skywards yields the underside of the tree canopy. It’s practically dark in this thick forest. “Are you saying I’d cheat and use my maps app?”

“I’m saying that without question.”

I jab my untrusting fiancé in the ribs gently. “I wouldn’t!”

“Face it, honey. You would.”

“Just give me that map.” I yank the folded up pamphlet from my annoying fiancé’s grasp. We’d met up with the other couples who were orienteering, back at Eastnor Castle. If I’m being honest, I’m tempted to agree with what Callum had said about this activity thing. A lot of the other couples at the castle hadn’t seemed like they were in very happy relationships. Not that I’m an expert at reading body language, but anyone could have cottoned on to the way the other couples stood well away from each other. Unlike Callum and I who had been canoodling with each other for the entirety of the orienteering introductions.

“Didn’t you say one of your GCSEs was geography?”

Callum shakes his head at my question. “Nope, geology.”

“Geology? How is that even a school subject?” I unfold the map like I’m shaking out a towel with whip and a crack, before handing it to Callum. “How is knowledge about the rocks we’re walking on going to get us unlost?”

“We’re not lost.”

Why do men with maps always say that?

“Oh we’re not, are we? So the panic didn’t set in as soon as the four by four dropped us off way out here? Because it sure as shit scared me.”

“Aw.” Callum takes me into his arms, squashing the paper map between us. “Don’t worry, my love. I won’t let the foxes get you.”

Making this comment would have been funny if at that precise moment the shrubbery beside us wasn’t suddenly violently shaking about.

“I’m out of here.” I exclaim, running quickly away. Callum may have been joking about foxes lurking about, but neither of us is sticking around to find out what’s behind that hedge.

About five minutes later I throw my hands up in disgust. “This is preposterous! How can there be this much mud after only one night’s rain?” My wellies have been sticking deep into the ground with every step I take. It’s like trying to sludge my way through jelly, living jelly with a sucker mouth that keeps trying to hold tight to my rubber boots every time I try to lift them back out again.

“Are you ready to give up?”

“Never!” I point a determined finger into the air. “I’ll find my way out of here if it kills us.”

Callum harrumphs loudly. “Speak for yourself, babe.”

“I’m speaking for the both of us, mister. Because if I die out here in the long lost wilderness, you will too.”

“Nonsense.” My senseless fiancé grabs me around the waste, nearly causing me to lose my footing. “I’ll eat your remains if you die first, and then I’ll survive.”

“Charming.” I guess I had better find us a way out of the wilderness before I become my fiancé’s last meal, and not in a sexy way either. “Come on,” I pull away from Callum and the mud. “There’s a trail here and we’re going to cross that field.”

“But there are cows in that field.”

“Yes, and?” I point a finger at the low wooden fence. “There’s clearly a step ladder here, so this entire field is a public footpath. We’re supposed to walk across it, honey. Cows or no.”

“We’re supposed to walk across it?” Callum protests, but follows me over the stepping fence anyway. “I don’t think those cows would agree. Oh, ugh.” He lifts his wellied foot after just having stepped in a cow pat.”

“Be careful, honey. That’s going to smell once we get home.”

“You think?” Carefully, he wipes his poo covered boot on the grass.

“Cal?”

“Yes, dear. I know cow poop stinks. I’m trying to get it off best I can—”

“No, Cal.” I think he hears the tremor in my voice, because my stinky-footed fiancé stops swiping his boot against the grass and looks up at me. “I don’t like the way that cow is looking at me.”

A brown and white cow is getting awfully close.

“Why are they all walking toward us, Cal?” I’m suddenly very worried.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who wanted to walk across this bloody field full of angry cows.”

Oh so now they’re angry cows and not just quietly grazing cows? “I think you’ve been playing Angry Birds on your phone app too much — oh my god look out!”

“Jesus, Em, run!”

My fiancé and I make a beeline for the opposite fence just as every cow in the field decides to stamped towards us.

“Why are they chasing us? AAARRRGGGHHH!”

Splat.

I trip up, fall, and land face first into a mouth filling cowpat.

“MMMPAAHH!” I moan, spitting and spitting out crap in order to save myself from choking on poo.

“Oh my god honey get up!” Callum wrenches me under the arms, gets me to my feet and practically throws us both bodily over the low stepping fence. We’re both lying on the ground staring up at all the cows who have stopped just beyond the fence.

“What are you looking at? You stupid f*cking cows! Make them stop staring at me, Cal!”

It’s true, the cows are no longer charging, they’re all just standing there staring at my faeces covered face.

I hear snickering and I turn to look at my hero of the moment. After all, my fiancé did just save me from a face full of cow pie, which is not the ingestible sort. Although, I’m not inclined to hold any heroic awards over his head for long, because I think he’s actually laughing at my expense, and not at the cows like I’d thought.

“Are you laughing at me?”

Callum purses his lips together, but I can tell he’s still trying not to giggle. “You’d better wipe that shit off your face, honey. It’s really going to smell once we get home.”

The man who is no longer a hero in my rapidly tear filling eyes, leans back and bursts into laughter at my face full of poopy expense.

***



We aren’t going home. At least not until this misunderstanding is cleared up. And when I say misunderstanding, I mean my fiancé doesn’t understand the peril he’s in for having even giggled at my current poo-faced predicament. One things for certain, my soon-to-be-husband will never again make fun of his betrothed having a her face covered in crap. No one laughs in this girl’s poo infested features and gets away with such a thing scot free. Firstly, Callum is made painfully aware that he will not be having any cuisine meals made for him in the foreseeable future, by me. When I nearly add “no more sex ever” to my list of ultimate payback, my fiancé picks me up off the ground and carries me on foot all the way towards civilization.

“Even if it was my feet covered in shit, I could still walk.”

Callum puts me down at my request, but in no way does he dare utter a single word in retort. He hails a couple of taxis, but when the drivers get one whiff of my face and Callum’s boot, they speed off with a, “no way in hell are you two stinkers getting into my taxi,” wave of hand.

Instead, we both walk all the way around the base of the Worcester Beacon to our terraced home on Court Road. I’m ready to collapse from exhaustion, so I do just that in the back garden. Callum hoses my face off with cold spraying water before spritzing his boot.

“There now. That’s so much better.” I mumble into the patio concrete. “Now carry me upstairs so that you can give me a shower and brush my teeth for me.”

This bit of revenge I’m enjoying might not turn out to be such a bad thing after all. Callum still hasn’t said a word to me, he’s just doing everything I say, no qualms asked.

After an hour of scrubbing down together in the walk-in shower, my fiancé finally breaks his silence. “I’m taking you to hospital.”

“You what?” I’m towelling myself dry after kicking our wet clothes aside into a corner of the bathroom. We’d gotten into the shower fully clothed, before stripping off, and I’m thinking of having my hiking wear burned rather than try to wash it out any time soon.

“You might need antibiotics, honey.” Callum frowns and looks at my mouth. He’s standing behind me so I can see his expression in the mirror.

“I brushed my teeth, flossed, brushed again twice with bar soap, and mouth washed three times. I think my insides are officially free of faeces.”

But Callum isn’t having any of it, and I think I know why. He never wants to kiss me again. Well that’s just fine because after enduring his laughter at my crap stained face, I’m not sure I ever want to give him the privilege of smooching with me ever again either.

My bottom lip starts to tremble with sadness. Callum spots this and lifts me into his arms once again. “What are you doing?” I squeal.

“I told you, I’m taking you to hospital.”

There’s nothing for it. Callum won’t budge on this one. He’s adamant that I get seen by a doctor. And not just any doctor, an emergency doctor. When we enter the small Malvern hospital thirty minutes later, my fiancé is adamant with the medical staff too. He’s ranting and raving all over the place that I need to be put on an antibiotic drip. He’s also being quite loud about the fact that I’ve just had my face plastered full of cow shit, to the amusement of all the patients in the waiting area.

“Cal,” I whisper sheepishly. I’m about to ask him to please calm himself, but the look of thunder on his face suggests that I’m the one who should keep my mouth shut at this point.

I’m starting to get that hero-worship feeling from earlier. My fiancé truly must be worried about my health. Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my decision to absolutely never cook for him again. Looking back I suppose I could find the shit-face incident funny, but at the moment it’s way too soon for that.

Eventually I do get seen by a doctor, alone. Callum isn’t allowed to join me as I’m examined.

“I don’t need an antibiotic drip, honey.” I show my fiancé a pack of medication in the waiting room after I’m finished with the doctor. “But they did give me these just in case.”

“Hooray! Antibiotics in pill form.” Callum jumps up from his seat and kisses me full on the mouth. He comes away smacking his lips. “That’s not half bad.”

“What’s not?”

“Imperial Leather bar soap could catch on as a new mouth-wash flavour.”

I shake my head and grin at the same time. “You’re either very brave or very stupid, mister Stephenson.” How daring of him to crack wise so soon.

“Brave?” He asks sheepishly.

I nod slowly.

“Hooray again!”

“You’re not entirely in the clear though.” I’m about to retort with a joke of my own that will keep up this light-hearted mood, but suddenly I just can’t find the energy.

I collapse into my fiancé’s arms.

Callum takes me home and helps me straight into bed. He tells me to rest while he pops out to bring back dinner.

“Hey babe, wake up. I made you a potato.”

Sitting up, I feel like I hardly slept a wink before my fiancé returned. “You made me a potato?” I have to ask him this dubiously. Perhaps I should tell him that I’ve already lifted the ban on cooking for him in future. I’m wondering if this sudden burst of culinary overload from my fiancé is his way of apologizing.

“I did.”

“Does that mean you baked me a potato?”

Callum puts his hands behind his back. “Just come to the kitchen. There are other ways to make a potato, you know.”

Wiping sleep from my eyes, I yawn and look incredulously up at him. “There are indeed other ways, and which of them did you use?”

“Oh, just come on downstairs and try it.”

“No, I’d prefer to know how it was made.”

Callum starts pacing the carpeted floor and I feel that a ludicrous rant from him is in order. I find I’m not wrong when he starts speaking. “Probably a farmer put a seed in the ground… I mean, I guess that’s how potatoes are made. They are vegetables, right? Is there such a thing as potato seed?”

I’m getting a little irritated now. Does my dear and darling fiancé not recall the literal shittiness I’ve been through today? “I don’t care.” I demand. “What did you do to my food?”

“I prepared it, come with me and try a bite.”

“Did you scallop it?”

“No, I… how the hell does one scallop a potato anyway?”

“Did you mash it?”

“Huh uh.”

“Fry it?”

“French fry?”

“Sure.”

“Nope.”

“Any sort of frying?”

“No, madam.”

This is getting ridiculous. “Did you boil it?”

“Oh no, you know my rule, no boiling without pants.”

I’m tempted to smile at this point, but I hold back. “You weren’t wearing pants when you made my potato?”

“No, I was, I just like reminding you of my rule. It’s a fun rule isn’t it?”

I throw off the duvet. “I’m ordering pizza.” Picking up my phone off the bedside table, I start to dial.

“All right, okay, I’ll tell you.” Callum stops pacing. “But you have to promise me you’ll at least try it.”

I look at him as though he’s lost his mind. “I’m not making that promise. Hi, I’d like to order a large vegetarian…”

“I cooked it on the manifold of my car. I had to drive back and forth from town twice just now while you were sleeping.”

“Yeah, I’ll need that to be delivery,” I tell the pizza guy on the phone. “Something tells me I’m low on petrol.”

***



My soon-to-be-husband certainly got his message across about my unwillingness to ever cook for him again. It’s blissful night time now and all is forgiven as we tumble about in bed.

“You’re losing too much weight.” Callum tells me flatly.

“Shut up and stop complimenting me so we can finish.”

“I’m not complimenting you, Em. I want you to stop dieting and over exercising.”

The bed tumbling ceases completely. “But surely me being thinner is a good thing.” I sit up and turn on the bedside table lamp.

“Thinner is one thing.” Callum traces his finger along my tummy. “Having pokey hip bones is another.”

“They’re not pokey.” I scoff. “They’re actually just visible for the first time in like… forever.”

“I can see your collar bones too.”

“Shut up, I’ve always had collar bones. Besides, what if I were naturally becoming stick thin now? Are you saying you wouldn’t love me if my metabolism changed?”

My dastardly fiancé takes ages to reply, so I give him a prompting jab in the ribs with my elbow.

“Ow!” He complains. “Your bony elbow really gouges now.”

“You’re such a chump! There’s just no pleasing you!”

Callum laughs and hugs me around my middle. “I’m only teasing, honey. It doesn’t matter what size you are, I love you for you.

“That’s the right answer.” I harrumph loudly. “But how do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“I have an idea.”

I look down at him suspiciously.

“Why don’t you let me make more car bonnet cooked potatoes for you until you’re of a size that confines you too bed. Then you’ll see how far my love for you spreads.”

Laughing at his foolishness, I shake my head. “Will your love spread to my fat that would end up hanging over the sides of the bed?”

Kiss on my belly button. “Yes.”

“And would your love spread to feeding me so many car bonnet baked potatoes that I’d explode?”

Kiss on my arm. “No. If you exploded you’d be dead and I’m not into necrophilia.”

I snort a grunt of disgust. “Why are we even having this conversation? I’m not going to let you force feed me while I lie around in bed all day.”

“Perhaps not, but you’re going to have to let Lara feed you wedding meals over the next few days.”

I don’t know what my betrothed is on about now, and he doesn’t elaborate. I’m happy to get back to a bit of bed tumbling anyway, as I feel our discussion was headed for a disastrous conclusion.

Our love making is a welcome end to the most wretched and poo filled day I can ever remember having endured.