Spectacular Stranger by Lucia Jordan

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    Chapter One

 
    Kelly looked at the creamy
wedding gown, which lay crumpled up, lying on the living room floor where she
had stripped it off. It looked forlorn and rejected, just like she felt inside.
The lace and silk felt rough and spoiled against her fingers and she longed to
tear up the garment, to get rid of it forever, as though the very presence of
it was poisoning her house, her life.
    Jake’s betrayal was still
fresh - it cut through her heart like a knife and she almost doubled over with
the remembered pain slashing inside her chest, but instead she straightened her
shoulders, flicked her dramatic red hair over her shoulder and determinedly
walked towards her wedding dress, looking down on what remained of her big day.
    She pictured herself in it,
laughing and giddily happy waiting for him to arrive at the church, and she
felt like a fool. Maybe she had deserved this; if she was honest with herself,
she knew she had forced him into marrying her, but surely that had been for his
own good – for the good of both of them, right?

 
    Kelly had met Jake in high
school and they had been inseparable ever since. They had done all the
traditional things – the graduation photos, the vacation together and
even losing their respective virginities to one another.
    As time went on, and they
got older, Kelly began to wonder if and when she was to move in with Jake, to
share his life and become his wife, maybe even become the mother of his
children. But time marched on and at twenty eight years old, Kelly had finally realized that he had no intentions of proposing to
her - not in the near future, and maybe not at all. So she had done what she
had thought was the perfect solution. She gave Jake an ultimatum; either marry
her or let her go.
    His answer had come
instantly, desperately: he wanted to marry her. He had taken hold of her hands
and looked into her eyes as he said so. And like a chump, she had believed him.
But, now as she thought over it, she knew he had just done what was right after
10 long years in a relationship with her. It was a pity he had failed to show
up at their wedding and sent her a text instead. She remembered the words
perfectly; they were etched into her brain, as they were permanently saved into
her phone. She daren’t erase the message, as if saving it would somehow make it
all better again.

 
    I’m sorry Kelly , I can’t
marry you . You deserve better than a man who can’t stop thinking if this
is the right thing to do.

 
    Kelly grit her teeth,
strode towards the dress and picked it up roughly, glaring at it as though it
was a bad man; keeping it away from her as if it was something dirty and
filthy. Striding into her back yard, she shoved the dress into the abandoned
stainless steel bathtub her father had intended to grow flowers in, once upon a
time. Kelly looked at the dress, laying so stupidly in
the grey bathtub, looking like the epitome of bad taste.

 
    She screwed up her face
into a dignified expression of disgust. Humiliation washed over her as she hoped no one was looking out of their windows to
see her final embarrassment. How foolish she must have seemed to all of those
guests. How pathetic, to be standing there in white lace and silk, with no
groom to marry. Those whispers had carried thtough the church, those ‘poor thing’s and those ‘such a waste’s. She loathed every
single one of them, and wanted the whole day to be erased from time.

 
    The red-haired young woman
strode into the dingy, ill-lit kitchen and grabbed the dented tin of lighter
fluid, used only for barbecues, from the cupboard under the sink, along with a box
of matches. Marching, almost running back to the bathtub in the garden, she
sprayed the lighter fluid all over the repelling dress, and without a second
thought, threw a lighted match stick onto it. $2500 of lace ignited and she
crumpled into a heap on the ground, inconsolable as she cried her eyes out.
Tears