For my parents. With love.
Reasons I, Sam Jenkins, cannot go to this wedding:
1 1. I’m too fat, and just don’t have time to get down to a look-okay-in-a-posh-summer-frock weight.
2 2. Lemon is so not my colour (which is the colour theme – Jess knows my aversion to over the top dresses and so has gone for a theme rather than providing the type of dress she loves and I hate). Mum says it drains me.
3 3. I have far too much work to do. And house-cleaning, and gardening.
4 4. I don’t have a date.
5 5. The last man I dated ripped my heart out, stamped on it and is going to be the best man.
Reasons I have to go to this wedding.
1 1. Jess was is my best friend.
I could add ‘and my hair looks crap’ but that one is easily handled. Much more easily handled than losing the chocolate-cake-and-chips stone in weight that has very comfortably settled itself round my stomach like an unwelcome lodger who intends to stay. Healthy food is on my to-do list, it just hasn’t made it on to my shopping list yet. I mean, you have to prioritise, don’t you? And I’m not quite ready.
Now don’t get me wrong, I can be pretty determined when I want to be, and show amazing self-control (last summer I lost 5 lb in weight the week before we went away, which meant the 7 lb I put on during the week was totally acceptable), but there are times in life when only a super-size bag of crisps and a bottle of wine will do, and the last few months has been one of those times. It has also been a time for espresso martinis and bumper bags of gin and tonic popcorn.
I was dumped, and now this.
A wedding invite. Well, advance warning of a wedding invite to be more precise.
Normally I love a good wedding, who doesn’t? But, right now, cheering on any happy couple would make me feel slightly hopeless and weepy for all the wrong reasons. And this is worse. This is the worst.
This isn’t just any wedding invite; it’s from Jess. My bestie.
We’ve known each other forever. She told me some time ago to ‘save the date’ (when I was still the deluded half of a happy couple), and now she’s emailed to tell me why.
She is getting married! The invite is in the post! It will be here any day! She is excited! Dan is excited! Everybody is excited! Her mum has already bought a hat!!! The wedding is going to be A-MA-ZING!! (The exclamation marks are hers, not mine – she is excited.)
Normally I’d be pretty thrilled too – after all, I love her to bits. I want her to be happy, I truly, truly do, and she will be. But normally was the time before Liam shredded my heart, hopes, and the perfect future I’d created in my head, as thoroughly as he shredded his very private and confidential banking documents – and pretty much every other sheet of paper left carelessly lying around. And Jess is marrying Dan. Liam’s brother. And Liam will of course be the best man. Not that ‘best’ or ‘man’ are words I’d voluntarily apply to him.
So I am not thrilled. I am imagining walking up the aisle behind my best friend towards the man who cheated on me. And everybody there will know he cheated on me. I will be the elephant in the room, the person that everybody stares at but avoids talking to because it is all so embarrassing and we are all so terribly British.
And if I’m totally honest I actually feel like an elephant, as in big and an anaemic shade of grey - and I don’t have time to remedy the situation. I’m not sure any spray tan or control knickers are slimming enough.
For the sake of my own battered self-esteem I need to be that kitten who looks in the mirror and sees a lion. Except in my case I need to see the sexiest pre-break up version of me possible. Liam and all our friends and family need to see that girl too. I need to be me, not the girl Liam dumped.
And I do not have time.
In
