Marry me

Chapter Twenty.

My facial muscles had already started to cramp from smiling too hard at well-wishers and my eardrums were wearied of hearing the same words over and over again:

'I wish you both a happy married life with a lot of children.'

'You should be the couple of the year!'

'Ah, you look so cute together.'

The last one had me choking on air. If only cute could mean me wanting to strangle him.

Crystal had become a lot more suspicious after witnessing the whole scene Mr. Asshole and I pulled off on the altar. And Kate, bless her violent yet generous soul, decided to keep her busy so I could dodge her burning questions. My mum, however, was a lot less skeptical. She was particularly focused on why my smiles looked constipated and if I needed medical help for my 'apparent' lockjaw.

And, there was the paparazzi tailing after me like female mosquitoes to human blood with their flashing cameras. Of course, I didn't say anything to most of their questions, despite the fact that they were trying to force me to speak. Being the conniving journalists that they were, they even resorted to asking dumb and irrelevant questions:

'Miss, do you have a name and is it true that you just got married?'

'Are you really pregnant or was this marriage out of convenience?'

'Rumour has it that you're a gold-digger, what do you have to say about this? Please comment.'

My yet most favorite ones were:

'Why are you hiding your face, Miss, is your face deformed? Are you wanted by the police for homicide? Do you have inexplicable facial hair?'

'Why didn't you kiss your husband, the former most eligible bachelor in the whole of America, during the ceremony? Do you have bad breath or contagious mouth sores?'

'Why are you jerking your hand like that, Miss? Are you prone to violent tendencies or do you suffer from involuntary and energetic muscle impairment? Or are you trying to wave?'

They were my favorite because I got to inconspicuously mash the feet of those who asked the questions into a meat and bone oatmeal courtesy of my five-inched heels.

And let's just say, after that encounter, my eyes were still seeing stars and my ears were still hearing bells.

Every other thing ahead of the wedding flew past in a blur like a thick gust of wind during a heavy blizzard and I eventually found myself seating on one of the numerous backseats of a sleek black limousine with Mr. Asshole sitting across me, a very comfortable distance between us.

A little tinted window obstructed the driver's side from the backseat side so I guessed the chauffeur driving couldn't hear anything said from the back. The other windows were tinted, just like the little window, and it was hard for daylight to seep in but thanks to the interior lighting of the limo, we were not blinded by darkness.

"So," I began to say when the silence finally got to me. "Where are we going to?"

No response.

I sighed with exaggeration. "Ah, silence. Doesn't everyone love to be ignored?"

He didn't raise his head from the newspaper he was flipping through. "To the morgue," he said monotonously, his fingers turning over a page in the New York Times.