This Takes the Cake

I loved my brother. I loved him to death, but when we were younger, there were times that I wanted to kill him, too.

“Mama! Cavin ruined my clothes!” I was nine years old, and I wanted to be popular at school. Which girl didn’t at that age? Mom got me new shirts and a certain dress with sequins on the belt which made me look pretty every time I wore them, but Cavin, who was six, thought it was funny to ruin them with ketchup before Monday. Did he want me to look like a fat shrimp? It sounded a lot like it to me.

It wasn’t the first time that Cavin made me mad. My little brother had been the prankster since he was four years old. His first prank he ever pulled was harmless, but I was seven, so it angered me greatly. He replaced my Halloween candy with his toy insects, and because most of them were spiders, I screamed and cracked my trick-or-treat bucket. I gave him a good beating, but Mom wouldn’t let us eat our candy until the next week for that. I was sure that Cavin had better things to do during the day, but when it came to scaring or angering me, I guess not.

“Oh, Fiora! We just got these on Friday.” Mom didn’t care for my brother’s pranking either. If anything, it was a waste of money for her. When Cavin and I were still children, she had to replace most of my things, and if he continued to do those things, he was going to use my college money instead of her paychecks. “Cavin! Take those shirts and put them in the washer this instant!”

The pranks didn’t affect me at all in our teens because most of his energy was spent on making his teachers miserable as anything. I’d rather take the pranks because I never wanted teachers to come up to me and say, “Your brother is a nuisance to my class’s environment.” It didn’t affect me much at first because they were teachers I never met before, but I had it once my former ninth English teacher, Mr. Carol, came up to me with the same news. I was so happy to leave for college once I graduated.

*******

When I met Pablo Pedrad, my life became perfect again. I first laid eyes on him the first day of our Physics class in our freshman college year. He was actually looking at me first, and I just pushed my hair behind my ear and batted my eyes. It took him a week to finally talk to me, and Pablo was confident when he spoke. He always had his shoulders relaxed, his chest out, and a grin on his face. I remembered the first word he ever said to me. “Fiora.” It wasn’t a word. It was my name.

My cheeks turned pink after I looked up at his beautiful, brown face. “Oh, hello. Can I help you with something?” I could’ve sworn I stammered while asking that.

He took me out downtown to shop in the cutest jewelry store, and it’s been history ever since. How could I not have said yes to dating him? He was the tall, tan, and handsome who I’ve been searching for years to marry. Pablo always wanted to be a lawyer, and he spent more years in school than I. Actually, there was a downside to Pablo leaving for Harvard for his law degree. When he started the his first year, he always called me to make sure he was alright. Less and less he called after that. I understood that homework was a pain in the butt, so I left it alone for a while. The longest that I hadn’t heard from Pablo was two weeks. Mom told me to let him go because he was getting in the way of my finding a career of my own, but I just wouldn’t. For the oddest of reasons, I wanted to be only Pablo’s housewife. All my life, I wanted to be at the top of the business pyramid, and I stopped going to school because Pablo said that he was going to make us rich one day. I had the belief that he was Mr. Perfect, and when he called, the belief just kept getting bigger. The day he asked me to marry him had my mind set.

Pablo and Cavin never got along. Cavin always had the meanest scowl on his face whenever I mentioned his name or said that he was coming over to the house. My first thought of why was that he didn’t want his big sister to leave forever. He knew it was bound to happen one day, but that didn't make it any easier…or at least that was what I thought. Pablo started hating my brother when Cavin purposely spilled pepper all over his clothes while passing it at the dinner table. Mom called it an accident, but my fiancé was smarter than that. Pablo didn’t fight back, but after the visits, he would tell me that my brother could not be a part of our lives once we said our “I do”s. That was the only aspect of our future marriage that I never agreed with. My brother was my brother. Getting rid of Cavin was getting rid of my whole family for Pablo’s. I couldn’t accept it. I just couldn’t. However, I couldn’t break the engagement either. I loved both my family and Pablo. The more I told him that Cavin was staying, the more he didn’t want to talk to me. He forgave me when the wedding day got closer.

We were holding a beautiful, May wedding at our town’s church, on the front lawn. The sun was out, the birds were singing, and the flowers were in full bloom in the church’s garden. The pastor let me change in one of the dressing rooms, so I could get into my dress. I had my mother, matron of honor, and two friends, my bridesmaids, help me before the stylist would complete my makeup and hair.

“Oh, Fiora, you’re going to look beautiful when Pablo sees you walk down that aisle,” squealed my best friend of eight years, Cilvia. She hopped and clapped her eyes as if she were seven again.

“Congratulations, sweetie!” exclaimed Liliana, who I met when we worked for our university’s bookstore.

“Today’s the day,” I kept saying to myself, and everyone else heard me. “Today is the day!”

“Now, don’t start crying, Fiora,” my mother scolded. “Do you want your…fiancé to see you like this?” I could tell that my own mom was still sour when it came to Pablo being “the one,” but because I was her daughter, she didn’t want to miss being a part of my wedding. Plus, I wanted her to be there more than anything. Actually, I hadn’t seen Cavin since I got to the church that day. He wouldn’t go to work at the car repairs to miss a wedding, which was my thought the night before.

When the stylist came in, I was ready to be pampered. She started on my hair. I requested for an updo because I wanted Pablo to see my eyes after days of being separated before the wedding. My hair was shaped into a back bun and tied with white ribbons with the ends dangling to my neck. Makeup was second. My eyes had to pop. They had to sparkle. They had to be the center of attention. Everything seemed to be going perfectly until…

“Where is it?”

I couldn’t move my head, so my eyes glanced over to the right. As the stylist was rummaging through her makeup bag, my mother asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, don’t worry, ma’am. I’m sure it’s in here.”

“What?” I interrupted.

“Just relax, sweetheart.”

How could I if the stylist was making it look like something was going wrong?

Finally, she sighed and pulled out a square, which was the blush. “See? It was just at the bottom of the bag. Now, let’s do those gorgeous eyes of yours.”

*********

After all of that, it was time for the wedding. My makeup was finished, I got my bouquet, and the bridesmaids were lined up at the side of the door, ready to go outside and walk down the aisle. We were just waiting for the groomsmen to take the bridesmaids down. Most importantly, I was waiting to hear that Pablo was at the altar, ready to marry me. The longer I waited, the more I was going to sweat. No, that would’ve ruined my dress that I paid so much to buy.

The wedding planner stuck her head through the door and waved to the party to pair up and exit. Thank goodness. I watched Cilvia and Liliana exit the church with their partners and Mom with Pablo’s father. One breath seeped into my lungs, and one breath blew out of my mouth. I kept reminding myself that I was ready for it. I was ready to walk down the aisle and say, “I do.” This wedding was the first step towards a forever, joyful life.

Violins filled the atmosphere with white noise as I slowly walked on the white carpet, which led to the altar, where Pablo was waiting for me. I was expecting a bigger smile on his face, but I could barely see anything through my veil, so I could’ve been wrong when I said the smile was too small for a man who was getting married to the woman he loved more than anything on the planet. The guests had their eyes watery and their mouths dropped. I was about to cry under my veil, but I remembered what my mother warned me about tearing up with makeup on my face. When I was a few feet away from the altar, Pablo reached for my hand. I gave the bouquet to my mother as he grabbed onto my husband-to-be, and he helped me up the stairs. I only turned towards the guests once before facing my fiancé, and Cavin was still MIA. So he didn’t come after all.

The pastor cleared his throat. He rose the good book up to his upper chest, and began. “Dearly beloved, we have been gathered here today…”

Before he could even go on, there was a group of very loud clicks. Water sprayed all over the front lawn, and the base of the sprinklers just kept on ticking. One sprinkler tore through the aisle’s carpet and squirted the guests. There was screaming all over the place. My dress barely made it. Pablo’s tuxedo wasn’t as lucky. The pastor got us back inside the church before all of us were drenched in sprinkler water. Mom checked my face for makeup smudges, but the water didn’t hit my face as it did my dress. My fiancé was not a happy camper as he stared at his wet clothes in the long mirror on the wall.

“My tux! This was expensive!” he shouted.

“Someone get him a towel please,” I told the wedding planner for my husband-to-be’s sake.

Pablo’s face was red by the time the towel got to him. “Who set those sprinklers off during our wedding?” he snapped at the pastor, “You said they would be off for this day!”

“Pablo, stop it! It wasn’t his fault. It was an accident.”

“An accident, my ass.”

“Well, the wedding isn’t ruined. We can have the ceremony indoors.”

With a few deep breaths, Pablo grew less tense. His shoulders relaxed, and he fixed his hair. “Alright. An inside wedding wouldn’t hurt. At least we won’t get wet.”

“Plus, your tux will dry as they set up the chapel.”

***********

Set up of the chapel took at least ten minutes since it was just presenting flowers and getting the guests seated again. In the meantime, I was watching the work being done from the door. I wasn’t as nervous as I was at the beginning of the day; however, what I was thinking at that moment was if something else was going to go wrong. First, the makeup. Then, the sprinklers. What else was going to happen on my wedding day?

“Fiora…” I rotated in a half circle to see the one person I hadn’t seen all day. Cavin fixed his collar and scratched his neck. He couldn’t even look at me. His suit looked as if it was half burnt for some reason. “I’ve been looking for you. I heard about the sprinklers going off.”

Blood was rushing to my face. “Where have you been, Cavin?” I hissed.

“That doesn’t matter, sis,” he replied. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Whatever it is, it better explain why were you MIA during the whole morning.”

He took the bouquet from me and bluntly said, “You. Can’t. Marry. Pablo.”

I scoffed. “Why can’t I?”

“That man is no good. I told you a thousand times about that, and you never listen to me.”

“There’s no reason you gave me for that.”

“Come on, Fi. He disappears for a few weeks at a time after he went to law school and calls whenever he wants? I’ve seen that before, Fiora, and that’s not a good sign. What’s going to happen when you two are living together, and you don’t know where he is half the time? Is that what you really want out of life? I thought you were more independent than that. What happened to the big sister who studied by herself to get into college? What happened to the big sister who traveled to Mexico for a field study just to teach the kids how to speak their own language? Where is she? All I see is a woman about to fall into a heartbreaking trap.”

“Cavin. You have no right to tell me who I can fall in and out of love with.”

“I have a right to tell you that Pablo has been with many other women besides you, and he can leave you whenever he sees fit.”

“I can’t believe you would say that, Cavin. I thought you would be more respectful of a college dropout than you are today.” I flipped my bangs away from my eyes. “Now, if you excuse me, brother, I have a man to marry.”

He tried reaching for me. “Fiora…”

I didn’t want to hear it. I just took my bouquet and followed the rest of the bridal party into the chapel.

We repeated the arrival portion of the ceremony, and I was reunited with my future husband again. Pablo was cheating on me? I thought Cavin was crazy. Then, I remembered that I forgot to force my brother to answer the “Where have you been?” question. I was still wondering that. Actually, as I was looking into the sea of guests, Cavin was sitting in the chair this time, but he was looking down as if I was ashamed of him. Well, I was ashamed of him for being nowhere close to me before, but why now?

“Dearly beloved,” the pastor began again. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Fiora and Pablo in marriage.” The more I stared at Pablo, the more it seemed that the pastor was getting louder and louder. I always thought that during our wedding, I would block the pastor’s voice, and it would be a fantasy just staring into my future husband’s eyes. It had to be because of what Cavin said. I had to forget about it, but I couldn’t. If I started crying right then, Pablo was only going to think that I was upset about the events that happened before, and nothing about my brother would come to him.

The pastor’s voice became quieter to me when it was finally time to take our vows. At the same time, I could hear a rumble. I highly doubted it was an earthquake, but it was definitely near the three of us at the end of the chapel. “Do you, Pablo, take Fiora to be your lawfully wedded wife?” My heart stopped when I saw one of the lit candles wobbling towards the edge of the table.

“I…”

Crack! The candle fell onto the wood floor, and a flame caught onto Pablo’s right tuxedo pant leg. When the guests screamed, that was when my fiancé looked down at the floor and realized what was happening. “Oh my god!”

“Someone put it out!” I shrieked.

“Everyone out of the room! To the reception room!” called out my mother, and that was where everyone went.

***********

It was officially the end of my life by the time we all came into the beautifully designed reception area. I kept staring at the white tables, chairs, and walls only to wait for my fiancé to finally speaking his mind. The flowers in the vases were going to wilt like my heart. Why was it me who was getting the bad luck? What did I do wrong in this world? Why was I to be punished?

Pablo was the last to enter the room, and his tuxedo was ruined from the pants up. He was covered in the fire extinguisher foam and carried the burnt pieces of his tux in his fist. “I’m done!” he shouted to everyone else, “I am so done! The wedding is off!”

“Pablo…” My throat was drier than a desert, so it hurt when I said his name.

“I can’t marry you, Fiora. If one more bad thing is to happen, I’ll be dead!”

“But it’s not my fault.”

“Oh, sure. I bet my girlfriend back in Massachusetts has better luck than you do.”

My watery eyes widened. “Girlfriend?” I clenched my teeth as I watched Pablo’s face whiten. “My little brother was right. You were seeing someone else while you were in law school!” I roared.

He waved his hands in between the both of us. He was stepping back while I was walking towards him, ready to beat him into the burnt pieces of his tux. “Now, now, Fi, I didn’t mean that. I was mad, and things come out when people are mad!”

“Cut it out! People also confess when they’re mad.” I ripped my engagement ring off of my left finger, threw it at his face, and struck that jerk of a fiancé in the right eye. “Get away from me! Get away from me and don’t you dare try to sleaze your way back into my life. I bet that girl in Massachusetts is more gullible than I am.”

“Fiora, I love you. I can make this work. We’ll have our wedding this weekend. I’ll throw it at the park, and we’ll…”

My brother creeped up behind Pablo and snatched his shoulder. When my now ex turned, his eyes widened and colored pale. Cavin snarled, “You stay away from my sister, or I’ll make sure the rest of your tux turns to ashes. Now, go!”

Without hesitation, Pablo dashed for the door, but tripped on one of the table’s legs first. My mother opened the exit for him as my ex-fiancé escaped. I didn’t know where he was going, but I didn’t care. All I was thinking at that point was Pablo was going to have to explain what happened to the person who allowed him to rent the tux.

My little brother and I finally met eye to eye. There was a pregnant pause between us, but Cavin was courageous enough to break the silence. “Fiora, I’m sorry you had to hear that from him. It was not what I wanted.”

I crossed my arms, and my designed eyebrows arched. “I don’t know how, but you were the one that caused the candle to fall. Come on, say it.”

Cavin faced the floor one second and nodded.

“You also set the sprinklers off outside.”

“Yes, Fiora.”

“And you somehow got into the makeup artist’s bag and hid the blush.”

He looked up and shook his head quickly. “That wasn’t me. Mom taught me better than to sneak into a woman’s bag. I’m assuming that was just fate.”

My hands curled into fists anyway while my arms elbows were still inches into my sides. “Cavin! This completely tops the cake for everything you have done to me! After playing pranks on me as a child, you decided to ruin my wedding?” Silence filled the reception area for a moment, and during the second, I began to cackle like a witch on Halloween. Cavin’s face was pale when I looked into his eyes. “And you did a great job with it. Thank you, Cavin.”

My little brother’s cheeks turned pink. “Well, you know me. I do my best.” The room started to make noise as the guests stared straight at the person who saved my life. “Fiora? Why are they all looking at me like that?”

Laughing, I nudged Cavin’s shoulder. “They want you to make a speech."

“But, Fiora, I’m not good with public speaking.”

“I’ll be right besides you, Cav. Just speak. Speech! Speech!”

Soon enough, all the others in the party began to shout the same thing. The louder it got, the more Cavin had the obligation to speak. He gave up rejecting the offer, leapt onto a chair and stepped onto one of the reception tables, making the champagne glasses shake. “Miss Bride, bridal parties, and dearest guests. First of all, I thank you for supporting my big sister on the biggest day of her life. It proves how much you care about her even though she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life. However, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Fiora is happy with whatever comes to her. What came to her today made her a happier woman than a married one. Fiora, I’m sorry for giving your cheating man away to a complete and total stranger…but then again, I’m not sorry.”

I chuckled again and stood next to Cavin on the table. “And I’m truly sorry for doubting you…and I mean that.” To be honest, I have never hugged my brother so tightly in years. When I did, I felt great. If Cavin taught me anything, it was that I didn’t need to fall in love in order to feel protected. If I need another rescue, I knew he was going to be there to save me.