Where to begin...
Well, I guess I can thank "Brigette" for giving you all her perspective on the wedding, since I ended up not being able to write about it until now. I guess it's time to explain some of what she was observing but not fully understanding.
As we got closer and closer to the wedding I became stronger in my conviction that Josh wasn't being completely truthful. As someone who is prone to keeping secrets and telling lies and half-truths - sometimes even when I don't have to, I'm sad to say - I recognized too many signs to let it go. Even when I pressed him directly ,and he denied it, I kept strategizing how I would find him out. He may have had Valerie's trust but he hadn't earned mine. Not with that mystery cell phone and those phony flowers.
So on the day of the wedding, my stomach was in knots. my every instinct was yelling at me not to go through with this farce of a ceremony, but I wasn't very well going to stomp off in dramatic fashion on a hunch. There was too much at stake and I was still considering Val's feelings.
Luckily, Josh finally - at the very last minute - did the right thing.
That would be the moment he came to see me in the Bridal Suite and we had our private talk. Now enough time had passed that I don't feel wrong telling you what was said.
He came in with this shoulders-slumped hang dog expression, looking very apologetic and guilt-ridden. I tried not to buy into it, sure it was an act. But even if I was not in a place to trust this guy, we still had some kind of connection based on my time as Valerie, and part of me desperately wanted to believe that he was genuine.
After hemming and hawing for a minute, he started by saying he wanted to apologize in advance... for lying, keeping secrets, all that stuff. That he knew he had done something wrong but that he wa still the same man (Val) had fallen in love with and that if I could forgive him we could probably move forward and adapt, but... but maybe that wasn't possible. and it would be a change.
I told him to cut the rambling already and get to the point.
"I can't marry you, Valerie." he sighed.
I stared coldly at him. "Why not?"
He couldn't even look at me when he said it: "Because I'm already married."
The way he said this indicated that it was not something Val would have known (and honestly the way she'd been acting there was no way she even suspected.) I tried to keep cool outside but there was a fire building inside of me. I hissed: "What."
"It was a mistake, before you and I got together... we rushed in and it fell apart immediately. I always meant to finalize the papers, but... a few months ago, something happened."
Fire building. "What."
"We got to talking, and talk turned into... something else... and, well, it was a mistake."
I said nothing. I knew there had to be more, and there was.
"A little while later, I found out... there were consequences."
I grunted. "Go on."
"She's five months pregnant, Val. She says if I leave her, she'll take everything I have."
I don't know exactly how to describe the sound I made in response to this... a grunt of shock, disappointment, hurt, exasperation, and oddly, satisfaction at being proved right... whatever it was, it definitely wasn't ladylike.
It was hard to process - to filter through any Val perspective I may have had. All I could say was, "God, you fucked up. You fucked up so badly."
To me, it would have been one thing if he had just cheated. Maybe Val could forgive that. It's another to have been married (and facing a likely costly divorce, if he even really wanted to split up from her.) all this time he was engaged, basically defrauding Val about his finances. And then to bring a child into it - all while basically hounding me about knocking me up in the near future! I couldn't overlook it and I was damn sure Valerie would be hurt beyond belief.
I felt like an idiot, sitting there in my whole wedding getup, looking like some teenage girl's idea of a royal wedding, my face painted up and my hair done with hours of care. I felt shattered, almost as bad as finding out I wasn't ever going to be Tyler Blake again. I didn't think it would sting as badly, as personally, as it did, but in the past few months I have been very invested in Valerie's life, her problems, and this was a big problem.
I wanted to get bigger and angrier than I think I am capable of getting in this tiny "cute" body, and that frustrated me even further.
He went to do another round of apologies and begging forgiveness and I cut him off.
I should have called off the wedding. I should have been honest with everybody and told them to go home, but there was so much time and money in this, and I didn't want Val to hear it that way. I didn't want the embarrassment of being publicly humiliated like that, to have to field those questions.
Whether it was the right call or the wrong one, I said... let's go through with the wedding, and deal with all this later.
The license wouldn't be real - polygamy is illegal in New York State, so it would be annulled without delay, I reckoned. The whole thing would effectively be a lie but my whole life is a lie at this point so what's one more. I'm used to it.
Now, as much time as I've spent these past few years as other people, I'm probably not that great an actor so I think probably everyone could tell there was something wrong as I was walking down the aisle. What should have been a beautiful, sacred moment between two people who love each other was instead all just a show (which again, it would have been anyway, only now the whole meaning was changed.) There I was, silently fuming, my voice trembling as I struggled to say "I promise to love, honor and respect you" to a man I hoped I would never have to see again very soon. All I could do was mentally write out how I was even going to explain all this to Val. I felt sick.
After the I Do's, we were alone in the Limo. I could hardly look at him. He tried to start our conversation back up and I cut him off, basically dropping my character.
"You know something, man? I knew there was something wrong with you. You were so fucking lovey-dovey and attentive and all that, that should have been the tip-off. But I wanted to believe and I wanted to trust you. I don't believe you ever wanted to leave her. I think you wanted us both and you only confessed now because you realized you were cornered. Either that or you were too 'nice,' I mean too much of a coward, to come clean and say you didn't want to marry V--me. I fuckin' hate you right now."
Once the words were out of my mouth I realized that they probably hit a lot harder from Val's mouth than from Tyler Blake's, but I didn't care. He deserved to be hurt badly. Some people just do. Some people deserve hell and for once it's not me.
His defense was "I still love you and I still want to be with you, not her."
I sneered. "I don't believe that for a second, and even if you do, you can't. You blew it."
We put our fake smiles back on as best we could for the reception but after unloading like that obviously neither of us were really feeling like having our "first dance" or feeding cake to each other. We just kind of relied on the natural hustle and bustle of a wedding to keep us busy, while I made it clear to Anna that I needed to speak with her in private before the end of the night, but only after as much of the festivities as we could get through. I was relying on her to guide me through all the thanks and congratulations.
When all that was satisfied, I took her outside and did my best to break the news to her as gently as it would come, but how you tell somebody their would-be husband is a babydaddy without causing a scene, I don't know. Valerie started hyperventilating and stormed out, never to return. When I texted her, she said she needed to process all of this.
Keep in mind, she didn't want me sleeping with him in her body, so the idea that he would be pursuing an affair - even a non-physical one - was probably not going to be something she could take well, not that I blame her.
And that was the night. The night that was supposed to be so magical and perfect turned out to be exceptionally shitty. I told Josh that I needed him to go on the Honeymoon alone, and that when he came back, I would be out of the apartment and after a reasonable length of time we would tell "our friends" that it just didn't work out, although now that I think about it, I don't know why I should lie and feel embarrassed just because I/Valerie was wronged. He's the fuck-up, he should face it.
Anyway. What I did while Josh was away - where I'm living and how I spent my "Honeymoon," I'll explain another time because that's a whole other story. This was draining. And it wasn't even really my wedding in the first place, and on top of all that, I've been fighting a cold all week, and believe me, Valerie's body is one of the less-resilient ones I've had.
-Tyler
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