Broken (2 page)

Amy did her best to encourage me to
get out of our room. She forced me to attend functions and parties
that were held on campus or in our dorm. She was the only reason I
made it through my entire freshman year. As our freshman year came
to an end, I begged Danny to let me rent the apartment above the
bar. Amy tried her hardest to convince me to live on campus for our
sophomore year, but as grateful as I was to her, I couldn’t. I
needed my own space.

As I glanced over at my cat, Molly,
she was staring at me waiting for me to get my ass out of bed to
feed her. She was my trusty old friend that I’d owned since high
school. I was struggling to get out of bed. My head just wasn’t in
the game to photograph this wedding today.

I finally rolled out of bed and as
soon as my feet touched the ground, I shivered. Man it’s already
starting to get cold, almost time to turn the heat on.

I made my way through my small
apartment, which consisted of a kitchen/living room combo, a
bedroom and tiny bathroom. The majority of my living room furniture
was purchased at yard sales. I had a mismatched couch and love
seat, an old cedar chest I turned into a coffee table, an end table
and two cheap floor lamps that I had bought at Wal-Mart.

The walls were an ugly dark wood
paneling. I tried to spruce them up with hanging pictures on them.
The majority of the pictures were black and white landscapes I had
taken during high school and college. I took the pictures at Wales
Park, a local park that I had hung out at when I was in high
school. There was also a photo collage of my best friend, Nicole
and me throughout the years. We first met in middle school in sixth
grade. With our last names beginning with C and D, we sat right
next to each other. We instantly became friends and have been that
way ever since. Even though we may not talk to each other every
day, anytime something is going on in one of our lives, we know the
other will be there. I laugh every time I look at the pictures on
the wall. We have changed so much in the last ten years.

As I shuffled into my tiny
kitchen, I looked around in disgust. It was in need of a major
update. The mismatched appliances from the 1970’s were an eye sore
to look at. The refrigerator was avocado green, and my stove was
the ugly yellow that my mother called
goldenrod.
To me, they looked like
baby shit green and baby shit yellow. The cabinets matched the ugly
wood paneling on my walls. Everything in my kitchen was so
outdated, but they were in working order, so who was I to complain.
This place wasn’t the “Ritz”, but it was perfect for Molly and me.
To us, this was home.

Molly was following me around meowing
at me to feed her. I opened the fridge and found a can of cat food
and a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. “Shit,” I muttered. I really
needed to go grocery shopping, which I despised doing. I took
Molly’s and my breakfast out of the fridge. A glass of Diet Coke
for me and tuna fish flavored cat food for her. I’ve never been a
coffee person. I’ve never liked it. All my classmates at school
would walk around with their coffees, lattes or teas and then there
I’d be, with a Diet Coke in my hand.

The caffeine was finally kicking in,
and I could feel the drunken haze lifting. I headed to my closet
and pulled out my signature wedding outfit, which consisted of
black dress pants and a simple black blouse. Wearing all black was
our way of staying out of everyone's way. We needed to blend into
the background, and I wasn't a dress-up kind of girl, anyway. With
my clothes in hand, I made my way to the bathroom.

Just like my kitchen, my bathroom has
been in desperate need of a facelift. My entire bathroom was pink.
The tiles on the walls, the floor, the bathtub and even the toilet
looked like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol exploded. I liked pink, but
this was a little too much. I hung my outfit on the door to the
shower to steam out any minor wrinkles and turned to the mirror to
take a look at myself. “Jesus, you look like shit,” I said aloud. I
hadn’t realized how tired I looked.

Even though I was not working late
nights at Danny’s anymore, the insomnia I had been suffering from,
for quite some time, mixed with the music pumping through the floor
from the bar below only allowed me a few hours of sleep at night.
My shoulder length, wavy, auburn hair was a complete wreck. I moved
my face closer to the mirror to see that my pale blue eyes were
bloodshot, and my mascara was smudged. I shook my head and jumped
into the shower.

I dried my hair with my
blow dryer and applied some light makeup trying to conceal the
dark, purplish circles under my eyes from the lack of sleep. I
grabbed my outfit and headed back into my room in only my bra and
underwear. I glanced quickly at myself in my full length mirror. I
was average looking. I definitely wasn’t drop dead gorgeous but I
wasn’t ugly either. I was average height five feet six inches tall
and pretty trim. I pulled on my dress pants and did a quick twirl
in front of the mirror and stopped to stare at my ass. For some
reason, men really enjoyed slapping or grabbing it at Danny’s. I’d
been told on several occasions that I was
bootylicious.
I’m still unsure if
that was a compliment or not.

I glanced up to my shoulder before I
pulled my blouse over it, glimpsing at my scorpion tattoo, and I
remembered the drunken weekend my friend Anna and I had shared. We
had gone up to the beach, and as we were walking down the
boardwalk, we passed a tattoo parlor. I stopped in front of the
window and stared in. There was a big burly guy covered in tattoos
working on a girl my age. I turned to Anna and told her how I had
always wanted a tattoo. A huge Cheshire cat grin spread across her
face and she yelled, “Let’s do it!”

At the end of the weekend we both
ended up with tattoos on our backs. Boy, my mother was pissed when
she saw it. “You’ve ruined your body!” She’d yelled at
me.

I’d just roll my eyes at her. “Oh,
Mom, give me a break everyone has a tattoo nowadays.”

I spun back around to face the mirror
head on. Before I buttoned my blouse, I let out a big sigh and
Molly jumped up on the bed. “You know Molly. You would think a
twenty two year old woman would have eventually grown out of the
bra size that she has been wearing since the eighth grade,” I said
to her as I looked at her reflection in the mirror.

Molly looked at me and meowed like she
knew exactly what I was saying. Although my boobs weren’t huge,
they were proportionate to my frame, but I still got jealous when
I’d turned on the TV or looked in a magazine to see all those women
with much more cleavage. Let me just say a padded bra from Victoria
Secret works wonders.

I contemplated getting a
boob job, but I was too much of a chicken shit to ever go through
with it. I'd seen a show on MTV that was dedicated to girls who
were getting breast implants. These girls were crying on the way
home from their surgery because of the bumpy car ride and how much
it hurt to go over speed bumps. They had to tape themselves up with
Ace bandages to keep them from moving. The final straw was the tube
inserted inside their boobs to drain any infection. I remember
thinking, “
Oh my . . . Why would anyone
put themselves through that?
” I thought I
was going to vomit when I saw that.

As I gazed into the mirror, with the
disgusting vision of the boob job drain still in my head, I
buttoned my blouse and my cell phone began to ring. It was Katie
calling. She always called me the morning of a wedding to make sure
I was all set. Katie was pretty neurotic about her photography
business. Being like an older sister to me, she always wanted to
make sure I was ready.

“
Hey, Katie. How are
you?”

“
Hi Leila, are you ready
for your next Bridezilla?”

“
You know it,” I said
confidently.

Katie went over the specifics of the
wedding with me. This was actually the first out of town wedding
that I would be photographing on my own. The bride was getting
ready at the venue where both the ceremony and reception were being
held. I was extremely happy to hear that. It made things so much
easier when everything was held at the same location.

Chapter 2

As I headed out the door, I
double-checked to make sure I had my cell phone, my camera and
extra batteries. Bridezilla was getting married at a beautiful
apple orchard about an hour and a half away from my apartment.
Katie and I had photographed a wedding there about six months
before, so I was familiar with the grounds.

As I began walking down
the stairs, thoughts of last night crept back into my head. I
cringed, and my stomach began to ache. I rushed down the rest of
the stairs to the parking lot taking a deep breath in. The air
outside was brisk. Fall was definitely upon us. I hopped into my
beat up old Honda Civic. Even though it was old, I loved my car.
The seats were a bit beaten up and worn, but I didn’t care. We’d
been through a lot together, and it had never let me down. I popped
my new
P!nk
CD
into the player and hiked up the volume and off, I went.

I arrived at the orchard
in record time. I am known to have a lead foot, especially when I
listen to music. I tend to get in a zone and lose myself in it. It
was a miracle I had never been pulled over for speeding. I pulled
into the parking lot with my stereo blaring
P!nk.
She was singing about the
weekend as I parked my car. I couldn't wait to get this wedding
over with and start my weekend.

As I made my way from the parking lot
into the venue, I noticed the leaves on the trees were beginning to
change colors. The orchard was absolutely breathtaking. There were
acres and acres of land covered in beautiful fall colors of reds,
oranges and yellows. Fall was my absolute favorite season of the
year. I entered the lobby of the reception hall and headed directly
to the wedding coordinator’s office to introduce myself and find
out where the bridal party was located.

Upon arriving at the bridal suite, I
could hear a commotion from behind the door. I knocked and a moment
later heard a loud abrupt, “Who is it?”

“
Leila, your wedding
photographer,” I replied.

The door flew open and
there she was, Bridezilla in the flesh. She looked like a cast
member of
Jersey Shore
. She had jet black hair, fake eyelashes, and huge fake boobs
with overly tanned skin. All she was missing was a big poof on the
back of her head.

“
Oh, who are you?” She
huffed.

I tried to introduce myself to her,
but she put her hand up in my face, demanding to know where Katie
was. I explained that Katie was photographing another wedding
today, and that I’d been working for Katie for four years.
Bridezilla cut me off mid-sentence and insisted that I get Katie on
the phone immediately. I sighed, got out my cell phone and started
dialing Katie’s number. No sooner had I hit the last digit,
Bridezilla ripped the phone out of my hand. She instantly began
yelling at Katie, saying that it was unacceptable, and she demanded
that Katie gets here right away. Her voice sounded like she smoked
three packs of cigarettes a day which gave me the
chills.

I could only imagine what
Katie was saying to her on the other end. She was a fantastic
photographer and a great boss, but if you crossed her, she turned
into what I liked to call a
Chihuahua.
Bridezilla became very
quiet and handed the phone back to me without saying a word. I
raised the phone to my ear. I could hear Katie explaining to
Bridezilla, as she told her at her initial consultation, there was
a possibility that she would not be photographing the wedding
herself and an employee might be her replacement. Katie went on to
say that it even stated as much in the contract that she had
signed.

I couldn’t help smiling. Eventually, I
had to interrupt Katie, letting her know that it was now me on the
phone. Katie started to laugh and said, “Kill Bridezilla with
kindness today, and I will give you an extra fifty bucks for
putting up with that bitch.”

I started laughing. “Will
do.”

After I hung up with Katie, I turned
to Bridezilla, held out my hand and officially introduced myself.
“Hi, I’m Leila your wedding photographer,” with a smug little smirk
on my face.

Bridezilla just looked at me and said
sulkily, “I’m Susan.”

I quickly went through the process
with Susan, explaining what I was going to do and then let her get
back to her makeup. Which, in my opinion, no matter how much she
put on, it wasn't going to be enough to make her a beautiful bride.
Not unless she hired a plastic surgeon to give her a nose job and
face lift in the next twenty minutes.

Just as I finished explaining things to her,
in walked this gorgeous brunette with the longest legs I had ever
seen. I felt a bit self-conscious about myself with her in the same
room as me. She was definitely model material, perfect body,
beautiful deep brown eyes with super long eyelashes and huge boobs.
She was wearing a satin red dress that was barely there and her
cleavage was hanging over the top of the dress. I thought to myself
Jesus is the entire cast of Jersey Shore here? All we need is
Pauly D and Vinnie.