Page 71 of Bossy Bride: Emma and Jesse

Wait.

“The ocean?” I say.

“Yeah,” Emma says. “I smell it too.”

Then the zipties around my wrists are cut and the hood is pulled off my head.

It takes me several whole seconds to take in where I am and what I’m looking at.

“An aquarium?”

And that’s when I see Cowboy Clarence smiling and rocking back and forth on his heels like he’s just pulled off the wedding of the century.

“What the hell?” I say.

“Mr. and Mrs. Boston,” Clarence starts.

I’m about to say something about that—including all the ways in which we are so not Mr. and Mrs. Boston right now—but Emma beats me to it.

“Uh. No!” she exclaims. “We are not Mr. and Mrs. Boston because you—you slimy, cheating, filthy, lying cowboy!—you ruined every single wedding we tried to have today!”

Clarence presses his hands forward, like he’s trying to ward off Emma’s upcoming rage.

But I’m with Emma. “What the actual fuck, dude? We were literally two seconds away from saying ‘I do’ back at the Shotgun Wedding when your… stupid Mob boss barged in and ruined it!”

“Now, listen—” Clarence starts.

“No, you listen!” Emma yells. “We missed Christmas Eve dinner with our family because of you! We are stuck in Las Vegas when we should be in Key West because of you! That rollercoaster wedding wasn’t even for us! The pirate wedding was actually not a wedding, but a stupid show. And by the way, my almost-husband could’ve been killed swinging from those ropes trying to save me.” She air-quotes the ‘save me’ part, which I kinda love. “Then you throw us out of a plane and… and what? Did you fuck up the mics on purpose? I don’t get it! You make no sense! Then you send Cousin Vinnie to talk us into the perfect, over-the-top Italian Wedding, which, also by the way, I loved. And then you ruin everything by sending in some Mob boss to kill everyone!”

“They’re not dead,” Clarence explains. “It was all fake!”

“I knew it was fake!” Emma screams. She’s pissed. “That’s even worse! Because we thought we were running for our lives! I was so… so… kerfluffled, I actually hallucinated my childhood nemesis, Kraken—”

She stops.

Because—what the fuck?—Kraken Karen walks out from the shadows and smiles at Emma. Actually has the nerve to smile at her!

“Not a hallucination,” the Kraken quips. “That was all my idea!”

Emma lunges at her, hands out in a choking gesture, like she’s about to wrap them around Karen’s throat.

I grab her arm just in time and pull her into me. Hug her tight. Because I’m pretty sure Emma is gonna murder that chick.

“Your idea!” Emma screams. “I will kill you with my bare hands for ruining my wedding! Are you that small and self-obsessed that you had to ruin our whole day just because we didn’t want you to plan our wedding and fuck up my wedding photos with your Kraken face? God, you are such a bitch! You really need to get a life!”

“OK, hold on here.”

All of us turn to look at another man standing off to the side. It’s the man-in-black dude who ordered us to get in the van back in the desert.

“You,” I say. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I,” the man says, pointing to his chest, “am Fingers.” He takes a little bow and then smiles at me. “At your service.”

And now Emma is the one holding me back, because this is the actual asshole responsible for everything today.

This is the asshole who deserves to be choked out and I’m going to be the one to do it.

And that’s when a mermaid on a swing begins to descend from the ceiling…