Ariel's Redemption

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Ariel stifled a yawn while the pastor kept droning on and on about the promise of marriage. The young woman was bored to tears and hated every moment in there. She looked around to see how the others were faring, expecting to see the dismay on people’s faces. However, everyone else seemed to listen, enraptured.

The woman turned her eyes back to the front. Standing in front of the pastor, the two red-haired young people held hands, looking one at the other as if no one else were in the room.

The bride's mother and aunts smiled nostalgically, wiping off tears at the corner of their eyes, and some of the men felt the compulsion to pat their hands in sympathy.

Mark, the groom, gazed at his bride, Lily, with wonder in his eyes. Lily always looked beautiful. Still, the wedding dress had turned her into a princess, and Ariel couldn’t stop her jealousy.

Through narrowed eyes, the woman watched her younger cousin getting married. Surrounded by happy or nostalgic faces, anger and frustration boiled in Ariel’s blood.

The woman had fisted her hands so tightly that her nails left b****y marks in the middle of her palm. Nevertheless, Ariel couldn’t care about that. She had to control the fury and bitterness raging inside her.

The young woman tightened her lips to stop the storm of words threatening to leave her mouth. She understood that others wouldn’t have looked with kindness over her tantrum. However, Ariel hardly kept her fury in check. Another of her younger cousins was getting married before her eyes, leaving Ariel behind in the dust, with only two more years left to fulfill her destiny.

Tears started to tease the tips of her eyelashes, and Ariel tried hard not to let them fall. Everyone knew of her failures. Ariel needn’t give them any more fodder for gossip.

Ariel was thankful that she had no role in the wedding party this time. Everyone convened to reduce the number of bridesmaids to one after Becka got married, and the young woman couldn’t be happier.

Green with envy, Ariel took her eyes off the silhouette of her cousin when the pastor invited the coppery-haired groom to kiss the bride. To see the couple kiss would have been beyond her capacity to bear.

Six years younger than Ariel, Lily had already fulfilled her dreams and desires, gaining everything. The young woman found it difficult to look past that.

With a cringe in her heart, Ariel remembered that three others had done it before her. At that bitter thought, the woman’s eyes swept over her younger sister Becka, encircled in the arms of her husband, Bryan.

Bitterness brought flames in her eyes, and the young woman turned toward her other two cousins, Matt and Jay, who held hands with their wives, Nora and Ellen. The two couples stirred her envy as well, and her breath hitched. Ariel fought to control her breathing so that no one around could guess the thoughts going through her mind. She didn’t need their pity or their disappointment.

That day had started better than Ariel hoped. The groom had been a no show in the morning, and his absence uplifted her mood. But then, at the last minute, the guy marched inside the living room, where the wedding was supposed to take place, and all her hopes crashed, filling her mouth with bile.

Ariel hated neither Lily nor Becka. In reality, she loved them both. They were family and shared a past together. Still, that morning, the young woman felt only hatred. Ariel disliked how it tasted. Yet, her feelings were out of control, and she couldn’t get a grip on them.

Sensing someone’s gaze on her, Ariel turned her head and noticed Bryan, watching her with compassion in his eyes. The young woman grimaced.

‘You can keep your pity! I don’t need it,’ Ariel scolded the man in her mind and slashed him with a withering look.

"Lily and Mark look so good together," Marjorie whispered from the chair in front of her. Ariel gritted her teeth with annoyance after she processed the words.

She hated that people had to fawn over the couple. Marriages happened, and they didn’t always reach their happy-ever-after.

Still, Ariel had to admit that Lily and Mark did look good together. That was another thorn in her claw.

At the end of the ceremony, Mark kissed his bride to seal the marriage, and cheers filled the room. With a stingy smile, Ariel applauded with the others. The smile didn't reach her eyes, though.

People filed to congratulate the two young people and then broke into groups. Aunt Amelie, Lily’s mother, helped by a few others, started arranging the chairs around the living room so that the guests could walk around and mingle.

Ariel did her duty to kiss the bride and the groom, and then she looked for a way out. A rich buffet took the entire side of the room, and the young woman went in that direction to busy herself with filling a plate. She imagined that no one would ask her to share hugs or shake hands if she had hers otherwise occupied.

Ariel filled her plate with some pastries, knowing well that Bryan had contributed them to the feast. The delicacies were worth adding half an hour more to her morning aerobics routine. Moreover, Ariel remembered that she hadn’t had the time to eat anything else that morning. She needed the nourishment, or she would not have managed to stay through all the toasts, reminding her of what she would never have.

With the pastries piled on the plate in hand, Ariel turned around and scanned the room to find a place to sit in peace and enjoy her treat. From the corner of her eye, the young woman noticed that Matt was talking to Bryan. Both of them were stealing furtive glances at her. She had a good idea about their conversation, so she groaned inside and headed in the opposite direction.

The young woman discovered an unoccupied armchair in a corner and took a seat with a muffled sigh. She hoped that the kitty-corner loveseat would not entice anyone else, and she would be left to her devices. Ariel didn’t feel like making friendly chit-chat right then. If it hadn’t been for her mother, the young woman wouldn’t even have come there, but Emilie hadn’t given her a choice.

The woman had just sat down in the chosen spot when she noticed that Matt and Bryan were headed her way. Uncomfortable with the prospect of talking to them, Ariel brushed her fingers through her hair nervously.

In a rebellious mood, Ariel had had her hair cut for the wedding. She admitted that she had done it in a bout of anger, and somewhat, she regretted her haste. However, Ariel had wanted to steal some of the bride’s thunder. She did succeed for about five minutes. The young woman did astonish her family when she appeared at her aunt’s house that morning.

No one remembered Ariel without long hair. Even in her childhood photos, she appeared with thick pigtails.

The puzzled look on her brother’s face that morning expressed what everyone was thinking. However, Alex, her brother, never minced words, so he was the only one to point out that he thought she had lost her mind.

Ariel felt somewhat strange without the weight of her heavy hair. She had had her haircut only two days before. Still, the impulse of brushing her fingers through it every few minutes had almost become an annoying habit. Nonetheless, the woman needed to reassure herself that she still had some hair left.

The young woman bit into a flaky pastry, and her eyes swept over the guests milling around, trying to avoid meeting the glances of the two men headed her way.

Ariel hoped that they might change direction and choose to talk to someone more inviting. Her face didn’t show any trace of a smile, and her indifference was far from welcoming. She preferred her solitude.

The woman noticed that most people gravitated around the newly wedded couple, fighting for their attention. Lily’s happy laughter rose over the voices coming from different groups. Ariel scrunched her nose, and involuntarily, her fingers tightened around the pastry she was holding. Sugary white powder fell on her dress, but the woman didn’t pay any attention to that.

Ariel knew that she had turned into a curmudgeon. Still, she had no control over her reactions. Ariel hurt, and it was difficult for her to feel any joy for her cousin’s happiness. She did not wish that Lily were plagued by misfortunes, but wishing Lily well did not enter her thoughts right then.

“How are you, Ariel?” Bryan’s voice insinuated in her musings.

Ariel groaned inside and turned toward his voice. Had she paid more attention, the man wouldn’t have caught her unawares, and she could have prepared herself for what was sure to come. But then, she had been oblivious to Bryan’s progress towards her by design. The woman had adopted the ostrich’s technique when confronted with some danger.

Bryan and Matt towered over Ariel, both slightly leaning forward. The woman looked up to them and sketched a cold smile, the hand with the pastry poised half-distance to her mouth.

“Hey, there, guys,” Ariel replied in a far-a-way tone of voice, and her aloof response prompted Bryan’s left eyebrow to hike up his forehead. “I’m fine, of course,” she continued with a slight smirk, waving the hand with the pastry.

The woman knew what Bryan’s arched eyebrow meant, but she didn’t have any care for it right then. “What about you? Are you having fun?” she continued, trying to convey the idea that she didn’t have any worry in the world for the moment.

Matt measured her with thoughtful eyes and then nodded. “We are, but I’m afraid you don’t seem to have any, sweetie,” he observed.

“Oh, but I do,” Ariel contradicted him. “Excellent pastries, Bryan, as always,” she congratulated her brother-in-law, that supercilious smile always firm on her lips. “You’ve outdone yourself this time,” she added and then bit into the piece she was holding in her hand, thinking that they might catch her message and go away.

“I’m glad you like it,” Bryan nodded. “However, you seem a little out of sorts, Ariel, and I don’t like it. Besides, you’ve retreated in this corner, all by yourself. It makes one wonder, you know,” he decided to point out the obvious.

Ariel blinked a couple of times, showing surprise. As always, Bryan went for the jugular and cornered her.

“Have I?” Ariel wondered, and she turned her head this way, and that way, pretending to observe the surrounding area. “I haven’t even realized it. I merely wanted to enjoy some pastries and rest for a while. I had a late night last night, you know,” she said, with a small secret smile tucked in the corner of her mouth.

‘Yeah, as if! I went to bed at eleven. Even the movie I tried watching on the internet turned out to be too boring,’ she recollected with derision but didn’t reveal any of her thoughts to the two men.

Ariel hadn’t been out at night for over four or five months already. She didn’t have any reason to go out and all reasons to avoid any dark places. The woman had the feeling that she was living in a cage most of the time.

Matt watched her thoughtfully and shook his head slightly. Even though he refrained from reading his cousin’s mind, he couldn’t stop the emotional vibes coming from Ariel.

Matt thought of saying something about that. But then, he changed his mind, sure that the young woman wouldn’t like to have her emotions dissected right at that moment.

“I am sure you can relax and rest for a while even if you come and join us there,” the man tilted his head towards where his wife, Nora, and Becka sat, talking one to the other.

Ariel shifted her glance toward the two women in time to see that Lily and Mark joined them. Realizing that Nora and Becka were talking to the freshly married couple now, Ariel shook her head.

The young woman didn’t feel like sharing someone’s happiness right then. She preferred to wallow in her own misery.

“I’m pretty sure that I’m quite fine here for the moment,” Ariel turned her eyes away from the group. She smiled thinly to her cousin, and her eyes challenged Matt to contradict her.

The two of them had had their spats over the years, and Matt knew that Ariel was a strong opponent. Her sharp tongue had reduced many to tears along the time. She never gave up until she won.

Matt had never been one of the people that surrendered to Ariel. The man was capable of a lot of patience when he had to argue his point of view. However, Matt didn't feel like getting into a quarrel with Ariel right then. He knew that it wouldn't end too well.

The man wanted nothing more but to enjoy his cousin’s wedding day. Matt knew that the party would have a happy ending. After all, Rebecca, his great-grandmother, wasn’t there to spoil it. He didn’t see why he would allow Ariel to do it.

Matt measured his cousin for a few more long seconds, undecided about whether to point the obvious or not.

“Fine,” the man chose to say in the end. “Suit yourself,” he added, and with a brisk wave to Bryan, they left her to enjoy her meal alone.

“I usually do just that,” Ariel murmured behind them, but Bryan heard her and shook his head with disappointment.

“Maybe it’s for the best that she didn’t accept your invitation,” the man said to Matt under his breath. “She can’t control her tongue, and I wouldn’t like to see that Lily and Mark had had their big day spoiled with venom.”

Still, his words reached Ariel, and the woman pressed her lips together with dismay. However, she knew that the man was right. Ariel never could keep her mouth shut, and she felt the need to shred people with words. That need had become more overwhelming lately, in particular, during the last couple of years.

Nevertheless, Ariel didn’t think that her habits gave her brother-in-law any leeway to talk about her that way. His unforgivable words needed some payback.

‘Maybe not right now, but soon,’ she promised to herself, munching another pastry, even though her anger rose and reached new levels.

The thunders in Ariel’s eyes prompted a few eyebrows to rise, and her relatives decided that that wasn’t the right moment to approach her. The young woman needed to cool off for a while.

However, after about half an hour, Ariel’s mother, Emilie, considered that her daughter had avoided the family enough and resolved to determine her to mingle. The young woman sighed with dismay, but then, she agreed to chat with her relatives for a few minutes.

“I’ve got a terrible migraine today, mom,” Ariel warned her mother. “I almost didn’t want to go out of the door in the morning. So I won’t be staying too long,” she pointed out.

Emilie shook her head in consternation and waved her hand with disappointment, but then, she escorted her daughter to a group of cousins and left her there.

The woman knew her daughter well. She didn’t have a chance to make Ariel change her mind. If the young woman wanted to leave, she would and on her own terms.

And Ariel did leave twenty minutes later. She felt like suffocating. Lily’s happiness drove her crazy, although Ariel knew that her feelings were irrational. The young woman should have been happy for her cousin, but she couldn’t.