The Wedding Gift - Chapter 2 - Harrison

I didn’t really know what Paulina was planning for the wedding. I didn’t have to. My wife is great at that sort of stuff. I didn’t even know that a woman with a big-ass harp was going to play while we were walking down the aisle until she actually walked up to me in the backyard holding a huge black fabric bag and asked me where she could unpack. I joked that dead bodies should preferably be disposed of outside the property, for example, in the woods, just right across the fence. She didn’t laugh. Her lips didn’t even twitch. I found it quite funny, as did a couple of my friends.

Paulina handled pretty much every aspect of our wedding. My job was to not forget to show up. I fulfilled that promise one hundred percent, although I must admit that pretending to disappear instead of waiting at the altar did cross my mind. And then ta-da, I’m here, relax, everybody, I’m just messing with you. The disorientation on Paulina’s face would’ve been priceless. But like I said, I didn’t do it, and so she was pretty chill throughout the entire ceremony. Well, later in the evening, she wasn’t so calm anymore—she was livid. At least that’s what I heard.

Usually, when I receive a wedding invitation, I think twice about whether to accept. I don’t like weddings. Every one of them seems to be the same—eat, drink, dance, repeat. It goes on and on until you feel sick and either get lucky enough to find your own bed and manage to fall asleep when the world finally stops spinning. Or have kind enough friends who show you where your bed is. Or you might as well end up falling asleep on the bathroom floor—or out in the bushes—so that the next day both your head and back hurt like hell, and that’s still not even your biggest problem.

But our wedding was actually fun. At least the first half of it was. My wife did a pretty good job with the reception, but to me, the bachelor party was the best part of having a wedding. My friends took me to Amsterdam, and they really went above and fucking beyond. We definitely had fun. I couldn't have asked for more. They rented a very nice-looking apartment with a rooftop access overlooking the city. We didn’t do anything too crazy, though. It wasn’t like in the movies, where the guys take drugs of unknown origin, lose the groom, have no memory of the previous night, and wake up to find a huge live tiger in their apartment the next day. We mostly wandered around the city center, went to a casino, and then spent the rest of the night at a nightclub. Still, it was definitely one of those trips I’ll never forget.

Another thing I’ll never forget was getting my ass kicked  at my wedding by a fucking Conor McGregor.