The Wedding Gift - Chapter 3 - Hannah

I was never a marriage type of person. If you love someone, you don’t have to sign any contracts or throw a big party. Still, I was thrilled to celebrate my friend’s happy day. I have nothing against people getting married—everyone’s free to do what works for them. I respected their decision and wanted to be there for them. I myself just don’t like being constrained and doing what everyone else is doing just for the sake of fitting in. Thankfully, Conor and I see eye to eye on that.

The wedding was Conor’s second time in Poland. When he came here for the first time, I took him to a Polish restaurant to try pierogi—because for some mysterious reason, tourists are obsessed with them. I’m more of a Pad Thai and everything-with-rice-in-it type of person. 

In the evening, Paulina, Harrison, Jack, and his fiancée Caroline joined in for a glass of craft beer. It didn’t end with just one beer, obviously. I wanted my friends to get to know the guy I was dating, and there is no better way than to have a group sit, drink a little, and remove the invisible boundaries that make us treat someone like a stranger. Conor said he had a great time and was very fond of my friends. I don’t think I had seen Harrison talking to Conor much, though. Paulina’s husband was rather reserved that night. It definitely wasn’t because of the language barrier. Harrison is pretty much fluent in English, as he was actually born in the UK. His mom moved there with her husband a couple of years before he was born. Things got a little more complicated when they got divorced. Then she found a British guy with whom she actually had Harrison. They lived in Birmingham until Harrison was eight or ten. Then the father also left them, so she took Harrison and moved back to Poland to her parents. And so he’s been living here ever since.

As for me, I always knew Poland wouldn’t be the only country I’d live in. I intend to be traveling for as long as I can. I consider myself a citizen of the world and promised myself never to settle for more than a few years. I've visited several countries so far, and right now my heart is in Ireland, where I’ve been living with Conor for six months.

We met at my two-month intensive English language course. All students met with the teachers for drinks after class as part of what we called the culture exchange program. That’s how I met Conor. He’s my English teacher’s good friend. In fact, Conor is also an English teacher. 

Right after Paulina’s bachelorette party in Berlin, I hopped on a plane, and five hours later, I landed at Fuerteventura Airport, where I waited another hour for my boyfriend to fly in from Dublin. We spent an unforgettable week there and considered staying a few more days, but then I received an unexpected email from work that forced us to change our plans. As it turned out, according to the company’s rules, I could work remotely, but only from Poland. Notifying my boss of the relocation didn’t cross my mind. In my mind, it didn’t change anything as long as I put in the effort and completed all my tasks in time. Once my boss discovered I no longer live in Poland, he fired me. Just like that.

Life in Dublin isn’t cheap, and my savings were melting away like a 99 in July. I desperately needed a job, but so far I failed at six interviews in two weeks, three of them being at FAANG. I knew I most probably wouldn’t get hired in any of these companies, but I wanted to at least try, and I was also tempted by the huge salary and equity bonuses.

At Paulina’s wedding, I may have spent an hour or two sending out my resume to several companies when I didn’t feel like dancing or talking to anyone, but I would never steal anyone’s money. Especially when it’s my friends’ wedding gift. What kind of person would do that?

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t think about the things I would do if I had that kind of money transferred into my bank account. With money like that, I could travel the world for years, or buy a cozy apartment by the beach.

When the groom was going around telling the wedding guests how much money he had just won, it was obvious that, right then, everyone pictured themselves holding the winning lottery ticket. They all saw themselves being handed a silver metal case full of cash, and then tossing the banknotes like lunatics. Not that that’s actually what happens when you win, but people can get very creative.

Not long after that, Harrison found out that the lottery ticket was gone. If I were him, I would’ve come to talk to Paulina and the other guests to see if anyone had seen or knew anything. But instead, his drunk train of thought led him straight to my boyfriend. He jumped on Conor, even though my boyfriend gave him no reason to suspect him. Literally anyone could’ve stolen that stupid ticket. Including the staff. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw them throwing punches at each other, like animals.

I suppose Harrison found Conor the most suspicious because he didn’t know him as well as he did the other guests. And Conor was the only foreigner at the wedding. None of our friends would say Harrison is prejudiced, but who knows? Maybe it’s his father’s fault he turned out like that.

Harrison was lucky that some guys broke up the fight and made him go outside before he got seriously hurt. When I saw blood on Conor’s head, my first instinct was to scratch Harrison’s eyes out. But I just stood there, shocked. How can someone be so aggressive? And over what? Money? Money he didn’t even really see or have, for that matter. Money, he wasn’t even really sure had been stolen, let alone by Conor. Harrison had no right to act like a mindless chimpanzee, jumping at the first person who seemed suspicious to him.

When Paulina saw Conor’s face covered in blood, she quickly rushed to find the first aid kit, and then we went to the bathroom to dress his wounds. He washed the blood off his hair, and then ended up with half of his head bandaged. Never in a million years would I have imagined seeing my boyfriend at a wedding, with blood dripping down his head. We did the best we could. Conor assured Paulina he was fine and that she had better go and check up on her husband, since Conor—not that he bragged, there was nothing to brag about—but as he said it, he made sure Harrison felt it too.

Paulina was about to call an ambulance, but Conor insisted that he didn’t need one. That it wasn’t as bad as it looked. I think he was just putting on a tough guy act.

I asked my boyfriend whether he unintentionally did or said anything that might’ve sent Harrison into a frenzy, but he simply glanced at Paulina, then at me, and said that the whole evening he’d been nothing but polite to everyone and that he knew nothing about their stupid lottery ticket. Then he thanked Paulina for the help and headed upstairs to our hotel room to get some rest.

After Paulina finally managed to check in on her wasted and bruised husband—he ended up with a black eye and a swollen cheek, like he had just had a Botox injection—she instructed two of his friends to drag Harrison upstairs to the hotel room and make sure he didn’t hurt himself or anyone else. He slept like a baby the rest of the night. 

After everything that happened, Paulina got herself together, joined the rest of the guests and pretended to have a good time. She didn’t want to disappoint the guests or cancel the whole party she had put so much effort into preparing. For the groom, however, the party was definitely over.

When I saw Paulina crying in the bathroom once, I wanted to talk to her and comfort her. After all, it was her first, and most probably the only wedding day in her life, and she didn’t deserve such embarrassment. I wasn’t sure how the rest of the night was going to work out, whether the guests would keep partying and pretending that nothing had happened, or walk around gossiping, so the party would eventually resemble a funeral more than a wedding.

I was curious if Paulina had ever witnessed Harrison behaving like that. I myself didn’t recall him ever being so aggressive. At least not when I was around. Paulina said she had never seen him hurt anyone like that. When I suggested that perhaps Harrison should seek help, she lashed out at me for being too nosy, even though I considered myself to be one of her few true friends. She started to defend Harrison, saying that her husband had never had a drinking or any other kind of problem, and that I should mind my own business. I know she didn’t mean it, she was overwhelmed. But then it really hurt when she implied that I should watch my own boyfriend more closely, because perhaps I didn't know Conor as well as she did Harrison. And that maybe I should seriously rethink whether moving in with a guy I just met was the right choice.

I’ve spent enough time with Conor to know that he wasn’t the kind of person who would go around beating people for no reason, nor was he overly obsessed with money. Although having seven figures in his bank account would definitely make his life easier, for him, it wasn’t his ultimate goal—having a clean conscience was.

Or so I thought.