Free Burning Moon by Jo Watson Page A

my wedding invitations—I’d put so much effort into them.
    I’d spent hours at the paper shop choosing just the right color, texture, and thickness. Hours spent with the designer finding the right layout and design elements to make it perfect. The invites were an off-white color—Romantic Eggshell Dream was the name of the paper. They were embossed in the corners with a delicate flower design and all handwritten in calligraphy—some old lady sat there for days doing them all—and then folded them in half and tied them together with pale lavender ribbons. What a waste!
    And then another thought hit me. This scandal was going to be spoken about by my family for the next millennium, at least . In fact, it would probably be passed down from generation to generation in the great African tradition of oral storytelling. Some great-great-great-niece of mine living in the year 2104, where robots feed you breakfast and everyone lives in hydroponic bubble suits, would still be hearing the legendary story of poor Aunt Lilly who was left at the altar in front of all her friends and family. So for the rest of my life, at every family function I would probably hear…
    “Shame, shame poor Lilly. You must be heartbroken.”
    “Oh shame. You must be so embarrassed. I don’t know how you cope.”
    “Poor, poor Lilly, maybe you should just go live out the rest of your sad, pathetic, lonely life under a rock in the middle of the desert with only lizards to keep you company.”
    I was grateful when a loud voice suddenly broke through my terribly unhappy thoughts.
    “Your hamburgers,” said the man in the black suit, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He started moving things around the table to make space for our food. He glanced at me with a displeased look as he bent down and picked up all the candles and flowers that had fallen over. I mentally kicked him in the groin and smiled politely.
    I looked at my plate. My burger might as well have been hanging from the roof of the Sistine Chapel. It was a work of art and I almost felt bad for eating it… almost . But at this point, I was famished. I grabbed the burger, took an enormous bite, and started wolfing it down. It dawned on me that I didn’t care that I probably looked like a hungry scavenger, frantically gnawing on the last remains of a carcass. Because the one good thing about having your life declared as a disaster zone is that things that bothered you before seemed so insignificant now.
    Take eating in front of a guy, for example. Why is it that when a waiter arrives, whilst in the company of a male we’re trying to impress, we become panic-stricken and in anxious trembling little voices say, “I’ll have the salad, please. No dressing, no croutons, no feta, just leaves.”
    We have these strict woman rules about what to eat and what not to eat on a date—no spinach or any other kind of green that clings to your teeth, no ribs or spaghetti, and definitely no soup. So we order a bunch of leaves and spend the night moving a lonely piece of lettuce around our plate, as if eating something with the calorific equivalent of air would impress him. And you know the hotter the guy, the less you’re gonna eat!
    But since I didn’t like Damian in that way, and this wasn’t a date, I didn’t care if he looked at me like I was a yeti that had just emerged from hibernation and was eating the arse end off a low-flying crow.
    I continued to ravage the burger, and I got so lost in the process that at some stage I caught myself making loud mmm sounds. I don’t think I looked up once, either. I was just so focused on the task of consuming as much fat as possible. I swallowed the last mouthful and finally looked up and straight into the face of a smiling Damian.
    “What?” I snapped at him, a fleck of something flying onto the table.
    “Have you ever considered a career as a professional eater?” he said, putting a chip into his mouth.
    Although I’d just claimed not to