Engagement Party

Charlotte Engagement.

As Amira walks out of her engagement party. A few days later, Amira was tilting back a cocktail to slurp the trace of whiskey in midtown Manhattan, seated in leather chairs at a bar decorated like the parlor of a landed nobleman, all rich wood and pastoral oil paintings. And Charlotte, Amira's best friend walked in telling her, she had no interest in marrying her fiancé, and her wedding is in a month.

Charlotte, Amira's childhood, friend was preparing seriously for her wedding. Amira froze in surprise as she once told her in a bar she ain't interested in getting married to her abusive fiance.

"Am surprised you gonna married to him after all you said?" Amira ask.

Charlotte sighed, and smile hastily, and threw her hair over her shoulder without mumbling a word. Charlotte caught the waiter’s eye and twirled her finger and her face gleaming.

"The whole relationship is a joke, I care about him a lot, but we fight constantly." Charlotte announced instead of smirking she was smiling.

"He says he loves me. But on some level when we argue. The trauma is always on me, making a gesture of my past. He must know this isn’t happily ever after." Charlotte acknowledged.

"Are you going to call it off?” Amira asks again while smiling.

"It’s too late to call it off. It would destroy him totally. The invitations have gone viral, and a lot of meaningful and distinguished men and women are invited from different countries. His whole family has booked flights already from Australia to Alabama. I just have to do it. I can't turn it down now.” Charlotte retorted. As she was happy and she can't wait for the day to come.

Amira sighed hastily and folded her arms. She stare at her face for evidence that she was joking. But she found none, and her concern swelled.

"You need to cut this off now dear. You’re going to leave him someday, and that’ll be way too much on you." Amira said and Charlotte froze at her squeezing her face so irritating.

“Honestly speaking, it’ll be easier then. The stakes aren’t that high. If we can’t find a way to make it work after marriage, we can always just get divorced." Charlotte proclaimed with a lot of excitement.

Amira was flabbergasted and lost for words.

She was amazed because, Charlotte knows everything she went through at the hands of her narcissist stepmother, how she deliberately abuse her without any wrongdoing, which makes her have a relationship with Oscar that lead to her divorce after giving birth to a baby girl. She was living in the house of abusive for more than 15 years before she met Oscar.

Amira and Charlotte had been friends since high school. They had a lot of mutual understanding, and gossip moved swiftly.

Perhaps, Charlotte saw meeting Amira as a preview of her fate, if she walk away from her fiance. And she felt her fate was slightly manic, 10 pounds heavier than usual, and glugging a dicey amount of whisky, as they keep articulating.

"Are you glad you called it off? I mean your engagement party, and your divorced with Oscar?" Charlotte ask and stare at Amira meaningfully and she gave her a funny smile.

Immediately, Amira froze in surprise and there was a pause.

A few minutes into their discussion, as they keep articulating, the waiter dropped off their third round of whisky, as Charlotte asked Amira if she was happy walking out of her engagement party and her divorce from her ex-husband Oscar.

Amira's decision to end a floundering relationship is far from straightforward. Ever since then people had been asking her whether she love the idea of walking out of her engagement party as if a simple “yes” or “no” will resolve the whole matter, but Amira knew the truth is always more complicated. As she cares about her ex-husband Oscar even after the divorce.

Amira and Oscar lived together after marriage, they shared intimacies and banalities routines, and chores. Amira's family, friends, and co-workers knew Oscar and loved him as the one who rescued her from the hands of her abusive stepmother. They had come to think of them as a unit, and their relationship was integral to Amira's social identity when she gave birth to her daughter after her wedding.

Amira walked out of her engagement party meaning exchanging the delights of a bride for the embarrassment of a deserter not to mention enduring the intense pain of a breakup, and she felt miserable starting all over from scratch.

When she ended her relationship with Oscar. Amira disappointed her own family by appearing to turn away from a certain kind of life.

Amira was on the brink of 23 years of age when she was emotionally shattered, and facing the prospect of beginning again after all the abusive words from her stepmother and the trauma encircling her after her divorce.

She experienced the bizarre power of unmet expectations that lead to her divorce. Those arbitrary fatbergs within her, and she couldn't promise herself to love again and face endless uncertainty.

Amira gave out a loud sighing and turn to face Charlotte.

"Yes. I’m glad I cut it off. I should have done it earlier. I wasted too much of everyone’s time as the reasons why they discriminate and victimize my decision." Amira finally replied to Charlotte's question and she was astounded, froze in her cleverness.

"I'm not against your decision Amira. Because I know all you went through in your father's house. I believe it's the reason why you never want to stay in an abusive relationship." Charlotte confessed instead of smiling she was smirking.

They parted after their conversation at the bar. A few weeks later. Amira heard that Charlotte was engaged and got married to her narcissist fiance and relinquished her happiness and went ahead and married an abusive man. Ever since then, they had fallen out of touch. As she never called or reply Amira's text messages ever since she got married.