Chapter - 37 (Not even proof-read, please bear the mistakes)

MAKING THE CHOICE

For the tenth time in the last half an hour, I tried to adjust the bow tie. But no matter how much I tried, it seemed to have a crush on the left side as it was bending to that side again and again.

Stupid f*cking bow tie!

With clenched jaw, I stared in the mirror at myself and gave up. Yes, I couldn't do it anymore.

"I can't believe you're getting married!" I turned to look at my mother when I heard her shocked voice. Though there was nothing shocking about it. It wasn't like getting married was a last moment decision; she had been a part of all the preparation since the beginning. But, this was my mother and over-reacting to everything was in her basic nature.

"Surprise!" I said, showing her my teeth in a fake grin. I was in a mood of complete sarcasm on my own wedding day. Things couldn't get any better. Great, sarcasm again!

Mom rolled her eyes at my response and stepped towards me with a light smile on her face. She kept her hand on my shoulder and looked at me with happiness in her eyes. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, Hailey entered the room. "Hey groom!"

Mom and I both looked at her with smiles on our faces. But, Mom's attention was soon diverted towards Adrian, Hailey's son who too was dressed in a tux. Forgetting me, Mom picked him up and started showering him with kisses which he tried his best to avoid by making whiny and irritated noises. But, Mom was not the one to be stopped by this as she continued with kissing her only grandson spree.

Hailey came in between my view of my nephew and mother. "You ready?" she asked, tilting her head to the side.

I wanted to laugh at her question. I wasn't even able to adjust my bow tie and tying my own shoes laces had been a strenuous task today which took me a good fifteen minutes. I was nervous and had feet as cold as Antarctica. Of course, I wasn't ready for what was going to happen in merely half an hour.

But, maybe this was what people always meant by saying having a cold feet on your own wedding day. I was suffering from wedding blues.

"As ready as I'll ever be," I muttered sarcastically.

Hailey chuckled at my response and patted my back soothingly. "Don't worry. You're doing a lot better than most men do. Remember Chandler Bing?"

I laughed at her Friends TV show reference. I definitely remembered that. "I just hope that Veronica is not pregnant," I added with a smirk, adding my input to the reference.

Hailey giggled at my reply and said, "Your dahlin' fiancée is too career oriented to have kids now."

"I know that," I told her, trying to put a full stop to this conversation.

Hailey and Veronica got along nicely but not great. Hailey liked her for the person she was but she always told me that she was not perfect for me. But, she was happy because I was happy. Was I really?

She understood my mood and changed the topic. "Is Kim going to come?" A slight caution could be easily detected in her voice.

This just multiplied my bad mood by a thousand and I told her, "I had invited Josh, her fiancé. She might be his plus one." I turned back to face the mirror and tried to adjust the sh*t piece of bow tie again. All I wanted to do was snatch it away from my collar and throw it in the nearby dustbin of the hotel room.

Feeling frustrated, I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. Feeling a pair of hands on my collar, I snapped open my eyes and saw Hailey looking at me with a smile on her face as she tried to adjust the irritating small piece of cloth. "Calm down," she whispered, looking straight in my eyes. "I know whatever you're going to do is right. I trust you, Keith." I nodded my head slightly and shot her a grateful smile even though my nerves were still not at ease.

"I want more grandkids," Mom complained from behind, making both Hailey and me roll our eyes.

"Keith is right here, Mom." Hailey smiled, patting on my tux covered chest. "Maybe that would save my son from the kissing torture." She winked at me.

"Thanks for adding spices to my already miserable state," I told her sarcastically as I took Adrian in my arms. "Wooh, dude! You're the only guy who looks better in a tux than me," I complimented the little blue eyed boy with a huge grin. He clapped his hands enthusiastically in reply.

Mom who seemed to be oblivious to the ongoing conversation between Hailey, Adrian and me, said, "Keith and his bride are not going to make me a grandmother for years. She is not someone who would spoil her figure. Oh dear God! I'm never going to be a granny!" Her sound was full of remorse.

Couldn't my family members go out of this room and give me peace for the last thirty minutes of my bachelor life?

"Mom, you're already a granny!" Hailey chuckled as she took Adrian from me and pecked on my cheek. "I'm going out. See you, brother. Good luck!" I nodded in reply.

"But, I'm not a granny of Keith's kids yet and that's because Keith doesn't have kids," Mom continued ignoring Hailey's logical talks completely.

"Really, Mom? Is that so?" I gave her a wide-eyed, full of fake surprise look. Sarcasm was dripping from my every word.

She shook her head at me and thankfully, Hailey interrupted again, "Mom, we've to go and attend guests now. Let's go!"

"Yes, yes. Let me just hug my son once," Mom told her as she took fast steps towards me and embraced me in a hug. "Don't run away," she said in good humor.

"Sure!" I chuckled and said bye to three of them.

"My best friend's wedding!" Adam exclaimed as he entered my room soon after their exit.

A chuckle escaped my lips and I told him, "I don't want to hear your confession of love for me."

"You're safe there." He winked at me and stood beside me. He turned towards the mirror and started looking at himself from every angle possible. "I'm going to propose Autumn today," he told me, looking all confident about everything.

I patted his back and grinned. "That's great!"

"Yeah!" He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to look at me. "It just feels so right with her. You know, like... uh... when you feel that whatever you've is just too good and you don't want to let her go. It's that feeling. It's... amazing. But, why am I telling all this to you? You must have had those feelings for your Barbie." He chuckled to himself, making me go speechless. "Right, Keith?" He asked again and all I could do was stare him.

I stepped away from him and sat down on the edge of the king sized bed. The feelings he was talking about was something I was very aware of. But, had I experienced these feelings so strongly for Veronica? When I had first met her, I had liked her immediately. She had that appeal in her, but then why the hell were my thoughts crowded by the girl I had met eight years back in a shopping store? The first time she had smiled at me, laughed at my joke, the night we spent on the beach playing 'Guess what', the memories of that night were still fresh inside my head. The one week that I had spent with her five years back was still much more important to me than the one year I had spent with Veronica. Every smile, every little talk, every laugh was still very much alive in my memories.

No, no... no!

I can't let my mind play games with me. Not now!

I was just having cold feet. Every guy experiences this. F*ck! Sarcasm King - Chandler Bing ran away from his own wedding. So, who was I to say anything?

Everything was good... perfect.

I had to make Veronica happy... always.

I was not going to break this promise or deal... whatever it was called.

"Why are you doing this, Keith?" Adam's voice brought me back from the sea of questions in my mind. I looked back at him with confusion written all over my face. "You're not being yourself since we came back from Miami, Keith. It's like you're lost in some other hell completely. I asked you to get your mind in one place but it seems like it's scattered all over a lot more than it was earlier."

Couldn't these people leave me alone for f*ck's sake?

"I've no f*cking idea what you're talking about, McCarty. I just want to sit alone for some time before going out there and saying 'I do'," I told him with lightly clenched jaw and tightly closed fists.

He pointed his index finger towards me and smirked victoriously. "That's what I'm talking about. All you want to do is say 'I do' like a robot. Do you even want to do this, Keith? Do you even want to marry Veronica?" I stared at him in shock as his asking these questions was like my conscience repeating the same questions that had been going through my head since a week. "Do you even love her, Keith?" His face was dead serious as he asked me this question.

I stared at him with lightly parted mouth and wide eyes as his voice echoed in my head, repeating the one question that had been nagging in my head since the last week. 'Do I love Veronica?'

Just as I opened mouth to say anything, Adam shook his head and looked at me in a very meaningful way. "Don't answer me, Keith. Answer yourself."

The way my mind was working, I couldn't answer anybody at that moment. I was completely lost in my thoughts. What... what was happening?

This was not done. Whatever Adam was saying was wrong. I couldn't do this to Veronica half hour before the wedding. Adam was just playing with my 'cold feet' feelings.

'It's natural to be nervous. It's natural,' I chanted in my head repeatedly. Kim was with Josh. She loved him. She was happy with him. She didn't need me. She wanted me to keep Veronica happy ad I was going to do that. I loved Veronica. Didn't I?

F*ck!

I was so messed up.

"Having second thoughts?" A voice jerked me up from the sea of thoughts I was lost in.

A curse escaped my mind but I stopped myself from saying it out loud. I looked round the room, but was shocked to see that Adam was not here anymore. Maybe I was too lost in my own world that I didn't hear him after his 'teachings'.

"You seem to have a habit of scaring me," I told Josh as he entered the room.

He laughed and rubbed his palms together. "It's not my fault that you're so oblivious to everything around you." He smirked as he sat on the couch opposite the bed.

Everything he just said was not making any sense to me. I was already in a sh*tty mood and his coming here merely twenty minutes before my wedding was not helping at all. "What are you doing here?" I asked rudely. I was not in a mood to be diplomatic anymore. I was pissed off and if it was upto me, I would have thrown him out of here right away.

He grinned at my reply and shook his head as he said, "I have an invitation." I rolled my eyes at him and folded my arms across my chest. His grin didn't fade at all as I waited for him to say the purpose of his visit here in my hotel room.

'Who the hell did even give him the key? Must be Adam's foolishness of not closing the door behind him'

Ignoring my pissed off expressions, Josh started saying, "You know, I wonder why Kim never told me that she knew you."

"Don't call her Kim," I told him using his own words.

Ignoring me, he continued, "I mean, she has always loved watching you play. Every time there is a game, she leaves everything and just watches it. I loved that in her. Not every girl is like that and which guy doesn't like a girl who loves football just as much he does?"

I stared at him with my mouth slightly parted. What was he saying? "But she told me that she watches just because you've to watch," I mumbled out my confusion.

Josh chuckled and picked up the water bottle kept on the table in front of him. "It was weird when she refused to take up the assignment of your shoot as she was a big 'fan' of the Great Keith Warren," he mused as he poured a glass of water for himself.

"She refused?" I asked as my eyebrows furrowed in confusion and disbelief. How could she refuse when she knew that she could me after such a long time if she had accepted? Why did she lie that she never watched my games?

He nodded in reply, not ignoring my questions for the first time since he entered this room. "She had been quite lost since she met you at the party last week," he informed, looking at me with narrowed eyes. "Then you guys went to Miami and I've never seen her more quiet as she has been in these six days."

My jaw clenched tightly on its own accord. Why the f*ck was he telling me all this? What was the need? Was he dumb enough to understand that I was getting married in hardly fifteen minutes? I didn't need to know anything about Kim now.

"Honestly, I couldn't even understand your mood with me. I mean, you used to be cool before knowing that I'm Kim's fiancé. Why is that, Keith?" His voice was slightly hard and yet, it had slight humor in it. I was just embarrassed to know that he had noticed all this. We stared at each other as if challenging the other about something. At the end, he smirked and told me, "On Tuesday, when we met at the restaurant, Kim and I were there to celebrate the fact that we had exactly one more month to go till we get married."

I swallowed the huge lump in my throat as I realized that she really was going to be somebody else's. But before her, it was me who was going to get married. How could she? How could we? "Congrats!" I managed to say without a smile.

He smiled in return and told me, "I came here to tell you about two very important things." I nodded my head telling him to continue, which he did as he stood up from the couch and took steps towards me. "First, I went to my office on Saturday which is supposed to be an off, and I heard very inappropriate noises from my boss, Sebastian Garner's office. After about half an hour, I saw your wife-to-be coming out of his office. I don't think I need to tell you how her makeup was spread all over her face and how her dress had creases, or do you want to know all that?" He tilted his head to the side as he observed me with a raised eyebrow.

"You've got to be f*cking kidding me," I told him with fists closed in a death grip as I stood up from the bed and came to face to face with him.

Veronica couldn't do this with me. Could she?

He motioned me to stop with his hand and said, "I'm not done yet." I just stared at him with my eyes turned to slits and I was quite sure that smoke was coming out of my ears and nose. I was extremely pissed off. Who was he to tell me that my fiancée was cheating on me?

My angry mood seemed to have made no difference to Josh as he grinned and said, "Second, on Tuesday night, Kim broke off our engagement." His grin faded as he said this and on the other hand, my pissed off stance changed to that of a very confused one.

Hurt was prominent in his eyes but he tried his best to mask it under his slight fake smile. While all I could feel was confusion that was instantly filling up every vein inside my body. Gone was the pissed off Keith. "Why?" I asked him in merely a whisper. Gone was the Keith who was concerned about knowing about Veronica and the possibilities of her cheating on me; I wanted to know about Kim and nothing else.

He chuckled slightly and turned away from me. Maybe he didn't want me to see the hurt on his face. "I had always known that Kim never loved me as much as I loved her, but I always hoped that one day she'll love me back." He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. "Hell, how wrong was I?"

"What do you mean? She told me that she loves you," I said, expressing my confusion in words. She had told me that she loves Josh last Sunday on the beach. Wasn't that the reason why she was marrying him?

I saw him shake his head and he turned back to look at me. "She is still in love with some guy she met at a shopping store eight years back. F*ck, how I hope I was at his place right now." He tried his best to hide the hurt he was experiencing but he failed.

And I... I was stunned at what he was telling me. No words escaped my lips and I just stared at him in shock. There was tiny part of me that was waiting for Josh to crack up in laughter and tell me that all this was a joke, but there was a much bigger part which wanted that everything that Josh had just said was true. And, as the clock ticked away, the bigger part won.

"Keith, let's go now! It's time," Hailey's sing sang voice reached my ears, but I didn't look away from Josh as he stared back at me with a very meaningful look in his eyes.

He was not kidding!

Kim had broken up with him.

"Make the right choice, Keith," he said and went out of the room after shooting a smile in Hailey's direction.

Kim loved me. She really loved me. She still, after so many years, loved me. She broke off her engagement with Josh for me. But, then why? Why did she not meet me in these five days and told me everything?

Everything from Hailey holding my hand to taking me downstairs in the hall happened in a daze. Everything was a blur.

I was lost in wrapping my head around everything that Josh told me.

I was so f*cked up.

Next thing I knew was sounds of music hitting my ears and I looked up to see many people sitting on their seats, looking towards the entrance of the hall from where Veronica was entering inside.

All eyes were on her, as she walked down the aisle, but her eyes were fixated just on me. She looked gorgeous in her white wedding dress and I could not take my eyes away from her as she took slow steps towards me. Her lips were curled up in a smile; a smile that I had become too accustomed to. Finally, she reached and stood in front of me. We looked at each other like there was no one else in this place. She looked at me with happiness, while I looked in her eyes in search of something... something that I should have seen years ago. I could not help, but recall all the days I had spent with her over the years. I could not help, but recall the day I had first met her; the day I had first met Kim.

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A/N

Wattpad Prize 2014 entry. Please VOTE, COMMENT, FOLLOW & spread a word about this story if you like the story. :)

And, now you all know what the prologue meant. Huh? I hope I managed to keep the surprise till the end.

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