2: 2
One hundred and eighty thousand?!
My knuckles cracked as they fisted, and I stood there staring at her, not moving.
The crowd jammed in the doorway exploded.
"Oh-ho, dumbstruck already? Can't even scrape together a hundred and eighty grand, and you want to get married?"
"Right, our Lola Pruitt is a beauty. Asking you for a hundred and eighty thousand is doing you a favor. Don't spit on kindness!"
"No money, then clear off. Standing there embarrassing everyone, keeping us all waiting half the day!"
My parents heard the commotion and pushed their way up from behind.
"In-laws, please," my mother said, forcing a smile as she reached for the mother-in-law's arm. "The bride price was all settled in advance. This entry fee, the car fee, you never mentioned any of it to us before... it's the children's big day today. Whatever needs saying, can't we go inside and say it first? Let's not give the guests something to laugh about."
"Laugh about?!" The mother-in-law wrenched her arm away hard enough to nearly send my mother stumbling.
"And whose fault is it that your family has no sincerity? This is how it's done where we're from! A hundred and eighty thousand, not a cent less! Too stingy to part with even this? I say you're playing poor on purpose!"
The woman beside her chimed in. "Exactly! Handed over three hundred and eighty grand fast enough a minute ago, and now you're putting on an act? The money's not right today, and you can forget about getting through that door!"
Mason Cole, standing behind me, lost his patience and stepped forward.
"This is daylight robbery! Hiking the price on the spot before the wedding's even happened. Where's the sense in that?"
Before he'd finished, a big, hulking man came charging out from inside and shoved him hard. "My cousin's getting married. Who the hell are you to talk?"
Mason wasn't braced for it. He hit the marble floor with a thud, his knee bleeding on the spot.
"No money, then get lost. Quit yapping."
The woman's cousin planted his hands on his hips and grinned at me, pleased with himself.
Mason's face twisted with pain. My parents rushed to help him up, faces gone white with anger.
But they were afraid of souring the wedding, so they swallowed it and turned back to me instead, my mother's voice trembling. "Leon... maybe we could try talking it over nicely with the in-laws again?"
Every eye in the place was fixed on me. I looked at the anxious, cornered look in my parents' eyes and drew a deep breath.
"Fine. A hundred and eighty thousand. I'll transfer it now."
The whole place went dead quiet. Even the mother-in-law froze for a second or two.
Then her face broke into a wide smile. "There you go! That's more like it. If you'd been this quick about it, why make such a scene?"
Whispers rippled through the crowd soon enough.
"Really lost his head over that woman. She's clearly setting him up, and he keeps shoveling money at her!"
"Idiot. His parents' retirement savings are being wiped out and he's happy about it!"
My parents stood beside me, shaking their heads at me with a smile, but in the end they didn't say a word.
Something ached in me, and I could only duck away from their eyes in a hurry.
No one knew that I'd agreed so readily, and it had never once been out of love.
The door swung all the way open, and Lola came flying out in her white wedding dress and buried herself in my arms.
"Leon, you finally made it! They were all bullying me. If I hadn't held them back, they'd have asked for even more. See how good I am to you? I saved you money on purpose!"
I forced down the churning in my stomach and said gently,
"I'm sorry you had to go through that, Lola."
The moment I said it, a flicker of triumph crossed her eyes.
She thought her act was flawless.
She didn't see the cold at the corner of my mouth as I turned my head away.
The reckoning could come slowly.
What she owed me, I'd pay back a thousand times over.
