Chapter 1

“You know I bloody wish I was joking." My dad said this, shaking his head and staring at me pitifully.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” I frowned.

“Oh, because you think I’m joking,” he said. “Heard of Isak Santos?”

I frowned and stared at my dad as though he had just fallen from the skies. “Who’s Isak?”

“The man you’d be getting married to,” my dad said so simply that it infuriated me the most.

“For the umpteenth time, Dad, is this a joke or something?” I asked. “You know I still haven’t gotten over the disappearance of Arthur, and now you want me to get married to someone else.”

“He isn’t just someone else,” he corrected. “He’s the man that would save us from the danger looming over our heads.”

“I’m lost here." I shook my head in confusion. “What danger? What’s happening?”

He handed me a card that looked like a wedding invitation card, and slowly, I began to incline as to what it was about. Grumpily, I collected it from him. The more I swept my eyes through the paper, the more confused I was.

Just as I had predicted, it was the wedding of another distant relative in about two months. However, I still did not understand how the recent events were connected to it.

My eyes darted from my dad to my mom in anticipation of some kind of explanation. “Okay?” I waved the card in their faces. "I'm happy for the couple, but how does this relate to the "danger looming over our heads," Dad?”

"That's an invitation to your third cousin's wedding, Iris," my mother finally said. "And she is five and a half years younger than you. Do you know what else is interesting?"

I shook my head in exhaustion rather than curiosity, but my mother went on anyway. "She let her parents choose her husband for her barely a year ago, and now they are getting married."

"And you've been dating that runaway boy for how long? Five years?" My father chipped in.

"Four, Dad. For four years," I corrected while grinding my teeth.

"Same difference." He shrugged. "Where's he now, if I may ask?"

I kiss my teeth in anger. "What are you aiming at?"

"We found you someone who you'll be getting married to, Iris. We've allowed you to have your time, and you've wasted it, and now it is ours." My dad's voice was sterner. Until then, I had no idea that I had been standing the whole time. I walked to a couch and lowered myself onto it.

I chuckled nervously once I had settled in on the couch and looked to my mother for some support. "This must be some sort of joke, right, mom?" She looked away, and words would fail to express how much deeper my heart sank at the sight. "It's the fucking 21st century, for Christ sake! No one does this anymore."

"Language, Iris!" My mother shouted at me, reminding me that she wasn't as dumb as I had thought some seconds before.

"The wedding invitation card in your hand contradicts this analogy of yours, don't you think?" For some reason, my father was getting on my nerves, and I wished he'd just shut the hell up.

"I can't believe you've both been here years before I was born, and you still think like this."

"Immigrants or not, our tradition still stands, Iris," my mother countered.

While I thought that being born in the Western part of the world would save me from the stupid tradition my Asian counterparts were subjected to, my parents were making negotiations with some guy I do not know in a bid to uphold the tradition.

"And if I refuse?"

"You can't refuse, Iris. This is your only chance at making us proud, especially after you went ahead to study that stupid course of yours." My father rose from where he was seated, close to my mother.

“It's always about you and your reputation. Always about what people will think and how high shoulders are raised.”

"You've had your time, Iris."

"So, I'm getting married to Isak." I shook my head, trying to remember his last name.

“Santos,” my dad chipped in. “Isak Santos. You had better start getting used to your husband’s name. Would do you much good.”

“Would you please not call him my husband yet?” I snapped. “You want me to get married to Isak Santos so that you can both feel good about yourselves?”

“This is for your good, darling; you'll see.” I had been so focused on my dad that I didn't know she had stood up from the couch until I felt her hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.

“Plus," my father stressed. "He’s a sweet guy and likes you very much. Isn't that what you kids are after these days?"

“Well, I don’t like him back,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Oh well, no one needs you to like him back, sugar pie,” my dad said sarcastically. “It was you who wanted to attend one of the best colleges in the country to study a course I find very sick. I mean, who still studies journalism when there are better courses?”

I sighed. I wasn’t shocked that my dad had to state his obvious dislike for my course of study.

“Despite my dislike for your course, I still went out of my way to fund your college education,” he said. “Maybe if you had studied one of those noble courses, we'd have left you to do whatever you deemed fit.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I stopped myself because I knew it was a lost cause, especially when my mother wasn't having my back. I agreed to meet with Isak in the hopes that I'd be able to get him to continue with the whole process.

Even though I had given up on waiting for Arthur, I didn't plan on forgetting him the way my parents were forcing me to.

****

The swiftness of the marriage ceremony made me wonder if I had a death sentence hovering over my head. It seemed like my family could not wait to send me off, and it broke my heart even more.

Isak Santos was very rich. He controlled chains of companies, so getting married to him wasn’t what I wanted; it was what my family wanted. Plus, he liked me too. Or so I thought.

According to my dad, he had liked me before I even got to know him or got married to him, so I hoped that as time passed, I would grow to love him and I would have the dream marriage that she had always dreamed about.

But what do people say about wishes being horses?