Michael was about to marry Jessica, a former model who wasn’t the nicest person in the world. During the wedding, a homeless man showed up, which made Jessica lose her marbles until Michael revealed the shock of who he was and made a surprising decision.
Michael adjusted his tie and waited with a feeling of dread as his fiancée walked down the aisle with her father. He should’ve been elated at that moment. Why was he so nervous? Wedding jitters? It didn’t seem like it. Even the groomsmen – his friends from college – didn’t look that happy for him. Was this a mistake?
He knew that Jessica wasn’t the nicest person in the world. She was gorgeous, tall, in shape, and a former model. He also knew she had been attracted to him because he had a successful business, which he built from the ground up. But she had always been great to him. They fell in love quickly, moved in together, and he proposed soon after.
He initially didn’t have any problems with his fiancée until she told him something important only a week before the ceremony. “Maria is not allowed at the wedding, Michael,” she said decisively.
“Security! Security! Get this filthy bum off MY WEDDING! DAD, do something!” Jessica screamed hysterically.
“What?” he asked, shocked at the message. Maria was his best friend in the entire world. They had grown up in an orphanage in Maryland together and were there for each other for years, despite never getting romantic.
“Yeah. It’s my wedding, so I get to decide who comes. She can’t come. Plus, she’s super ugly. I don’t want her in my pictures,” Jessica continued, shrugging her shoulders.
Michael mumbled, “It’s my wedding too, and she’s my best friend.”
Suddenly, his fiancée’s eyes went directly to his, and she raised an eyebrow in defiance. “And I’m going to be your wife. So it’s time to choose because I won’t allow you to see her after we get married. It’s her or me.”
Michael became quiet after that, and Jessica returned to her phone, thinking she had won that exchange. In part, she had. But ever since that day, Michael had been having second thoughts. He told Maria she couldn’t come to the wedding, and although she was sad, she agreed.
“All I want is your happiness. If Jessica makes you happy, then I won’t go. I’ll follow your lead,” she told him through the phone. He could tell she was disappointed but didn’t want to admit it. Hell, he was disappointed too. He had no idea what to do, and the wedding loomed and loomed closer.
Suddenly, Jessica snapped him out of his thoughts, arriving in front of him on the aisle and calling his attention. He grabbed her hand, and they were about to turn to the priest when she suddenly snapped, “Oh my god, who let a homeless man into MY wedding?”
She said it so loudly that Michael turned to look in the same direction and saw all the guests doing the same. An older man in worn clothes stood at the end of the aisle. He seemed unsure of himself, but he stood there and looked directly at Michael.
“Security! Security! Get this filthy bum off MY WEDDING! DAD, do something!” Jessica screamed hysterically, and Michael looked at her face. The disdain in her voice and the pure vitriol in her eyes sent a cold, dark shock through his spine. Had she always been like this?
But he didn’t want to ponder it too long. He was still intrigued about the seemingly homeless man who had shown up at the wedding. The man raised his head, looked straight into Michael’s eyes, and grinned. That was when Michael realized who he was and had to stop Jessica’s hateful screams.
“He came to me,” he spoke up loud enough, and everyone looked at him as he let go of Jessica’s hand and rushed to the older man, wrapping him tightly in a hug. “Grandpa Sam!”
“My dear boy!” the man said with his head on Michael’s shoulder.
“How did you get here?”
“Maria has been looking for me for a while now. She said I was her wedding gift to you. I don’t know what that’s about. But she’s a nice girl. She drove me here and said she couldn’t come in with me but to go ahead,” Grandpa Sam revealed, not letting go of Michael for a second.
And his words penetrated deeply into the businessman’s mind. Maria had found Grandpa Sam for him so that he could come to his wedding. Grandpa Sam was the closest thing to family Michael had left, aside from his friends and Maria herself.
When his parents died under unexpected circumstances at their house, Michael wandered off and got too close to the Chester River. He might have drowned if Grandpa Sam – who had been walking through that area begging for money – hadn’t found him.
The older man introduced himself as Grandpa Sam, and he was the first adult that ever made Michael feel safe. He later called the police, and they took him to an orphanage. Michael had never forgotten Grandpa Sam, and when he achieved success, he started trying to find him again to take him off the streets if he was still in that situation.
He had not been able to find him yet, but the man was now here. All because of Maria. She had done this.
“Michael!” Jessica snapped at him. “What’s going on? Who is that filthy man? Get him out of here! We have a wedding to continue!”
Michael separated from the older man and looked at Jessica’s angry face. And for the first time since he had laid eyes on her, he saw her for what she truly was. Ugly. Pure Ugly. In fact, he had no idea what he had found so beautiful about her. Because the awfulness dripping off her features overshadowed her hot body or model-like face, and that was when he decided.
“You know what, Jessica? We’re not getting married. Not now. Not ever. You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I can’t imagine being happy with someone like you,” Michael snapped at her face, glaring at her.
“What?” she asked, her features contorting in pure hatred.
From afar, Michael heard his groomsmen whopping and cheering. He gestured for them to leave, then he guided Grandpa Sam out of the church and into his car in the parking lot. Jessica, her family, and friends yelled at them the entire time. It was a huge scene, but the dread in Michael’s gut had utterly disappeared.
He called Maria immediately and drove directly to her house, where they had dinner with Grandpa Sam and his groomsmen. This outcome was better than what would’ve been waiting for him if the ceremony had continued.
Later that night, he pulled Maria aside. “Thank you. Thank you for everything. For being my friend. For finding Grandpa Sam. For everything. And I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking with Jessica,” Michael apologized, holding Maria’s shoulders tightly.
“Don’t mention it. Let’s forget about that… woman,” she said, stumbling with her words to avoid saying something harsher. They both laughed and continued their pleasant night between good friends and the kind older man.
At last, Michael managed to get Grandpa Sam off the streets, and years later, he married Maria, the real love of his life.
