13
I dreaded the summer with everything in me, because I knew what was coming. The extravagant embossed invitations, paid for by a Mrs. Tracy Taubman Ellis, were impossible to ignore. Even from up here. The love of my life was getting married.
If you would’ve told me a year ago that my broken, depressed boy would be walking down an aisle, I would’ve laughed. But slowly at first, then faster and faster, I have watched Lily’s love transform him from the inside out. He still has broken parts, sure, but between those pieces he is so strong and so happy. And strangely, I am almost grateful.
Lily’s taste is impeccable. Just another thing to hate about her. She has a thing for vintage glamour, and the Casa Marina Hotel in Jacksonville Beach is bathed in shades of cream and ivory today. A great wedding cake of a hotel on the Atlantic coast, heart-achingly close to our pier, it is a perfect setting for such an occasion. Elegant vases of white roses adorn the hallways, and the veranda overlooking the ocean has been decked out with temporary black-and-white tiles like a 1940s movie set. I watch Cooper stand on a cramped balcony before the ceremony, looking out at the sea, the same sea he looked at next to me. Isn’t it a beautiful relief that no matter what temporary misery you are dealing with, there are still oceans out there just waiting to be admired?
As the wind blows, I admire him. The strong curve of his nose, his twinkling eyes, his deeply tanned skin, his upturned mouth: he is worth every second of misery up here. This boy is magnificent.
Soon he creeps down a hall and enters the bridal suite through a side door. Lily has asked for a moment alone, so the room is quiet and empty when he slips in to see his bride.
“Babe,” she says, her heart all aflutter and her stomach in knots. Even I cannot deny that she looks absolutely breathtaking as a bride. Her elegant gown, her diamond necklace, her subdued chignon: she was born for silver-service occasions like this one. “You’re not supposed to…you can’t be here.”
“I know. I just wanted to give you your wedding present,” he says as he reaches into his jacket. “You know how I am with public displays of affection, and I won’t be able to hold it together if I give this to you at the reception.”
He hands her a notebook. She takes it and opens it, but she doesn’t quite understand. On each page is one sentence, but it seems to be written in a different language on every single page.
“You wrote a book for me?” she asks, her voice quivering.
“Not exactly.” He reaches over and starts flipping through the pages. “Look – it says ‘I love you,’ in a hundred different languages. I stayed up online for three hours researching how to write it all out.”
“But…why?”
He takes a breath, closes his eyes. Is he in heaven or hell?
“Because all of these put together couldn’t come close to what I feel for you,” he says. “I didn’t know how to say it, so I used Google Translate instead.”
Tears fill her eyes. We are both in love with him. Then she sort of laughs. “The platinum watch I got you isn’t feeling so special anymore. God, I feel pathetic now.”
He wraps an arm around her shoulder, breathing onto her forehead. I miss him so much it hurts the body I don’t even have. “Don’t give me your money,” Cooper says, golden hair shining. “Just give me love. That’s all I need, Lily. Just love. Just you. Oh, and there is one message, in the back. A Cooper Nichols original. Read it.”
“Now?”
“Why not?” he blushes, and she flips to the back and reads the handwritten note:
Just as trees accumulate rings around their cores to signify their age, so do human hearts. As we get older and start to experience heartbreak and failure and disappointment, we surround our hearts with more and more rings of protection to buffer us from the cruel world in which we find ourselves. This place is hard, and it is natural for us to self-preserve. We put up a wall here, erect a barrier there, until suddenly we are buried alive, suffocating under what we thought would save us. But thank you for coming in and slicing through my rings. Thank you for uncovering what I’d buried. I’m all yours now.
She stares up at him. The words spilling from his mouth and pen are gorgeous, but they are not showing in his eyes. He is still out to sea, and maybe that will never change. It’s hitting her now all over again: part of him is somewhere else, and she has no idea where that might be.
And wrapped in white silk and diamonds, locked in a crystal house of silent horrors, she watches her gorgeous world spin apart, helplessly in love.
And then I realize something else: I will no longer be able to send Cooper the Muse. Not for a while, at least. How will he be able to write a novel about his lost love when he is falling for someone else? How will I be able to pass on the lessons of my life now? What have I done?
I calm myself and whisper I’ll just have to take things as I did back on Earth: one day at a time.
As I leave the room, I chide myself. I wanted him to move on, not sink deeper into a mess. Did I do the right thing in sending them for each other? Didn’t I want him to find happiness, to stay on Earth? How could I have known that their love would run away like a brakeless train, threatening to jump the tracks at any second? I am so stupid. And God, it’s not Lily’s fault. I want to hate her, but I can’t. She is the same as me, deep down at the bottom of things. All she wants is to love and feel love in return. We are all the same, here on this blue jewel spinning on blackness: a vast sea of little children yearning to reach out and feel the comfort of love, to know we belong somewhere.
But like a moth to misery, I am drawn to the ceremony. I sift back in and watch from the aisles, listening to the preacher.
“Cooper Nichols has always loved the summer,” he says, and Cooper freezes up so suddenly, Lily notices.
“What is it?” she hiss-whispers. He shakes his head, and I see them in his mind: the images of me. Palm trees. Confetti cake. Tears. He is still not over it. Not fully. And I can’t help it: I cry with joy.
“But when Lily Taubman stepped into his life on that October day, he learned a new appreciation for the fall,” the pastor says, and Cooper sighs, relief sliding down him. The pastor has no idea about me, and why would he? So Cooper listens in a daze as the ceremony rolls forward with relentless motion.
“Does anyone have any reason why these two should not join in holy matrimony?” the pastor asks ten minutes later, pausing for this antiquated wedding ritual. “Besides because of the fact that they are putting the rest of the human genome to shame with their Hollywood looks?”
As the crowd laughs, I consider speaking up. Here it is – my big movie moment.
“Don’t do it, Cooper,” I would say, rising from the crowd. “Don’t do it. I still love you. That will never change. So pick me. Run away with me. I can save you. I will be your date for a million Valentine’s Days. I swear it.”
And then I remember that I am a ghost. I am a girl evaporated. I am nowhere.
As the preacher drones towards the finish line, Cooper looks up at the sunset, and I sense that his thoughts are wandering to me. Oh, Cooper, I think. He is wondering if I am here. He knows I am here, actually, wishing him well, sending him off in a cloak of love, but his brain won’t listen. He is still angry underneath all that – but angry about what?
Why am I so good at figuring out everyone but the one I love?
I forgive you, I whisper into a gust of wind he will never notice. I’m so proud of you. Congratulations.
Lily catches him staring up at the sun, and so he leans in and whispers something I wish I didn’t hear. “Hey, kid.”
“Yes?”
“I just want you to know that I’m gonna love you forever.”
She turns a rosy blush against her creamy satin, and even though he couldn’t marry me, I am glad he married her. “I love you too, Cooper. I love you.”
She tries to believe his words, but there it is again – that strange distance in his eyes. It was like looking out of a sunroof on a rainy day. She was in love with him, and he was somewhere else. She could just sense it. All women could. Was it just his artistic-ness, or was something more happening? People talk about hotels or cemeteries being haunted, but a human heart can be just as full of ghosts. But to look past the spirits and believe that humans are precious and pure and actually onto something here on this doomed planet: this is the mark of a true romantic. So Lily smiles past the terror and takes her husband’s hand. She blushes at him, and suddenly I think: there she is. There’s the irresistibly shy girl he fell for the first night they met. There is such softness under her dignified exterior, and it is a juxtaposition anyone could fall in love with. Even me. Even after all this.
The ceremony ends. The guests rise. And draped in white lace and fear, Cooper and Lily Nichols walk down the petal-strewn aisle and step into the future I prayed for. I watch them slip into the vintage limo parked beside the sprawling Mediterranean splendor of the Casa Marina, and for a moment I pause and imagine my hand being the one he leads into the car, my shoulder being the one he rests on as the champagne drowsiness sets in on the way to the airport, my knee being the one his hand squeezes when they hit turbulence on the way to their sun-drenched honeymoon in San Juan and his heart contracts with fear. But no amount of regret can alter yesterday, and no amount of worry can stop tomorrow from coming. So the clouds drop out from under me as I soar up above the bleeding Florida sunset, leaving them to soak in their bliss.
I will see this marriage through. I will guard him. It is my job, after all. I will hold Cooper’s hand through the wreckage of me, no matter how hard it gets, and then I will make him the biggest author the world has ever known. I promise this on every solar system I have ever seen, and all the other ones, too.