- Margot -
He was beaming as he stood before the priest, his eyes fixed on Kelsey like he was seeing her for the first time and knew life would never be the same.
I wondered how similar his expression must’ve looked the first time he saw her at that crowded frat party his sophomore year of college. Had he known then that his life would be changed forever?
Had he known then that he would be standing here five years later, surrounded by his friends and family as they waited with bated breath for that one moment, that moment when we’d get to hear the sincerity in the happy couple’s voices as they said I do?
He said he did. He said he knew the second he saw her that she was the woman for him. He said that, in that moment, everything else faded away, and he came to believe with a certainty he hadn’t known before that his future might be brighter than he’d ever thought possible.
Naturally, I couldn’t have been more delighted for him. He was my brother, after all. His happiness had been tied up in my own for as long as I could remember, and while I knew his marriage might alter the dynamic between us, that perpetual reality seemed unlikely to change.
Then again, our whole family’s happiness was wrapped up in his. I’m not exactly sure why. I suppose it was because Matt’s personality was so big and intense that you couldn’t help but feel what he was feeling.
As a kid, his joy could be felt anywhere in the house, and the same went for his frequent teenage angst. I didn’t know if his infectiousness was because he was a guy or the eldest or simply because he burned more intensely than most people, but it wasn’t the same for me.
I always kept my feelings more private, divulging them rarely and with great discomfort. Sometimes I wondered if this was because my parents were quite traditional, because my mom was similarly reserved, or if it was merely a biological personality quirk.
But just because I was a private person didn’t mean I didn’t crave the same things Matt did. And as much as I hated to be jealous of him on the most important day of his life to date, I couldn’t help it.
I wanted a big, bold, all-consuming love that lifted me when I was down and lifted me even higher when I was up. I wanted the kind of love I’d read about in books, the kind that’s so powerful it infects you. The kind that spreads through every nook and cranny of your whole body until you know you love someone not just with your heart and eyes, but with your brain and hands and toes.
I wanted that life-affirming, Disney kind of love. The kind that made men out of beasts and princesses out of humble maidens.
It wasn’t the wedding I envied. I didn’t care if I ever wore a fancy white dress or had a chance to hold the attention of an entire room full of people. That didn’t interest me. To be honest, there was only one person whose attention I wanted, whose attention made me feel seen, important, and loved…
And that person was Landon Bishop, my brother’s best friend.
I’d slipped my heart in his pocket years ago. Unfortunately, I was still waiting for him to notice. Sometimes I suspected he already had, though, since I often struggled to play it cool in his company.
But by the time I figured out that it wasn’t only his attention that I wanted, he was on his way to becoming a gentleman, and that’s exactly how he always acted…much to my disappointment.
He never crossed the line with me. Sure, he may have encouraged me with some mild flirtation, but he never led me on. Didn’t he know that I would’ve settled for that? That I would’ve been elated to enjoy even a glimmer of false hope that we might get together someday?
Then again, he never said no either. He never said he didn’t want my affection or that he didn’t want to return it. So, like any young girl, I read between every line I could to create a picture of our relationship that I could live with.
Because there was nothing I wanted more than to believe he’d loved me back this whole time and that, any minute now, he was going to make a woman out of me like I’d always known only he could.
After all, as my brother’s experience proved, once you know who you’re supposed to be with, there is no plan B. There is only that one reality you can live with. So as far as I was concerned, the only thing standing between me and my happily ever after was the fact that Landon hadn’t yet realized how perfect I was for him.
Of course, it didn’t look like that was about to happen in the next few minutes either. He was too busy beaming at the happy couple from his spot behind my brother, his shiny shoes occupying the marble stairs a few steps up from where I stood between the other bridesmaids, counting down the minutes until I could relax my face or let myself cry. God forbid I wept too early when I was third backup for Kelsey’s emergency tissue stash.
I looked back up from Landon’s shoes, letting my eyes linger briefly on the way his smile tugged to one side because of a scar that would be invisible to anyone who didn’t know it was there. I wondered if he ever studied me as closely as I admired him, if he’d even noticed that I’d grown up and out in all the right places or if he still saw a little girl when he looked at me.
I suspected he was aware of my changing body and mind because of what happened at my eighteenth birthday party, but that was years ago, and I’d seen him so few times since then…
I wondered what he was thinking as he watched his best friend tie the knot. Was he both happy and a smidge jealous, like I was? Or was he thinking about someone in particular, someone he loved or maybe thought he could?
If there was someone special in his life, I hadn’t heard about it, and he hadn’t brought a date to the wedding, which I’d been reading into since I noticed. A flicker of hope rose in me again, but I tried not to dwell on it in case my pathetic optimism was tangible from where he was standing.
But I knew it wasn’t. No one had ever been able to read me like that. I was a closed book, a book written in a language that only one person on Earth might be able to read… If only I could get him to open me up and drag his fingers across my pages.
Ugh. What a joke. How was I still so hung up on this guy? Sure, he looked good enough to drink in his tux beneath the soft lights seeping through the stained-glass windows, but that didn’t change the fact that he was still the same guy I’d watched shoot snot rockets as a kid. What the heck was wrong with me?
Yet, try as I might, I couldn’t reduce him to some gross memory. He was so much more than that. He’d been the one guy who couldn’t bear to see me cry and the one guy who’d do anything to make me laugh for as long as I could remember.
And I knew in my marrow that no matter what happened, I would love him till the day I died.
I took a deep breath, suddenly conscious of how hard my clammy hands had been gripping my bouquet and relaxed them. Then I turned my mind back to the night of my eighteenth birthday, felt my smile widen, and refocused on the happy couple just in time to catch their vows.