I checked my watch.Go time was in twenty minutes.I was starting to have a panic attack when someone knocked on the bedroom door.
“You can just come in, Bex,” I said.
The door opened, and Joel stepped in.
“Bexley said you needed some help,” he said.
Joel was wearing a tux, and, of course, his tie was perfectly tied.He was only four months older than I was, but I felt like a kid next to him.He’d gone to Juilliard and acted on Broadway.If he hadn’t been Eddie’s best friend, I would never have met someone like him, and no way would he have been so nice to me—gone out of his way to be nice to me.
I picked the tie off the bed.“I can’t....”
Joel took it from me.“Turn around.Face the mirror.”
He came up behind me and draped the tie around my neck.And he tied it perfectly the first time.Like it was easy.His hands were rock steady.
“You would have made a good surgeon,” I said.
Joel laughed quietly.“I almost was.”
“Really?”
“Mmm.But I would have been a very unhappy doctor.Reg helped me see that and discover who I really wanted to be.”
The way Joel said Reg’s name sounded like he owed his life to Reg.I felt the same way about Eddie.If I’d never met him, my life would have been miserable, and I would never have known why.I wouldn’t be tap dancing.I would have been taking abuse from my parents and my sister and letting them crush me.I wouldn’t have been here in this beautiful house by the lake with all my friends, about to get married.
It was like Joel could read my mind.He caught my eye in the mirror and smiled at me, and I smiled back.
“I’ll see you down there,” he said.
“Yeah...thanks.”
Joel left.I checked my watch.Ten minutes.I started going over all this stuff in my head, stuff I needed to do for the wedding.We could have had a simple service at city hall.And part of me was in a rush to marry him.But a bigger part of me wanted our wedding to be special, for him.Just twenty guests, my friends and his, at our house.Eddie hadn’t invited Tommy and Edgar.He told me Joel had taught him what real friendship was, and what he had with Tommy was just memories, not friendship.
There was another knock at the door.
“Come in, Bex.”
It wasn’t Bex or Joel this time.It was Eddie.He came in with his hair all slicked back, not messy like it usually was, and so dark it looked almost brown.
“Hey,” he said.
“What the hell, Eddie?We’re not supposed to see each other before the wedding.It’s bad luck.”
“Says who?”
“I don’t know.People.”
“You look good,” he said.He stroked my tux with the back of his hand like he was brushing something off it, but there wasn’t anything there.
“Joel tied my tie,” I said.
“Yeah, mine too.”
He moved in closer and put his arms around me, and I put my arms around him and held him, listening to him breathe.And the calm feeling that only he could give me came back, the assurance that everything was going to be okay.It was a privilege to be able to love him and such a gift that he loved me back.And it was so overwhelming that I started sobbing, because I realized I could stop trying to make everything perfect.It already was.
I had to let him go because I didn’t want to get snot on his tux.I sniffed and looked around for a Kleenex.He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out to me, and it was so not the kind of thing I’d ever seen him do before that I laughed and took it and blew my nose.
“Bexley said you didn’t eat lunch,” he said.
