“What’re you doing sitting here alone? They’ll be serving dinner soon,” he said.
“I’m not finding I have much of an appetite.”
“I paid for that fillet. Don’t you waste it, now.”
Wren chuckled.
“Wren, right?” She nodded. “Yeah, I remember. Something got you down?”
“Just feeling…a lot.” Sad, happy, excited, nervous. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff. Everything she had ever known in her life was about to change, all of it at once.
Paul exhaled loudly. “Boy, I feel that.”
“I like seeing my best friend so excited. And Tristan’s a good guy and all. But I’m afraid that I’m going to lose her. Does that make sense?”
“Did you forget who you’re talking to?”
“You’re just her dad, what do you know? I’m her best friend! You couldn’t possibly understand the bond we have,” she teased.
“Well, it’s good practice, anyway. Feeling this way.”
“How do you mean?”
“I hope I’m not going out on a limb by asking if you’re pregnant?” he said, as Wren could barely even stand up straight. She also had a permanent grimace on her face from the sheer exhaustion and pain of carrying this kid around.
“Get used to the feeling. You’re supposed to celebrate all these milestones that mark the passage of time, but all they mark is your time with them slipping away. Off to school! Sixteenth birthday! Learning to drive! Graduating college! Let’s all eat a goddamn cake! And then the day they find someone else to take care of them is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life?” He blew a raspberry in the air.
“Fuck, man,” Wren said. “I haven’t even had this baby yet; why are you doing this to me? I came over here to collect myself, not to hurl myself over the ledge.”
“You could be eating steak and getting ready to hit the dance floor, but you wanted to sit here and talk to a sad old man who just gave his daughter away. That was your choice.”
Wren laughed.
“I guess I should get back. I’ve never danced at a weddingbefore, believe it or not. Won’t be too many more of these where I’m going, which is apparently the grave.”
Paul nodded. “The next phase of your friendship with Charlie will be new, and it will be different. Will it be better? I don’t know. But it will be. So there’s that.”
“That sucks.”
“Tough,” he said.
“And what about you and your little girl? What’s your next phase look like?” she asked him. She had seen him struggling walking down the aisle. But his tears were gone and now all that was left was this deep, still sadness. Is this what she was going to look like someday, some twenty- or thirty-odd years in the future?
“Oh, I’m screwed,” he said. “And they don’t even want to have kids, so there’s another dagger. Good thing I love my wife, though. I’ve still got her. That’s all I really need.”
No matter what else happened, she thought, she would still have Arthur. That’s why it had to be this way. Why he had to be her number one, and Tristan had to be Charlie’s.
“Now, go on before I drive you even deeper into depression,” the old man joked.
“Do you think…you could give me a hand off this railing?”
And now it was Charlie’s dad laughing.
“I was gonna ask you the same thing.”
With that, and a deep, steadying breath, she was ready to do the damn thing.
When Wren returned to the bar area, Arthur had managed to snag a private moment with Tristan. She watched the two ofthem knowing they were only friends by proxy, really, and that Arthur had a vague distaste for Tristan. He wasn’t everyone’s flavor, after all.
