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Well, fuck.
This was awkward.
I walked down the aisle to meet her.
Step by step, I headed in her direction, moving toward her as quickly as I could, and when her knees began to buckle, I was right there to catch her. She wrapped her arms around me, holding me tight in her beautiful white dress that looked as if it had been made solely for her. She looked like a goddess who’d been struck down by lightning. Shit wasn’t fair. From what I could tell, Aaliyah seemed like a good person. This kind of crap shouldn’t happen to good people. Jason was an asshole for what he’d done.
“Why wasn’t I enough?” she cried, repeating those words over and over again as the pain in her heart poured out of every part of her being.
I didn’t know what to say or how to make her feel better, so I pulled her closer to me, holding her weary body against mine. I remained quiet and still as she lost herself within my arms. I wouldn’t try to fix her, because one can never fix what is broken. Sometimes you just have to stand in the wreckage and hope you can learn to live within the new shattered pieces.
* * *
“You don’t haveto stay with me,” she said as we sat on the ground in front of the altar. We’d been there for quite some time, at least an hour, yet I wasn’t going to leave her side until she was ready to walk away. The woman had just been stood up on her wedding day; the least I could do was sit with her.
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. I’m sure you have better things you could be doing, more important things.”
I didn’t say a word. It was clear she was feeling lost, abandoned, alone, and I knew if it were me, I’d hate to be by myself. So I refused to leave her there on her own. I saw it in her eyes each time she told me I could go, a small hope that I’d choose to stay. She just needed one person who wouldn’t walk out on her that afternoon. Therefore, I stayed.
Her knees were bent and pulled into her chest as she hugged them, staring forward into the distance. “The reception would be starting right now,” she whispered. “There would be music, and dancing, and happiness…wine. Gosh, I could go for some wine. Couldn’t you go for some wine?” she asked, tilting her head in my direction. Her eyes were bloodshot, puffy, and covered in mascara.
I didn’t reply.
She hopped up. “I think I’ll go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“To the reception.”
“What?”
She nodded her head, obviously in a state of shock because she was talking insane. “Yeah, you know…just to check it out.”
“What? No. That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, it is. Can you drive me?”
“Huh? No,” I flatly stated. “Of course I won’t drive you there.”
“But earlier, you said you’d drive me anywhere I wanted to go. You swore you would.”
Women and their impeccable memories.
“I don’t think that’s a healthy choice…”
“But it’s a choice, and I’m sure you’re sick of sitting here, so we should go there.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Connor.”
“What?”
