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“You should have more faith,” he answers.
I give Mason big eyes. “What was the miracle pep talk about?”
He waves his free hand in the air. “How I should stop thinking about how I was undeserving of her.”
“Youareundeserving of her.”
“Thank you, Jameson. That means a lot. That was the point of the pep talk, actually. That everyone is undeserving of a person like Charlotte. I just had to get over myself.”
“I concede. That’s a good pep talk.”
We look out at the cathedral again. Most of the guests must be inside already, because there aren’t too many people at the doors. A woman in a dark suit—one of the wedding coordinators, I think—walks across the lobby. Narthex. Whatever it’s called in places like this. She looks like she’s talking to someone, which has to be a good sign.
I give the cathedral itself another once-over. It’s nice, in a traditional way. It looks likea weddingis about to happen here. The light pours in through the windows on these perfect fairy-tale angles, making everybody in the pews glow a little bit with our special day.
I mean to think about it at a cynical distance, but I can’t.
Itisa special day. I don’t see how it matters if we’re doing this to tell the world in general and Lily’s grandfather in particular that they can fuck off and leave us alone. Not the guests, I mean. They can come to the reception. Lily’s grandfather can fuck off.
The reason doesn’t matter. That’s my point. My point is that when I finally did propose, Lily said yes. I was balls-deep in her at the time, so there’s some small possibility that she was swayed by my prowess with my dick, but I don’t think that’s what got me over the finish line.
I think she’s into me.
I think she mightloveme.
And I think I fucking love her.
I might even plain love her.
It doesn’t feel very plain. It feels like sunbeams at fairy-tale angles through cathedrals and Lily’s red hair shining in that same light and all of my siblings laughing at the same time. It feels like waking up in my old bedroom at the house I lived in with my mom and dad and knowing that everything was going to be okay. It feels like seeing an angel and realizing that the terror is part of the beauty, because when you witness something that beautiful, you’re never going to be the same.
When you witnesssomeonethat beautiful, you’re right to be terrified. Because the old you doesn’t exist anymore. The old you has gone on to somewhere else.
Maybe somewhere with a green field dotted with daisies and trees in the distance and a river sparkling under the sky.
I don’t know.
The string quartet goes back to the music they were playing before. I’m pretty sure that’s not what they’re supposed to be playing.
“Where are they?” I ask Mason, though he’s standing up here without his phone in his hand, same as I am.
“I don’t know.” His forehead creases. “I thought they’d come in while I was telling you about my knee.”
“Should we send somebody to look? Maybe Lily’s knee hurts.”
“It might be something with the dress. Or the makeup. I don’t know,” he says. “Sometimes the person wearing the dress needs more time than they think.”
“I left buffer time in the schedule,” Gabriel says. “They should have had more than enough time to get her into her dress and take photos. There was even time for her hair to be completely ruined and re-done.”
“Nice,” I tell him.
“Thanks,” he says.
If Gabriel’s trying to hide the concern in his voice, he’s not doing a very good job.
“If they don’t show up in three minutes, I’m going to pretend to have a nervous breakdown,” I announce.
“That’ll be believable,” Gabriel sings.
