Erika Krouse - Come Up and See Me Sometime

“Ready for it?” I asked, suddenly looking away from the window.

“Yeah, I guess she meant that she was okay with the idea,” Gary said.

“Is that what she meant?”

“I didn’t ask,” he said. “Who knows what anyone thinks anyway?”

I PLAYED piano at a Presbyterian wedding, for a friend of a friend. The piano was good, the flowers were fragrant, the dress was misty white. The stained glass was blue.

They looked at each other and cried through the service. They choked on their vows. They said, “Yes, I will.” I cried too as they clutched each other and kissed and kissed and kissed.

AT NANCY and Gary’s wedding reception, Johnny and I did the wave-salute at each other from our respective tables. He had brought a date; she was blond, drunk, and kissing him. I had no date, but my stomach was the flattest it had ever been.

Johnny asked me to dance. I pulled close to him and smiled at his date.

“I think she’s the one,” he said.

“The one what?” I asked.

“You know,” he said. But I didn’t—not really.

I left him alone in the middle of the dance floor and asked someone else to dance. He said no, so I asked someone else. He also said no, looking at his curly-haired date.

Gary, the groom, waited for me at my abandoned table. “Do you want to dance?”

“No,” I said, “I want nothing.”

“Look at her,” he said, and pointed to his bride. So I did. Her dress was enormous—she was packed in like a lace sausage. She thumped someone on the back so hard that his hors d’oeuvre flew out of his hand and dropped to the floor.

“I love her,” Gary said, “I love her completely. My love for her is complete.”

And it was. Complete. And I wasn’t. Completely. Relief and fear tangled together, like the hands of women clutching in the air for a falling bouquet of something.

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