He sat in the middle of the table, looking around at his family and friends gathered around him as his hands bunched together under the white table cloth. Underneath his tux coat his white shirt was sticking to him, the ends crumpled beneath a belt that he had pulled into a notch just too tight. His Best Man had fixed his tie, his mother had cried and his sister had walked gracefully down the aisle in a dress the colour of a summer’s sky, the deep blue that promised stars at dusk. His lips had trembled and his eyes had threatened rain. But he had held still, quiet, reserved for the day.
The little church was one they had grown up beside, walking by it every day of high school. He had watched as her school dress shrunk from below her knees to just above her thighs. He had stood outside her bedroom, waiting for her to throw open her door to fashion parade her causal day clothes. He wasn’t her only friend, but he was the only one who lived a street away for “emergencies” – and who she said she could overlook the “boy factor”. She still shut her door.
But one day she left the door open a crack. When she moved to open the door she found it open, and nervously checked her audience. He sat with his back to the door.
She opened the door wider, allowing him into her world. She showed him where she had written her pain on the wall behind her bed. He listened to her, talked to her, cared for her. She trusted him. He waited in the room for her casual day parade. They had pulled the bed away together, and together they had painted over it when she moved to college.
They wrote letters. He told her about his new friends and she told him about hers. He joined the geek clubs, and she bought alcohol at hers. He got a new haircut, a job and roommate. She got a tattoo that snaked around her shoulders.
She stopped writing back.
He travelled to her college, crossing his arms self-consciously over a shirt that reminded the world of pacman. He knocked on her door. He banged on her door. He found her key messily bluetacked to the inside of a pot that smelled like an ashtray.
He felt his heart thud against his shirt, fear written across his heart. He pushed the door open against the tide of dirty clothing. She lay on the kitchen floor, her hair the colour of chestnuts fanned out around her, streaked orange and green. A cigarette packet lay strewn across the floor next to an empty bottle.
He backed away to her bedroom, pulling away her bed to read the words written behind the bedhead. What do I do with myself now? I don’t want to disappoint him. I want him to believe in me. I’m a long way away from the girl who worried about causal day clothes.
He walked over to fall down beside her, pulling her head into his lap. There he quietly cried, tears sliding down his face to land like dew drops in her hair. He cried for her fear, for her pain, for her suffering. For the pit she couldn’t climb out of. She shuddered at his touch, fighting to lift her body to meet his eyes.
There he kissed her. He kissed her mouth coated in ash, drugs and alcohol. There he reminded her of the girl she had been. A girl who still held fears, however shared them with one who wouldn’t turn her away. Who shared them with a boy that had turned his back for her. She let him in again. She felt her body struggle against the weight tied to her ankle. But he held her; he showed her a world where nights were filled with stars within the blackness. He found the light that made up her shadows and walked within them with her. He stood by her as she found the key to the ball that bound her.
Their wedding day was built on a friendship no one could deny. A journey that had let the streaks in her hair fade to memory. She had picked the colours, the church, the dresses, the cake. He had proposed to her in a furniture shop, kneeling before her behind a bed with his intentions scrawled along the wall.
And yet. The time they had held was too short.
The tux coat he wore hid the blood stains that ran along just where his heart lay. No matter how he had scrubbed at the stain, in his mind it only bloomed brighter. It seeped into his heart. He pressed a hand to his throat where her wedding and engagement rings crossed into each other. A car crash had taken her from him, a single moment in time that jarred his future to a course he never would have chosen.
But this was their day. Their moment. Her day would not be ignored.
He stood and cleared his throat, watching a hush settle over the guests like leaves drifting softly to the ground. He felt his world threaten to crash, becoming a tower of blocks swaying precariously by a toddler’s hand. Gripping the table, he looked out at the people who loved him. Who loved them.
“My Laura glowed wherever she stood. She burned with a passion that life gives few. Once that fire scorched her, and she crumpled to ashes. However, she grew from it. And my wife… my-my Laura, would want us to know she had won.”
When he got home that night he walked slowly to his room, pulling away the bed with a savage tug. And there he wrote everything she had ever written. Words filled with emotion.
Words of earning. Of fear. Of hope. Of anger.
Of love.
He laid his head on a pillow just as light peaked into his windows. Closing his eyes he felt her slender hands press into his own, a phantom leaning over to lay a goodnight kiss on her lone audience from long ago.
What did he write throughout those long hours you ask?
Only he truly knows.
ns 15.158.61.51da2
