The voice note is still going, muffled now through the desk, Eleanor's voice reminding me about the bachelorette party tonight, and I sigh once, quietly, at no one.
***
The wine bar Eleanor chose is warm and dim and smells like dried roses and candles. The moment I push through the doorshe crosses the room and grabs both my hands like she's been waiting specifically for me, like I'm the thing that makes it real.
"You look tired," she says, studying my face.
Coming from Eleanor, that'sI love you and I see you and I'm watching, all compressed into three words. She has never once learned to be subtle about caring.
"I lookpolished," I correct her.
She laughs and pulls me toward the table, and for a moment the warmth of her hand around mine is enough.
Beth is already two glasses in, holding court with magnificent authority. Eleanor has one eye on her at all times with the weary, fond attention of someone who loves a person exactly as they are and is also slightly braced for what's coming.
Daniel's sister is at the far end of the table, quieter than the rest. I met her yesterday, and I liked her immediately.
The table fills quickly with the noise of women who genuinely like each other, laughter crossing laughter, everyone talking and no one minding. For a few minutes I stop performing. I just sit inside it and let it be enough.
Eleanor is mid-story about the florist disaster (something involving a miscommunication about peonies that spiralled into what sounds like a minor standoff) and the way her hands move when she talks, wide and theatrical, pulls the entire table toward her like gravity.
"He fixed it himself," she says, quieter now, meaning Daniel. The story shifts register in her voice, becomes something softer. "He saw it was bothering me, and he went and sorted it out for me."
That's the whole thing, isn't it.Someone who sees the problem and fixes it without needing credit, without needing you to witness it. Someone who does it because they care.
Beth tops up my glass with enormous ceremony, rises halfway from her chair in a way that suggests she has rehearsed thismoment internally, and announces: "To Eleanor, who is about to be extremely, annoyingly happy."
The table toasts with immediate enthusiasm. Eleanor covers her face with both hands and laughs into her palms, shoulders shaking, and she looks so luminously, defencelessly joyful that it almost physically hurts to look at her.
I drink, and I smile, and I mean it, and I ache. All at once, in equal measure, taking up the same space.
Beth turns to me with the particular gleam of someone who has had a thought and has decided not to vet it first. "You're next."
The laughter from the table is immediate and reflexive. It's the automatic group response to a familiar joke. But I feel it land somewhere low and quiet in my chest, like a key turning in the wrong lock.
Eleanor's foot connects with Beth's shin under the table. I can tell by the precise trajectory of Eleanor's shoulder and the small, wounded sound Beth makes.
"Beth." One word, one tone, the kind of delivery that communicates an entire conversation in a single syllable.
Beth's eyes go wide and then remorseful. "Sorry. I didn't mean—"
"It's fine," I say, already smiling, already waving my hand, already positioned approximately six inches above my own body watching myself be completely fine about it.
Eleanor watches me do this. She doesn't say anything, but she watches.
I refill Beth's glass partly because I'm generous and partly to redirect the table's collective attention, which works beautifully because Beth is, always and reliably, Beth.
***
An hour later the party has slid into the comfortable, slow part of the evening. The candles have burned lower. The voices are quieter. Someone has started a playlist that's mostly songs from a decade ago, and no one has complained.
Eleanor leans her head against my shoulder. "I can't believe this is actually happening."
I squeeze her hand.
She chose someone, I think,and he chose her back, and neither of them flinched.
I look into my wine glass, at the slow dark swirl of it, and finally let the thought I have been organising all day arrive in full.
George never got to choose me. I decided what he would choose before he ever had the question. I told myself it was practicality, self-awareness. That I was protecting us both from something messy and uncertain. But it wasn't. I was only ever protecting myself from the specific, particular humiliation of being someone's hesitation.
The candle on the table gutters once, catches itself, and keeps burning.
Tomorrow is Eleanor's wedding. George will be there in a suit, possibly with his collar slightly askew. He will be there, and I will see him, and I will have to exist in the same room as every choice I didn't make.
I finish my wine and set the glass down gently on the table, and I listen to Eleanor laugh at something Beth just said, full-throated and unguarded, the laugh of someone who has stopped waiting for the other shoe.
George is no longer mine to lose.
Because I never let him choose me.
