Chapter thirty-four
Tessa
Ismooth the front of my dress once before stepping into the aisle, steadying myself before anyone can see.
Then the music swells and my heels find the rhythm of it, one step, then another, each one deliberate. Every face in the pews rotates toward me like flowers tracking light, and I feel the collective weight of being looked at settle across my shoulders.
I think about Eleanor's voice this morning, firm and immediate:I'm not rearranging my wedding because you and my brother don't know how to handle your feelings.Then the softer version of her, the one that came after a beat of silence:You helped build this day.I had offered to step down and she had refused before I finished the sentence, which somehow made it worse and better at the same time.
The altar comes into view and I fix my eyes on the flowers arranged at its base instead of the stupidly handsome man already waiting for his sister beside the groom. Because flowers are neutral and safe and they do not have feelings.
I reach the front and turn into position. The relief of stopping lasts exactly half a second.
George is standing directly across from me.
The distance between us is unmerciful. Close enough that I can see the line of his jaw, the faint shadow of tension there, far enough that I cannot do anything about it. He looks composed, and formal, with every button where it should be. But his hands are clasped in front of him a little too tightly, the knuckles edged with pale.
He doesn't look at me. Instead he is watching Beth as she comes down the aisle next.
Beth slides into place beside me and whispers, "You good?" without moving her lips, which is a skill I genuinely admire.
"Perfect," I whisper back, which is the most efficient lie I have told all week.
The music shifts and the whole room draws a single quiet breath. Eleanor appears at the end of the aisle, and she is radiant. I watch Daniel's face change in real time as he sees her, something cracking open in it that he doesn't try to hide.
George exhales slowly beside him. Long and carefully measured. It's the kind of breath you take when you are actively managing yourself. I recognize that technique because I use it. He is regulating something, which means there is something to regulate, which means I am not the only one fighting to stand still.
Eleanor reaches the front and hands her bouquet to Beth, and then she and Daniel take each other's hands, and the officiant begins to speak. The words become a kind of architecture around us, holding everyone in their correct positions.
Then the officiant says the wordchoose, and something in my chest pulls sharply sideways.
I had spent three months telling myself that George pulled away because I hadn't mattered enough. The thought had grownso familiar I'd stopped questioning it, the way you stop noticing a scar. But standing here, watching his jaw hold that tension, watching him work so hard to look like he isn't working at all, I can't help but thinkwhat if I mattered so much he didn't know what to do with it.
My breath catches on that idea the way fabric catches on a nail. Small and sudden and impossible to ignore.
He'd been holding everything at once. His family's expectations, his professional reputation, whatever quiet and terrifying thing we were becoming and he hadn't been able to hold it all. That is not the same thing as not caring. Those are different things.
What if he had been choosing me, and I had already started walking away.
I had not waited. I had not asked. I had decided the outcome in advance and executed it, efficiently, the way I execute everything, and I had called it self-preservation.
George shifts his weight almost imperceptibly across from me. I notice it the way I notice everything about him, apparently, against my will and better judgment. He still won't look at me, and I can't tell if that's discipline or distance, and I'm not sure which answer frightens me more.
Eleanor and Daniel exchange vows in voices low enough to feel private even across a room full of people holding their breath. "I choose you," Daniel says, "on every ordinary day and every impossible one," and I hear Beth sniffle beside me with absolutely no attempt at subtlety.
I think:what if he stopped trying because I told him to, and he actually listened, and this would be the cruelest possible moment for him to finally, finally listen to me.The thought almost makes me laugh, which would be catastrophic, so I press my lips together very firmly and think about the centerpieces.The ranunculus. The eucalyptus. The forty-seven emails it took to get the ribbon the right shade of ivory.
Eleanor says her vows. George's expression does something complicated—he loves his sister enormously, and watching him try not to show it, watching him blink once and reset, is one of the most quietly devastating things I have ever seen.
The officiant pronounces them married and the room erupts and I finally,finally, exhale.
***
The walk back down the aisle dissolves into applause and warm chaos, and I do not look at George, which requires more sustained effort than anything else I have done today, including existing in his direct eyeline for the past thirty minutes.
In the post-ceremony noise I peel away from the group and move toward a side hallway, following the pull of somewhere quieter, somewhere I can put my face in a different expression for a moment without anyone analyzing it. I find my clutch on a chair near the coatroom and hold it with both hands. The exit at the end of the hall is propped open onto an afternoon that has nothing to do with any of this—blue sky, a breeze, the smell of cut grass and car exhaust. Practical. Uncomplicated.
"You're not leaving before the reception, are you?"
