I had memorised the way they curved when she was trying not to smile, the way they pressed together when she was thinking about something serious. The way they parted when I touched her just right, the soft sounds that would escape them when she forgot to be self-conscious.
The way they felt against mine in the darkness of my room when the rest of the world ceased to exist.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I clicked on her profile, the sound so loud I was sure the elderly woman feeding pigeons nearby could hear it. Or maybe it was just me exaggerating.
The main grid was empty. Typical Kelechi.
She’d always been private about social media, said it felt too performative, too much like putting on a show for strangers.
But there was a small number next to the tagged photos section that made my stomach drop.
I hesitated, my thumb hovering over the screen. To be honest, this felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, knowing I was about to jump but unable to stop myself from looking down first.
I tapped it anyway.
The first photo began loading with the sluggish cruelty of torture, and I could hear my pulse in my ears, could taste the metallic tang of anxiety on my tongue.
When the image finally sharpened into focus, the air left my lungs in a rush that left me dizzy.
She was sitting in a restaurant booth, wearing a white satin robe that caught the overhead lighting and made her skin glow. A rhinestone tiara sat slightly crooked on her dark hair, catching the light in tiny rainbow fragments. A pink sash stretched across her chest with Bride to Be written in gold script that might as well have been written in my blood.
The five women around her held their champagne flutes with the kind of ease that only comes when you actually believe in happy endings.
They looked good in their coordinated outfits and easy smiles.
But Kelechi’s expression was off.
I’d spent months watching her, learning the specific way her eyes crinkled when she found something truly funny. I knew that her left dimple only showed up when she was caught off guard by real joy.
This wasn’t that.
This was just the face she put on for everyone else, the careful, practised version of the woman they all expected her to be.
I zoomed in on her face with shaking fingers, my vision blurring at the edges.
Her eyes held that distant quality I’d grown to dread, like she was somewhere else entirely, somewhere safe inside her own head where she could hide from whatever was happening to her body.
Even surrounded by celebration, she looked small and lost and utterly alone.
The woman next to her had the same nose, the same delicate jawline that had driven me crazy when I’d trace it with my fingertips in the early morning light.
Her sister, probably.
She was leaning into Kelechi with joy radiating from her face, her arm wrapped around the shoulders I’d once known better than my own. Completely unaware that the guest of honour looked like she was drowning in plain sight.
I swiped to the next photo.
Same scene. Different angles.
In this one, I could see her hands folded tightly in her lap. Her smile was still in place, still perfectly appropriate for the occasion, but her body looked wound tight as a spring about to snap.
My chest constricted until I couldn’t draw a full breath, until the cherry blossoms started to blur into pink smears against the blue sky.
This was happening.
Oh my goodness; this was actually happening.
In a few weeks, maybe less, she’d walk down an aisle toward someone else. She’d wear a white gown and promise forever to a man her family had chosen. A man who fit what they wanted in ways I never could and never would.
