“Once a week. Like a boa constrictor.”
Casey snickered.
They ended the call.
Bip, I know you think he’s a dog, but you HAVE got to see this!!!!!!!!! It has three million hits already. P.S. The dead azalea? That is so you.
Brit roused herself from the fetal-position slumber she’d tipped into a few hours after she’d last talked to Casey, awakened by the chime of her sister’s text and startled by the staggering number of exclamation points.
Should she even bother?
But she clicked the YouTube link anyway. Really, how much worse could it get?
Her heart gave a swift hard jump when she saw the title.
“John Tennessee McCord’s Toast at Felix Nicasio’s wedding.”
It was one of those illicit videos filmed by someone who annoyingly held their cell phone vertically.
But the still was of J. T., holding up a glass. He looked so handsome in a tux her head went light. He seemed both utterly at home up there, with hundreds of eyes on him, and a little diffident.
And speaking of painful, her heart was slamming away in her chest.
She held her breath. Said a silent prayer.
Then exhaled and pressed play.
Whoever had recorded it had clearly hit record when he was already a few words into the toast.
“Most of us sitting here, we’re in the business of fantasy and illusion,” J. T. was saying. “So many things about our lives are outsized. We show up on billboards. On the big screen. In millions of living rooms weekly. Someone else writes beautiful or moving or funny words for us, and they’re accompanied by huge sweeping scores or hip soundtracks so that we and the audience know how and when and what to feel. So sometimes it’s hard to know whether what we’ve got is love... or publicity.”
This was greeted by scattered nervous laughter.
“Because real life isn’t like the movies. Real life doesn’t have crisply crafted story or character arcs or big crescendos. The love scenes aren’t choreographed. Sometimes it just flows forward more or less uneventfully, with intermittent explosions or grace notes. And we can’t always wrap everything up and make everything better with a big theatrical gesture.”
“You tell ’em, Tessnesseese!” Some drunken female shouted.
This was greeted by a chorus of shushes.
“In real life, it’s hard to know if love is what you’re in. For a few reasons. First, well, we aren’t handed a script that we can read cover to cover that tell us that yep, that’s love, all right. And secondly... well, maybe your life up to that point has been a grittier sort of art-house movie or horror flick. So maybe you’ve never been in that kind of movie before and don’t recognize the genre.” More laughter and some murmurs here. And Britt’s heart squeezed like a painful little fist, thinking of the kind of movie J. T. had grown up in. “And thirdly... well, I think the reason we refer to it as ‘in love’ is because when you’re in it, you occupy it the way you occupy your own skin. Or the way you occupy a little house, maybe with a picket fence and a formerly broken porch, with one other person. When you’reinsomething, you can’t always see clearly that you are.”
He had that audience in thrall.
Britt had stopped breathing.
He looked up, and then she could have sworn he looked her straight in the eyes.
“And movie love, like our outsized lives, is big: big moments, big declarations, hopefully, big grosses.” He paused, grinning, when the audience laughed. “But in real life it’s the little things. Maybe it’s peanut butter in the house because she knows you like it. You bring her a half-dead azalea because you know she’ll love it better than roses and you want to see the look on her face when you hand it to her. And it’s in the silences. In how you enjoy everyday things more, like reading, because she’s reading next to you.”
Someone was audibly weeping now. Britt could hear it.
Or maybe that was her. She sniffed and swiped at her eyes.
“Felix—and I don’t think he’ll mind if I tell you this now, because he’s done locked his womandown—” They all laughed. “He was a wreck shortly after he first started dating Michelle. We all know he’s a guy’s guy, a bachelor in that old-fashioned, groovy sense... and we all saw that he was just laid low by her. He wanted to know, ‘J. T., how doIknow I’m in love?’ And I wasn’t much help to him then, and I do apologize, Felix. You’ve punished me enough for being useless then by making me make this damn toast.” Lots of laughter here and a few enthusiastic hoots.
It settled down, and J. T. got somber. “But I feel like I have a duty to Felix and Michelle and everyone here. Because if you’re wondering, gentlemen, if what you’reinis love, I might be able to help.”
He paused. The silence all but echoed. Not even the clink of a glass or chink of silverware.
