You showed me the ring and awaited my surprise, the second an eternity. I watched the flicker of doubt in your eyes, a prayer that my smile would answer. Is this the one?
“Yes,” I said. The trays of diamonds, nestled on cushions of velvet, had nothing on you. They darkened in the gloss of us. We wore halos of coppery light that flooded in from outside the shop. When we walked together people turned to look. I wondered how they saw us. Did they admire? Envy? Dream?
Now, in the dining hall of a sprawling country manor, I watch you. You sit to my left, and I admire you yet again, beneath the pale yellow light of spring that seeps through the window. You wanted an April wedding. The ceremony was picture-perfect as expected; flowers of yellow, a dress I’d dreamed of since childhood, when I played out a day like this in my head. Moments caught on camera and on a rolling film of memory, never forgotten.
These faces that surround us. Family, friends. Do they admire? Envy? Dream?
I look at you. I know every part of you. Your smile. The tiny scar on your left cheek, two centimetres from your nose. The way you’re gripping the champagne flute. Nerves.
Behind that cheery bravado you have always been nervous.
The hall is awash with voices and cheer. Jollity, forced and otherwise. Speech, speech, they demand, they chant, and the room pulsates with wild energy, with clinking flutes and raised hands of people desperate to impart their stories.
Your face loses colour as David takes to the stage. David, your best friend at university. We wait with bated breath for the embarrassing anecdote, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he launches into the rose-tinted tale of how we met. A university bar, with sticky floors and one cheap vodka shot too many. How I was with my best friend Annabel when it happened; when the stars aligned and a drink was spilled on Annabel’s dress, her fury contrasting with her bouncy, chestnut curls. You apologised profusely. We were all brought together, this group of new-found friends.
The rest, David says, grinning, is history.
I look at you. I know you. I have loved you since that very night.
But I couldn’t tell you. Not when Annabel was so enamoured. Not when she told me she had asked you out. Not when you kissed me after one too many beers one evening, and said it was a mistake.
Not when you trusted me, Annabel’s best friend; not when you asked me if she would love that perfect, perfect ring.
Speech, they call, and I catch your eye.
Slowly, I rise from my seat at the most prominent guest table. Take a gulp of champagne.
There is collective silence. They’re waiting.
I could tell them. I could tell them all.
Instead, I smile shyly, as usual, and make my way outside to the waiting taxi.
You are hers now.
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