“Isn’t it great?” she squeals. “The venue had an immediate opening, so we took it.”
“I have school,” I point out.
“You can take a break.” Like the exclamation marks, I hear her roll her eyes. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to do any maid-of-honor duties. I know you’ll be too busy for that. But I am commandeering you as a bridesmaid. I already roped in Aileen and Deirdre.”
As she should. Our older sisters had made both of us suffer through their weddings.
“You’re not using yellow in your color scheme, are you?” It’s the worst color. Evidenced by washed-out photos of me at Aileen’s wedding when I was seventeen, and again at Deirdre’s last year. I don’t know why they’d both gone with the same palette, except to make sure I looked hideous standing next to them. I can’t wait to get married and they’re my bridesmaids. Payback, like me, is said to be a witch.
“Nope,” Brigid says. “I want green, but Charlie says blue. We’re almost at a compromise.” Good. I can work with either of those colors.
I balance my phone between my ear and shoulder to note the wedding in my calendar. Then almost drop it when Brigid says, “I’m sorry. I know this date means Ashton won’t be able to make it. But you’ll tell him we said ‘Ciao’ right? How’s he enjoying Italy?”
Fiddlesticks.
“He’s having a super time!” I cringe. “I have class soon, but I’m super happy for you and Charlie. Can’t wait for the wedding!”
I wrap the call up before Brigid remembers I have better descriptors up my sleeve than ‘super’. Or that I’ve used it twice in a row.
I set my phone down and cradle my head in my hands. Over winter break, when my mom asked why Ashton hadn’t come around, I’d told her he was too busy prepping for his Italy trip. Now, the love gods are punishing me for keeping our break up a secret from my family. How will I show up to my sister’s wedding and explain to my siblings and my parents—and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents—that not only am I heartbroken and single, but I’m a colossal liar, as well?
It’s just… after four years of dating, they’d grown to know Ashton. He’d been my date to both Aileen’s and Deirdre’s weddings, appearing at my side in every unflatteringly jaundiced photo with a matching yellow bowtie.
My hand moves before I know what I’m doing. I bring up my social media, navigate to the photos page. And I click through the timeline of our relationship.
It’s all there. Proof that at some point in the past four years, he’d loved me. From the first selfie we’d taken, at one of our high school’s sports rallies, his arms around me. He’d given me his sweater when I’d complained of being cold.
A candid snapshot of us working side by side on the school paper, where we’d met. In it, Ashton twists a strand of my hair around his finger, a cherishing look on his face and a blush on mine.
A professional shot from junior prom. Me, radiant in a purple dress with a fancy updo. Ashton, dashing in his rented tux. Happy, anticipatory gleams in our eyes and shy smiles, since that was the night we planned to take our relationship all the way.
A close-up of us hugging when we’d received our acceptances to Lakewood on the same day, senior year. Then another of freshman dorm move-in day. Of us at one of his frat formals. On the sidelines at one of the first football games of the season. There’s a trend with freshman Kennedy, who had kept her mouth clenched shut over the braces she’d had to get over the summer, though freshman Ashton had assured her constantly she was beautiful in his eyes, no matter what.
There’d been good times. So many good times. Memories of birthdays and holidays and days of no significant importance where out of the blue, Ashton would gift me a necklace or a spa day or a membership to his family’s country club. I hadn’t cared for any of those things, but I’d loved them all the same, since they came from him. That he’d thought I might like them.
We plotted a life together. Applied to the same colleges; researched which grad schools we’d want to go to. Anything and everything, we were on the same page. Buying our first home after securing prestigious careers. Ring styles and engagement photo shoots and wedding themes. Marriage. Babies. We had notions drafted and ideas blueprinted to take us all the way into our old age. The beginning of this school year, even, we tested the waters of living together by moving in to an apartment off-campus, and it hadn’t been so bad. Until suddenly it all went off track with Ashton saying we needed to talk.
It wasn’t until after he dumped me that I noticed a change in our photos, starting sophomore year. For one, there aren’t as many images as previous years. And there’s a lot with other people in them. More and more of his frat buddies. Less of the two of us.
I’m aware that just as much as photos display the good times, they can hide the bad. Hide that Ashton had been spending more time at his frat instead of with me. That as much as I loved his gift-giving, I could do without another set of golf clubs I’d never use. That as special as I viewed our lovemaking, more often than not, he’d roll off me and I’d be left prickling with unspent need.
A knock interrupts the maudlin montage of my thoughts. Just in time, too, before pitiful violin playing accompanies them.
I close out of the page, giving the go-ahead. Rylie pokes her head in.
“Off to work?”
