Chapter 23 A Necessary Change #2
“Because I missed you. I wanted to see you.” Then, her voice softened and yet another twinge of guilt cramped in my stomach at being present for a conversation Monica obviously wanted to be private.
“I felt bad the entire trip because of that stupid fight we had before I left. I don’t like fighting with you. ”
The vulnerable dip in Monica’s voice took me completely by surprise and laid on the mounting guilt even thicker.
The end of the month is next week. Just two more weeks. Then it’s over.
“ So , to make up for it, I brought you a little something.”
Curiosity got the best of me and I spun to see what the ‘little something’ was. From behind her back, Mon handed over a stack of mail and my reaction was just as puzzled as Ethan’s.
“You got me the mail?”
“Well, it did look like it had been piling up for a few days now, so someone had to.” I knew Monica was trying to make a joke, but Ethan’s souring expression said that it wasn’t a well-received one.
“Just flip through until you find something good, babe.”
Caution written through his stare, Ethan flipped through the short stack of mail. Each piece of mail he fingered through, my heart beat faster. The room was so quiet my worry was exchanging between what was in the mail and if they could hear how heavy my heartbeat was.
He got through about half the stack of mail before something he saw made him stop. In seconds flat, Ethan’s expression washed blank.
“Well,” Monica began, and I couldn’t help but notice an oddly placed nervous edge to her voice. “Do you like it?”
Ethan’s lips parted, and I nearly fell over in anticipation waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t. He closed them together again and I felt the urge to scream at him to say something try and split through.
“If you don’t like the design or the font or whatever, we can change them on the E-vites. These ones are only for us and family.”
E-vites?
“Did you already send these out?”
The first thing out of Ethan’s mouth and it didn’t bring me a damn bit closer to figuring out what they were talking about.
With a charming smile, Monica said, “Dropped the ones to your family and mine off at the post office this morning. Your mom should be relieved to get something in writing. She’s been up my ass about setting a date for weeks.”
Ethan’s eyes finally rose to meet my sisters, the severity to his stare agitating my curiosity more. “Monica, this is in three months.”
“I know. I know it’s soon, but I’ve always thought a New Year’s Eve wedding would be nice. Plus, we’d never forget our anniversary.”
Wedding.
The panic that that singular word induced was so powerful, I had no hope of stopping the words that flew out of my mouth next.
“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?”
Ethan was the first to look at me. In that moment that our eyes met, a sadness with the potential to incinerate the remaining parts of my heart to ash washed clear over Ethan’s gaze. He looked completely and hopelessly gutted, and like somehow, I had the answers to make it all better.
“Well—” Monica’s voice pulled my focus from her fiancé to her. The next several seconds of my life felt like they went by so fast, I could barely even register them or the crushing devastation that came with them.
“In so many words… we have a wedding to plan!”
Monica’s excitement exploded right through me like shrapnel, tearing, slicing, disfiguring my heart.
“I figured since we were going to get married eventually, why wait? And in the spirit of grand, romantic gestures—” Monica nudged Ethan playfully. He barely moved. “I thought I’d surprise him with these Save The Dates I made when I was gone.”
“Wow…” In the moment, I knew I needed to say more, to react more like she was, but I couldn’t. My brain was too busy telling me to react normally for my brain to actually consider how I’d go about that.
“ And December 31st is going to be here before we know it, so I’m going to need to get a head start on wedding dress shopping with my Maid of Honor pretty soon.”
Anticipated numbness had already begun to set in as I asked, “Who’s your Maid of Honor?”
Monica’s perfectly plucked brow shot up at me, a humorous cinch on her mouth.
“I thought it was obvious I was talking about you, dummy.”
And with that, the numbness consumed me whole.
“You want me to be your Maid of Honor?”
“Don’t look so shocked,” Monica said with a laugh—one that I tried to fake and match. And as I joined in with my sister on her bout of laughter, the realization that this would be my life for the next three months hit fast and hard.
Faking my way through the happiness. Pretending it was all okay. Wearing a mask to hide my broken smile.
“It can be a small wedding, big wedding, elaborate, simple, themed, whatever kind of wedding.”
Monica turned to Ethan, and not a moment too soon.
As she looked away from me, the cheerful expression I’d been holding up slipped and crashed into as many tiny pieces as my heart was in.
I wouldn’t make it through this without losing a piece of myself every day over the next three months, and I knew it.
By the end of it all, I’d be a ghost of a person brought to the brink of death by literal heartbreak.
But I had no other choice.
Walking up to Ethan—who looked stiff as a board—Monica continued.
“As long as you’re the one at the end of whatever aisle I’m walking down, that’s all that matters to me.
The rest we can figure out or wing it, even though I’m historically not so great with ‘winging’ things.
This surprise is probably my first attempt at being spontaneous, like, ever. ”
I watched her close the space between the two of them, and her arms slide up and around Ethan’s neck—holding him the same way I did the day at the lake. The memories of that day crashed with the new ones being created right before my eyes, and the collision pained like a fatal heart attack.
A searing ache sliced right down my chest, cutting me open to bleed out every last affection I held for Ethan. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop the pain. I couldn’t stop the bleeding.
As Monica tipped herself up onto her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to Ethan’s lips, the pain intensified to the point I neared blacking out.
Splotches of black faded in and out around my vision until all the splotches morphed into one giant, black ring closing in.
At the center of that growing ring was Ethan’s face and his eyes that, while he returned my sister’s kiss, were locked on mine.
They were practically screaming at me, begging me to listen, but I couldn’t hear him over my own symphony of sorrows.
From this moment on, I’d have to tune out his pleas’ and the music coming from his soul, both of which I was a goner for.
If I wanted to be able to breathe again, I’d have to drown him out.
If I wanted to be able to stand next to my sister on her wedding day while she vowed to spend the rest of her life with a man I’d dared to picture as my own, I’d have to walk away and never look back.
There really was no other choice.