The Ninth Wedding #5
“I mean, it’s over. Although I recognize that you would like to still have all the good parts of our connection while severing the other parts, that isn’t how this is going to work.
I lost you, and you’ve lost me. I loved you, and ultimately that didn’t matter—that’s the worst feeling of losing there is.
Even if I end up believing that we weren’t meant to be together, and even if we manage to evolve into some other kind of relationship, if we talk ourselves through.
..there is still the overwhelming feeling of failure.
Not just in terms of you, but in terms of making any relationship work. ”
V nods. “I know what you mean. But I think it’s also a trap we fall into—staying in something that isn’t right because we don’t want to have failed, because we don’t want to lose.
When I got to New York, I told myself, This is your chance to try to be alone .
Which at first sounds horrifying, because the whole world seems to be telling us that we should never be alone, that the only way to find happiness is to find someone else to be there with you.
I have spent my whole life trying not to be alone.
And for all I know, I won’t end up alone.
But I’d at least like to give myself the option.
To not feel I’ve failed because I am stepping away from what we have in order to navigate more on my own.
What’s funny is that of the two of us, I feel you’re much better at being alone.
But you also have much more pride than I do, so it makes sense that you’d hate to lose more than I do. ”
“I at least seem to have the pride-fall pattern down well,” J says. “If only I was smart enough to see it coming—but I guess pride doesn’t let you see it coming, does it?”
“You’re going to be fine,” V says. “We’re each going to be fine. Don’t you feel that, at least a little bit, right now?”
And he has to be honest with her. He cannot make himself a ghost.
So he tells her, again, “No.”
There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of songs about falling in love, being in love.
There are more about having your heart broken.
But how many songs are there about loving someone and having the nature of that love change?
How many songs are there about going from lover to friend, from sex to affection?
How many songs are there about being happy alone?
Walking home, J wonders these things.
He knows, theoretically, that V is right: He hasn’t really lost her, if he chooses not to lose her.
But at the same time, he doesn’t feel a reason to make that choice.
Maybe he doesn’t have the right songs to guide him.
Or maybe there’s a reason there are ultimately more songs about heartbreak than about anything else.
V texts an hour later suggesting that, since they both have to be there early, they go to the wedding together. J says he’ll just meet her there. He is surprised when he gets a call from V at nine.
“Get your tux on and come early,” she tells him. “Thor and Meta seem to have hit a snag. And Thor’s asked for both of us to come to their hotel to help.”
J meets V in the lobby. He is in his tux and is carrying his guitar. She is in what could only be a bridesmaid dress, tight and teal.
“I chose it,” V says, tracing J’s glance. “Believe me, the other options were worse.”
“I thought Meta would dress her bridesmaids in black.”
“Yeah, well—that’s not how it played out.”
“So why are we here?”
“I think Meta’s having some pre-wedding jitters.”
“Okay...but why are we here?”
“I guess we’re about to find out.”
She leads J to the elevators, and he isn’t at all surprised when she puts in a key and hits the button for the penthouse suite. How else are newly minted tech billionaires meant to live?
The elevator opens into a foyer, and even though V has the key, she rings a doorbell to announce their arrival.
It is Thor who answers. Like J, he is in a tuxedo. Unlike J, he looks like he’s never been in a tuxedo before. Everything seems just a little misaligned, and his posture suggests the whole outfit might fall to pieces if he makes the wrong sudden move.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Thor says to V and J. “I honestly don’t know what to do. Come in.”
Instead of a groom, he looks like a high schooler cast as a butler in a school play—J half expects him to ask to take their coats. Thor has always seemed young to J, but never nervously so. Now the nervousness seems to have risen to the surface.
“Where’s Meta?” V asks.
“In the bedroom.”
“And what’s going on?”
“She doesn’t want to go through with the wedding. Having her family here and my family—it’s too much.”
“Thor,” V says. “We’ve talked about this. Maybe it is too much.”
J is surprised by her tone. It is not the sound of a coworker. It is the sound of an older sister.
“I know, I know,” Thor says. “Meta and I talked this over, many times.”
“How can you have talked it over many times? You’ve only known each other for months! And now you want to get married!”
J’s ears perk up further. She really doesn’t know they’re already married.
Thor looks at J, and all is understood: The secret is still a secret. J is here right now because he is the one who, through sheer accident, knows the truth.
“You love each other,” J says. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Thor says emphatically. “That’s not the issue here at all. The issue is the wedding, and how scary it is.”
“Let’s go see Meta,” V says. “It’s pointless to have this conversation without her.”
Thor leads them to the bedroom. There, Meta is lying on the bed in leisurewear, staring at the ceiling. Next to the bed is a mannequin in a wedding dress, hovering like an angel or a ghost.
“Hello, Meta,” J says.
“Hello,” she replies, not moving. She sounds worn out and looks like a teenager with a migraine. J feels they should be talking about whether or not she feels up to going to class, not whether to call off her wedding.
Thor sits down at the foot of the bed and tenderly puts his hand on Meta’s ankle. “We appreciate you two coming over,” he says to J and V. “We didn’t know who else we could talk to.”
For months now, J has seen Thor as a minor character in V’s story, the young boss who whisked her away and then took the town while she burned the midnight oil.
Now he rewinds the story and plays it with Thor as the main character—a nineteen-year-old whiz kid who had been immersed in his Secret Project since high school, who had probably never left Sweden until the money guys came calling.
So he moved to Manhattan with a crew of adults; of them, V was probably the most human, since she worked in publicity, not programming.
His family stayed behind. His friends, if he’d managed to have any in high school, stayed behind.
Then he met a girl, and suddenly she became New York City to him.
He didn’t make other friends, except possibly a few of hers.
He lost himself in love before he ever found himself in any other way.
Now, when life wobbles, V is the closest person he has who isn’t Meta.
And Meta—she may have stayed nearer to home than Thor, but the fact is that even if she has relatives and friends in other rooms of the hotel, none of them have been summoned to this suite. Which speaks volumes to J as well.
Meta closes her eyes, then says, “I’ve gotten so caught up in planning that I haven’t let myself stop and wonder if I should be doing this at all.
I think it’s been weeks since I slept well, and I kept telling myself it was because I was anxious about meeting his mother, and anxious about my parents coming all the way to Sweden, and anxious about getting everything right even though I was making calls from six hours in the past, thousands of miles away.
But now I’m wondering if it wasn’t just that.
I’m wondering if we’re about to combine elements that were never meant to combine.
We wanted coalescence, but what if we get combustion instead? ”
V looks over to J with raised eyebrows: Do you want to take this ?
He signals back, Not at all. All yours .
“It’s natural to feel that way,” V begins.
“I don’t know many brides who haven’t. So let’s put it into that perspective.
But I also feel that it’s not too late to change your mind.
If you go in there and say, ‘Hey, we’ve decided not to get married,’ everyone will understand.
Marriage is a big step, and you don’t have to take it now.
The two of you are so young, and your love is so young.
You don’t need to make it grow up fast.”
“I’m not sure getting married is the issue,” J says delicately.
“Of course it is,” V replies, somewhat dismissively. “You’re not saying they have to get married, are you?”
“No, not at all. It’s just...”
“It’s just what ?”
J looks to Thor beseechingly and says, “You have to tell her.”
V shifts her glance from J to Thor. “Tell me what?”
Thor turns to Meta, who opens her eyes, looks at him, and nods. She sits up and he reaches for her hand. Only when the hands are clasped does he look at V and say, “That we’re already married.”
“WHAT?”
“We went to Borough Hall and got married a few weeks ago.”
“I happened to be there when they did,” J adds.
Now she swings back to him. “You mean, you knew this whole time—”
“We swore him to secrecy,” Meta says.
“Still. Wow.”
J waits for more, but V remains stunned. He turns to Meta and Thor and says, “So...are you regretting now that you’re married?”
“No,” Thor says.
“Maybe a little. But not a lot,” Meta says at the same time.
Thor stares at his wife for a second. “Honey?”
She touches his cheek with her free hand, soothing. “I mean, no. I’m glad we’re married. It’s just that...before it was just the two of us, and now it’s going to be everybody. That’s the problem.”