text: I only went to mass twice a year. Christmas and Easter. I admit, some years I’ve even skipped Christmas (how could you not, when there’s so much else to do?). Despite this, I wiped my hands on a towel to get all the french fry grease off them so I could prepare to pray without getting my pristine white dress dirty. I pushed aside the McDonald’s bag that I had made Christy go out and grab from down the street in the midst of my first mental breakdown, rested my hands on the table and kneeled down in front of it. It was only a matter of time until she came back with the ice cream I had told her I needed, too. She was the perfect maid of honor, so she would probably be pushing over other customers to get it to me quick. I had to do this fast. I put my head down, coming face to face with an invitation plastered our bible quote, Romans 12:10. “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.” I pushed it aside. “Dear God,” I started. I could hear how stupid I sounded. How cheesy. I wouldn’t talk to my friends like that. And right now, more than ever, I wanted God to be my friend. He was like Emily, that girl that I dropped and then she suddenly married, like a millionaire and threw these awesome parties so I had to make my way back into her life. Had I remembered to invite her? I shook my head. “Scratch that. God, I really need you right now. I know I am wearing white for my wedding when I shouldn’t be, and I don’t know if that’s like, illegal or not, but I’m sorry. I’m also sorry for going to mass still a little bit drunk last Christmas. Those red and green Christmas Eve jello shots were so festive, and I was celebrating your birthday.” I remembered that party that I went with my girlfriends. Brooks and I had recently gotten engaged, and I was so excited to announce it to everyone that I had gone a little bit wild. I bit my lip and shook my head. Not something to be thinking about in the middle of a prayer, Jesus Christ, Julia. I mean, not Jesus Christ, don’t say that. He must have gotten the worst impression of me during this intro. When I said amen, does it send, or are there like no take backs when praying? “Anyways, to the point, I don’t want to waste your time because you have to be back here in-” I checked the clock on the wall. Thirty minutes. Tears surprised my eyes and blurred my dressing room. “An half an hour. To bless my marriage. Geez, okay. Here it is. I sent Gavin an invitation.” Saying it out loud made the tears slip out of my eye. I quickly dabbed it away for fear that my makeup that had been beat to perfection would be ruined for all the pictures. How embarrassing was that? Sending your ex from high school that knows you’re still in love with him an invitation to your wedding? Get a grip, Julia. “And I know you took your extra time making Brooks. Like, that face! Great job on that one. His eyes are so bright, which mixed with dark hair is my weakness, so you must have been paying attention. And super thank you for making him into me. Everyone was surprised about that part. Plot twist, I love it. Cornell grad, good accounting job. You probably thought that this was the best thing to ever happen to me, or something. And it was, for a little. I just need your advice.” I took a deep breath before saying the next part. Sucking in made my dress fit a little bit better. Which was for the best, after all, it cost half my dad’s salary for the year, and I tried about 5 stores and 34 dresses before I fell in love with the lacey details on this one. The champagne glasses swirled around the grand room as I gulped down the french fries that were threatening to shoot back up my throat. My heart felt like someone had grabbed it with both hands and squeezed it repeatedly to speed it up too fast. I had never said it out loud before, but God, if he was real, seemed like the best person to spill to. “I’m still in love with him. And I told him!” I let a high pitched giggle slip. It was a sound I had never heard come out of my mouth. It bounced off the wooden walls of the old room and came back to slap me in the face because of what I had just admitted to. “Through e-mail. I told him if he felt the same way, he should come and meet me here before the wedding. Or I’ll go through with it with Brooks. I found him on LinkedIn. I mean, you know this, since you know everything, but I just thought I’d include it in this... message... thing. So you know I’m not leaving anything out.” “Julia!” It was Christy. She must have come back with the ice cream. I had spent enough time inspecting this church to make sure it was the perfect one for my special day to know that her voice was coming from the grand front door, and it would take her about two minutes to burst into my dressing room. “I’m asking you now to have Gavin not come. I have the potential to have the perfect life with Brooks! And if Gavin comes, I am going to mess up everything. My mom’s going to be so embarrassed, my dad’s going to waste all this money. All my friends are jealous of me, it’ll be so humiliating if I leave with my ex boyfriend! But you know me, I have, like, 0 self control. And I can’t take back what I did, but you can prevent it from blowing up in my face. I can be happy with Brooks, and I promise I’ll go to mass, like, once a month. And-” My quick rambling was cut off by Christy’s heels clicking into the room. “Julia. Here.” I turned around, and she had a small cup with vanilla ice cream in her outstretched hand. “Just take it. I had to practically bodyslam six people to get it here in enough time that you could digest it and still not be bloated for the pictures. Or else, it means a trip to the bathroom.” She mimicked sticking her fingers into her mouth and gave me a death stare. I winced. Brutally honest, but that’s why I chose her as my maid of honor. “Are there a lot of people here?” My question was prompted by the thought that maybe she would have seen Gavin, and she would go on and on about how funny it was how much he had the same blonde, curly hair that always got in his eyes when we were high schoolers and ran around the city with our friends dining and dashing. Instead, she just waved a hand. “Yeah, they’re all mingling in the lobby, or whatever.” She was too distracted to think about those details. “Honey, what happened to your makeup? Did you rub your eyes?” I nodded as she frantically fixed my under eye makeup. My mind wandered. 15 minutes left for him to show up and absolutely ruin my life as I know it. I imagined what it would have been like if Christy was fixing my makeup for Gavin to see it on that altar. Maybe we would have still broken up like we did that first year of college, because “distance” or “exploring other options”, but I realized sooner that I really did need him and I flew from San Diego State to NYU to surprise him. I would have told him that I didn’t care about the distance and I could have lived out my college years drunk texting my love to him instead of having meaningless hookups with random guys who I had to ghost the next day. And then we would be here, and I could see the tears being shed out of those puppy dog brown eyes when he gets that first glimpse of me in this dress. Just like he had always described on our way to 5th period math class. “Brooks is probably going to cry like a baby when he sees you.” Christy’s minty breath in my face as she finished the last touch of blending snapped me out of my daydream. It was like she was reading my mind and setting me straight. I turned to look at myself in the long mirror suspended on the brick wall. It was true, I looked absolutely breathtaking. I would for sure be using these pictures as my new profile pictures, taken that Gavin doesn’t show up. 7 minutes. The impending feeling of doom as the seconds ticked away reminded me of the last night in the city Gavin and I had spent together. We both were silent, not in the mood to stir up trouble like we usually did on summer nights. I could still feel his hand loosely grip mine as we dodged people on the sidewalk. After two years together, even we knew that 3,000 miles was too much distance to keep us together. I bit my lip to keep from crying the whole time, even when Gavin found a ten dollar bill on the ground and used it to buy us cheap alcohol with his fake ID. There was no use wasting our college years on a silly high school relationship that I would forget about within a few months, so I knew that the heart-wrenching conversation was coming at the end of that night. “Are you sure you’re good, Jules?” Christy gave me a soft massage on my exposed shoulders. “You look white as a ghost, and to think, I got you a tanning membership before this. That was expensive, are you sure you went?” I shrugged her hands off, turned around, and plastered a fake smile on my face. “Remember when we met Brooks?” “Yeah, at that fancy bar after we got our first paycheck?” She rolled her eyes. “God, I wish someone else had been there so you don’t only have to reminisce with me. Or, I need to go back there and find my own rich businessman so I can actually enjoy this conversation.” Christy and I had been fresh friends at our new job right out of college, and we decided to splurge on a strict girls’ night at the nicest bar in the city, where Christy pointed out how to die for hot a group of men were. When none of them hit on us all night, I had to take matters into my own hands. They must have known what they were doing, because guys who ignore girls completely are so much more attractive than the ones who want us. Of course Brooks stood out to me, he had a deep voice and he was tall. He wasn’t into the shenanigans at first, so things were a little rocky until I learned to not make so many dark humored jokes in front of his millionaire family and friends. “Three minutes, Juju. I’m so excited.” Christy inspected me one last time to make sure every inch of me was perfect. I kept glancing at the door, expecting someone, anyone to burst through. If it wasn’t him, it would be one of my bridesmaids, freaking out that she saw him and expecting me to ask to get him out of there. If it was him, he would shout, “Julia, I’ve been waiting for you.” After all, his Instagram and Facebook proved that he hasn’t had a serious girlfriend in years. He must have been waiting for me. He was going to show up. I knew it. But time was up, and he wasn’t waiting for me. He never came, and I waited to meet Brooks behind big, golden, closed doors to the altar, with my closest friends in matching blue dresses in front of me and men in tuxes on their arms. They were the kind of doors that every little girl dreams of standing behind to meet this kind of man. The kind that slapped me in the face on how just truly lucky I was in that moment, and how stupid I was to even reconsider this blessing. “You alright, princess?” My dad patted my tanned arm. “Nerves? Get rid of ‘em. You look great. Go out there and go get ‘em.” I swallowed my doubts and looked to the ceiling. I had to pray in my head this time, or else my dad would take me for a psychopath. God. I’m sorry for having my doubts about Brooks. Not that I doubted him, because he truly is the perfect man, and I love him. But I am sorry for acting like a bitch and thinking for one second that I should be with someone else. Especially someone who doesn’t want me back. Thank you for giving him to me. I am going to go to mass every weekend now. And I’ll never be rude to him. And I won’t do jello shots on Christmas Eve. Amen. I thought the prayer would take up enough time for the music to start, but the silence lingered on. My dad held my arm a tiny bit tighter, and I turned to him and smiled. “I’m really excited. Thank you for all this.” I rested my head on his shoulder while we waited for the organ to start playing the notes I had practically memorized when choosing the music for this ceremony. The anticipation was like waiting for the lights to come on during a blackout. My heart was suspended in my chest with excitement. I was ready to see him. Someone opened the door. Brooks’ best man, Cole, looking just as handsome as he did when we met them in the bar that night years ago. Finally. Cole whispered something to Christy. My palms were sweaty with excitement, and my heart leaped in my chest. Christy looked back at me, and I expected a smile or a nod. But her eyebrows were scrunched up, and her bright red lips were parted open slightly. She slowly but gracefully walked to me and grabbed my hand. “Sweetie.” She intertwined our perfectly manicured fingers, and led me back toward my dressing room, closing the door behind me. I was greeted by the smell of greasy french fries. I felt like I was going backwards in time. My mind swirled around in confusion. “But the music, we have to wait for the cue-” She handed me the handkerchief gifted to me by Aunt Beth, and looked into my eyes with her own. “It’s not your fault.” Her cold fingers trickled down my spine as she started to unzip my dress. Chills followed her nails. “Hm?” I felt her finish unzipping. I could breathe again. “It’s Brooks. He left.”