“I’m in love with you.”
She stopped stirring her coffee and suddenly the coffee shop was too loud.
“What?”
I thought about that day she told me that she thought Chris from drama was cute and I ran into her making out with him under the apple tree and how I wanted to punch Chris from drama in the face but didn’t, that time she told me Michael from homeroom had asked her to homecoming and how I was sick with myself because she looked so beautiful when she was happy and at the same time I wished that Michael from homeroom had asked Ashley-the-slut instead, that day she called me over at four in the morning because Michael from homeroom was cheating on her with Ashley-the-slut and I had brought her favorite Cake Batter by Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and let her soak my shirt with tears until the sun rose and her eyes were red and puffy from all that crying and I wanted so badly to take her pain into me because she deserved so much better, the day after when we watched Mean Girls in my basement and laughed at the part we always laughed at when Amanda Seyfried groped her boobs and said they could tell when it was going to rain and she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek and said “Thank you for everything,” and I felt like an Indian summer wrecking an entire forest and wanted to tell her until she said “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” that time dad brought up about how much he hated homosexuals and called Ellen Degeneres a “screwed-up dyke” and I thought maybe if I dated some boys things would get better, that day I had my first kiss with Tommy from American history and realized that things would never, never get better and sat on my roof with a Budweiser I had stolen from the pantry and cried until I couldn’t tell if I was drunk from the alcohol or if I was drunk from the grief.
But instead I said “I’m in love with you.”
She blushed, and said, “I thought you’d never say it.”
And she reached for my hand and all the scars were worth it.
* * *
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said, fixing the veil over her face. Her hair was falling over her shoulders in soft golden waves and I could have drowned in her eyes. They were just as blue as my love.
She smiled at me.
“Thanks for being my maid of honor, Jenny. You’re my best friend, you know that?”
I wanted to rip that stupid veil off her face and pull her into my arms and go back to that coffee shop and tell her I loved her when I had wanted to and maybe then I would be okay.
I smiled instead.
Love wasn’t supposed to hurt this much.
“I know.”