The unblinking eye of my front porch security camera showed my maid of honor kissing my fiancé, not twelve hours before she was supposed to hand me my bouquet.
A synchronized headache was their excuse for leaving the rehearsal dinner early.
Apparently, the only cure was to stumble into my house together and fall into our bed.
Right now, she’s probably sipping a mimosa, texting me heart emojis about how excited she is for my big day.
They’re expecting a heartbroken bride, fragile and weeping at the altar.
What they’re getting instead is a feature presentation, a brand-new wedding slideshow I edited this morning, with a special screening for our 200 guests—especially her father, the minister who is about to marry us.
The Night Before the Rest of My Life: A Toast to Too-Close Comfort
The clinking of champagne glasses sounded like a thousand tiny alarm bells. I held my flute up, the bubbles fizzing against the rim, and forced a smile that felt brittle enough to crack. Across the table at the rehearsal dinner, my fiancé, Mark, was laughing at something my maid of honor, Chloe, had whispered in his ear. Her hand, adorned with perfectly manicured nails the color of blood, rested on his forearm. It wasn’t just resting; it was anchored there.
I took a slow sip of champagne. It tasted like acid and sugar. This was a familiar scene, a little tableau I’d witnessed in different forms for the past year. Chloe’s casual, lingering touches. Mark’s easy, accepting smiles. I’d told myself it was nothing. I was 46, not some paranoid teenager. Chloe was vivacious and tactile; that was just her way. She was twenty years my junior, a firecracker to my slow-burning candle, and I’d convinced myself her energy was just… a lot. For everyone.
But tonight, the night before my wedding, the gesture felt different. It felt proprietary. Her thumb was stroking the fine hairs on his arm, a gentle, repetitive motion that made my stomach clench. He wasn’t pulling away. He was leaning into it, his body angled toward her, creating an intimate little pocket of space at a table full of our closest friends and family. My son, Leo, caught my eye from across the room and gave me a small, questioning look. He saw it, too.
I lowered my glass, the crystal cool against my tense fingers. I’d spent two decades raising Leo on my own, building a landscape architecture business from the ground up, and guarding my heart with the precision of a fortress designer. Mark was supposed to be my reward, the peaceful harbor after a long, stormy sea. And Chloe… Chloe was supposed to be my sister in all but blood, the one who understood. Yet, watching them now, I felt a familiar, cold dread creeping up my spine. It was the same feeling I got when I knew a client was about to pull the plug on a massive project, a sense of an ending masquerading as a celebration.
The Unspoken History of a Smile
Chloe had always been the main character. Even when we first met at a yoga studio ten years ago, she’d somehow made my struggle with downward dog into a hilarious anecdote about her own double-jointed perfection, charming the entire class. I was drawn to her magnetic field, her effortless ability to command a room. She was the kind of beautiful that seemed both accidental and meticulously crafted, all flowing blonde hair and a laugh that could make a statue smile. She made me feel younger, bolder.
But over the years, I’d started to see the machinery behind the magic. Chloe didn’t just like attention; she required it, breathing it in like oxygen. Every friend’s success had to be filtered through the lens of her own life. When I landed the city park contract, she’d spent the celebration dinner talking about a vague modeling offer she’d once received. When I’d first introduced her to Mark, her immediate reaction wasn’t just happiness for me, but a detailed, forensic analysis of him, delivered with the intensity of a detective. “He’s handsome, Lin. Almost… too handsome for his own good. You’ll need to keep an eye on that.”
At the time, I’d laughed it off as Chloe being Chloe—dramatic, a little possessive. Now, her words echoed in my head with a sinister new meaning. Her smile, which was currently directed at my fiancé, was a performance I knew well. It was wide and dazzling, but it never quite reached her eyes. Her eyes were constantly scanning, assessing, looking for the next camera, the next audience, the next opportunity.
I watched as she finally pulled her hand away from Mark’s arm, only to place it on the back of his chair, her fingers still brushing his suit jacket. It was a subtle shift, but it was a claim. She was a vine, beautiful and green, wrapping herself around my sturdy oak until you couldn’t tell which was which. And I, the fool who’d planted her there, had been admiring the foliage, never once thinking to check the roots.
About the Author
