Ten Months Later

Camila

“I don’t know what I’m so damned nervous for,” I say while shaking my hands out. It’s not like the constant motion is actually going to get the anxiety to leave me. I know that it can’t be that easy, but I’m trying anyway. My wedding dress skims across the floor as I pace. The tight bodice felt like a comforting hug when I first had it designed for me, but now it feels uncomfortable. If it hadn’t taken so damn long to get into the thing in the first place, I would seriously consider just ripping it off and starting over.

“I don’t either, babes… This is like a dream come true for you, after all. Fulfilling the desires of your youth, and all your other wishes at once. The whole nine yards, really. This is the type of shit that happens in movies!” Amanda teases.

Her pale green gown looks amazing against her olive skin. She had chosen the shade of the gown specifically to give her a reason to spend time working on her tan before the big day. Her hair is styled up and away from her face with modest makeup. Chandelier earrings catch the light and accentuate her slender neck, while loose waves of hair have broken free from the updo in a way that somehow makes her look even more beautiful, as she tries to fan me with a magazine that she found sitting in the dressing room.

“I know that. I don’t have anything to be afraid of, and yet here I am, filled to the brim with anxiety!”

“It’s just a ring and a piece of paper. No big deal. You have this on lock.” Amanda gives me her most winning smile, but it still doesn’t help at all. “Okay, okay. New tactic. Come here.” She grabs her skirt in one hand and grabs me by the upper arm. She yanks me toward the large floor-length mirror and positions me directly in front of it. “I know that you aren’t a big fan of affirmations, but you need them. So, Repeat after me. I am strong. I deserve love. I deserve abundance.”

I exhale slowly and drop my arms to hang down by my sides. I stare at my reflection.

There’s no denying that I look amazing. My dress is something out of a fairytale. The ballgown skirt extends out wide in every direction from my hips. The bodice is fitted, laced up the back in a nearly corseted fashion, except that the front has a deep V to make the outline of my chest fall into a heart shape. Sheer sleeves reach down my arms and end with a loop that hooks around my middle fingers. It’s the sort of dress that makes me feel just as beautiful as I know I look—just racy and daring enough to be alluring, but still modest enough to be a proper wedding dress. It’s not like Nathaniel hasn’t explored every single inch of my body anyway.

“Affirmations make me feel dumb,” I admit with a glance to my best friend and maid of honor.

“I don’t care. Do it anyway!”

I sigh. “I am strong. I deserve love and abundance.”

“Good. Now: I am marrying the love of my life and I deserve to be happy.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek for a moment. “I am marrying the love of my life and I deserve to be happy.”

“And lots of pretty, pretty babies.”

“And lots of- Hey!” I turn around and slap Amanda playfully on her arm while she cackles maniacally. “We haven’t even discussed children yet! I don’t even know if that’s something that I want for my future, let alone what he wants! We’re so young, and we’ve lost so much time together already. I wouldn’t want to rush him into something like that.”

“Do you think that maybe that’s part of the reason that you’re so nervous? I know the two of you have covered a lot of ground since everything happened. Maybe it’s the things that you haven’t covered that are making you so nervous?” Amanda asks kindly.

I hadn’t considered that if I’m being really honest. “Maybe. That’s probably something that we should have gotten fully out of the way before today, huh?”

Amanda shrugs. “Maybe.” She starts to fluff my large skirt around me. “But maybe not. I mean, you two spent years apart and still managed to find your way back to each other. With all of the things that you have endured, I feel like a conversation is something you can manage as well. It will happen when it happens. It’s not like you have to make any choices right now. Today, you just have to walk down the aisle to the stud of a man that is almost your husband and promise to love and obey him till death do you part, blah, blah, blah.” Amanda smiles once more. “Man, you look freaking beautiful, seriously. He’s going to die when he sees you.”

I can’t help but snort in laughter. That would be ironic, after all this.

“Feel better?”

I nod. “Thank you for being here with me, I know it wasn’t easy to pull all this off with your schedule, but I’m so glad that you’re here to keep me sane, Amanda. I mean it. You’re my best friend.”

“Yeah, I know that.” Amanda winks with faux arrogance.

The door to the dressing room bursts open quickly and then slams shut once more as Diana blocks the gap with her small frame. She looks out of breath and fumbles to lock the door, but there’s no lock on the handle. “Damnit.”

“Diana?” I ask curiously. She’s my only bridesmaid and is dressed in a very similar dress to Amanda, but hers is a light blue color to suit her complexion and hair better.

“I tried to stop them. I really did,” she huffs as she tries to steady her breathing.

“Stop who?” I ask.

“The men!” She says with some level of spite. “I tried to tell them that it was bad luck to see the bride before the wedding, I tried to explain that it was a jinx and something horrible was going to happen if he did it… But then Nathaniel started going on and on about what happened at my wedding, and I was so embarrassed that he knew about it even though Stephan and I had been so careful. But, anyway, they took advantage of my humiliation and slipped past me and Stephan. I had to run the whole way here just to make sure that you were decent enough to be seen!”

“What happened at your wedding?” Amanda asks curiously, and I’m glad she did because I want to know too.

Diana blushes a furious red. “I was hoping you weren’t going to ask me that.”

Both Amanda and I give her a knowing look. “You can’t just say something like that, and then expect us to not ask you about it.” Amanda laughs.

“Okay! Okay, fine. Stephan and I… may have gotten a little carried away at the reception.” She shifts anxiously with her back against the door. “It would have been fine had Nathaniel not come looking for us afterward. He may have caught us in a rather compromising position after we, ah, finished consummating our wedding vows. If you know what I mean.”

Amanda and I exchange a look and burst into laughter.

“Stop laughing! Stop it, or I will make sure to return the favor!” She huffs in mock indignation while Amanda nearly falls over from laughing so hard.

“Okay… Diana… You need to breathe or sit… or something.” I laugh. The door behind her starts to open, but Diana leans her weight back into it to try to keep it closed. I can hear Nathaniel swear on the other side of the door and start muttering something about how he’s a grown man and his sister is acting like a child. “It’s okay, Diana. I’m not superstitious. I don’t mind if he comes in. He clearly has something he needs to tell me.”

Diana looks reluctant to move even though I’ve given her permission. “This goes against every instinct I have as your bridesmaid,” she says and pushes away from the door.

As soon as she’s away from it, the door pushes open, and Nathaniel and Alessandro come rushing through.

Nathaniel looks so damned handsome in his tuxedo. Even for a man who practically lives in a three-piece suit, there is something even more spectacular about seeing him dressed up quite as formally as he is right now.

He places a hand on his chest, and his mouth goes slack at the sight of me. And, just like that, every fear and insecurity that I had felt about today and the things I’m going to do dissipates. It just turns into nothingness and floats right out of the air vents in the ceiling. How could I ever be unsure about this man? He smiles dopily at me and crosses the room to scoop me up happily into his arms.

“Really now! This is a bit too much, don’t you think? Nathaniel! Have you lost your mind?” Diana scolds her brother from across the room as he spins me around in place, but she makes no effort to stop him whatsoever.

“You look… so damn stunning,” Nathaniel says reverently, his eyes taking in every bit of my glowing face. “You weren’t getting cold feet, were you?”

“Me?” I grin. “Never. Is that why you came in here? To make sure that I wasn’t planning on leaving you at the altar for some reason?”

Nathaniel chuckles under his breath. “Even if you did, I think at this point Alessandro would find one or both of us and force us down the aisle.”

“That’s right,” Alessandro says, but my brother’s voice sounds strange.

Nathaniel sets me back on my feet and I turn to ask Alessandro what’s wrong, but he’s focused on Amanda. They seem to be locked into a staring match. I hadn’t even thought what it might be like for her. Alessandro had left her, too, without so much as a word. She had mourned him. Sure, she had dated some men and women on and off throughout college, and even less frequently afterward, but it was always an unspoken fact between us that she would hold a flame for my brother—the man that she considered to be her one true love. She had thought that he had died, and it was something that had brought us so much closer through college and even our internships and beyond.

She hadn’t taken the news of his return very well. She ran through the entire spectrum of emotions at least three times in the span of an hour, and then again when I had the unfortunate obligation of informing her that he had not asked to see her. Amanda had only been mentioned to Alessandro in passing. Perhaps I should have done more to make this less awkward.

He was a member of Nathaniel’s groomsmen; she was going to have to see him. She knew that, and she insisted that it would be fine. However, being fine with something, in theory, can be a whole hell of a lot different than being fine with it in practice.

I didn’t realize until right now that any time Amanda has been brought up over the last few months, Alessandro would find any reason to excuse himself from the conversation. It’s funny how my brother is always good with physical confrontation, but emotional confrontation… not so much. I can cut the tension in the air between them with a knife. They have always had a rather unique relationship, but something is different now. I would have made him say something to her had I known that they hadn’t spoken this whole time.

Alessandro’s shoulders square, and he sets his jaw firmly, determined to not show any emotion other than his polite, formal mask. Amanda’s gaze hardens. I can’t imagine what Amanda must be feeling: confusion, betrayed, hurt… But there’s something else in her eyes, something electric.

Poor Diana is stuck on the other side of the room without a single hint as to what’s going on or why the pair of them are very pointedly not staring at one another. I was too afraid to ask Alessandro if he missed her, or if he had thought about her while he was away. Despite everything that happened, I didn’t feel like it was my place to push something like that onto him if he wasn’t ready. He had been keeping to himself so much as it was. If he needed time to transition back to regular life while we put all of our affairs in order, he was entitled to that. However…

“Alessandro, you look well.” Amanda was the first to break the silence, and that made Alessandro look only that much more guilty.

“Ah, thank you. You, as well, you too… look good.” Alessandro rubs at the back of his head, mussing his hair as he looks every but at Amanda.

“Thank you. I’m glad you’re in good health.” Amanda locks all her features and emotions into a carefully controlled mask. It’s the sort of thing that I have watched her do in the courtroom time and time again, most of all whenever the subject matter has affected her a bit more than it should have. She can handle some really intense cases. I think, on some level, she was internally congratulating herself for being the bigger person. But I also know her well enough to know the pain that mask is hiding… and, perhaps, something else—a longing, something that she’s told herself she didn’t or couldn’t want when she wants my brother so badly it’s making her sway on her feet. “Maybe we should get a drink sometime. Catch up on everything. I’m sure that you’ve got some really great-”

Alessandro’s hands ball into tight fists at his sides, and he turns and walks straight out of the room.

Nathaniel and I exchange knowing glances. “I should go and check on him.” Nathaniel steps away from me and then leans back in to kiss me softly.

I nod, he should go and see what’s the matter.

“No,” Amanda interrupts. “He doesn’t get to run away from me a second time.” There’s a fire in her eyes as she glares at the spot that Alessandro filled only a moment ago. “I’ll go.” She picks up the bottom of her skirt in her hands and stomps out of the room after Alessandro.

“I don’t think I would want to be him right about now,” Nathaniel says so that only I can hear, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Oh, he’s brought this on himself.”

“Should we wait for them?”

“Something tells me that they are going to be a while. He couldn’t avoid her forever.”

A loud crash resounds from somewhere down the hallway, and I hear loud Spanish cursing coming from my brother directly after. Nathaniel, Diana, and I all look at one another and start laughing.

“Come on, we have a ceremony to get to.” I roll my eyes at the feuding couple. There’s no point in attempting to break up their argument now. “Better for them to get it all out of their system, now.”

Nathaniel links his hand with mine and holds open the door for me. “She might have a temper to rival yours,” he teases me.

“Oh no, she’s so much worse.”

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