As the ceremony approached, I kept an eye out for Harry. It was semi-chaotic. The wedding planner was going nuts, and the florist was late, so she was still setting up as people walked in. Amara had to run to CVS for false lashes (she’d forgotten them) so I drove myself to the wedding after we finished getting ready at the hotel. Amara had decided to forego a rehearsal dinner. I'd tried to change her mind, but it was no use. As the ceremony was about to begin, I found out that Amara was still fifteen minutes away, and Harry was nowhere to be seen. I stood behind the scenes, watching for both of them as people entered the venue. Only in L.A. are you late to your own wedding because of traffic.
Finally, after a lot of fretting, sweating, and pacing (on my part), Amara was here. She was quickly ushered into the back room by the wedding coordinator, and Sam stood at the altar, shifting uncomfortably. I gave him a thumbs up from behind the curtain, and his face relaxed tenfold.
The thing about Sam and Amara is that both think they are the luckiest person in the world. Amara had said numerous times that she didn't deserve such a nice guy (which I balked at – I mean, come on), and Sam had confessed to me on numerous occasions that Amara was "the girl" every guy dreamt of marrying. So as Sam wiped the sweat off of his face, Amara came up behind me and whispered in my ear.
"Ermagod, I have the hunkiest soon-to-be-husband ever." She waved at him and blew him a kiss behind the curtain as the procession music started to play.
"Yeah, well, he is definitely the luckiest guy around. Look at you. You look so beautiful, I might cry." I hugged her lightly, as I didn’t want to get makeup on her dress. She was a good six inches taller than me, even when I was in heels.
I noticed Harry still hadn’t shown up. But I couldn’t say anything to Amara. She was literally a minute away from walking down the aisle. I couldn’t talk to her about this, not right now. Tonight, she and Sam were off to Portugal for a glorious, three-week honeymoon. The thought that I would be without my best friend for three weeks as I was going through the biggest crisis in my life ever, made me feel small, sad, and like I wanted to run away.
"Charlotte, you’re up next." The wedding coordinator steered me towards the door that separated the indoor area from the outdoor area, where I’d be walking out and into the lush garden where everyone was seated. I gave Amara a quick thumbs up. She was beaming. I slowly walked out and into the daylight.
The music for the bride had started a little too early, and as I got about halfway down the aisle, people stood up and began to smile out into the aisle, not at me of course, but at Amara. However, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for my wedding day. As I quickly walked to my place at the altar, smiling and winking at Sam, tears started to fall down my face. Luckily, I was at my best friend's wedding, so no one seemed to notice or care. Amara walked down the aisle slowly, and Sam started to cry, and then Amara’s parents started to cry. We were a blubbering crowd, watching this goddess walk down the aisle to marry the man who adored her.
"Isn’t this sweet?" Amara’s twenty-two year old sister, Adriana, cooed in my ear as Amara and Sam said their vows.
"Yeah. So sweet." I thought about how, as sweet as Adriana was, this was not her forte. She had not yet learned about the hardships of marriage. Poor, young thing, I thought.
As the ceremony wound down, and the newlyweds ran down the aisle to the back room, presumably to have crazy newlywed sex or take some pictures, the crowd started to disperse. I went over to the security guard by the gate to check if Harry had come in yet, or perhaps had been held at the front until after the ceremony, so as not to disturb anyone.
"Excuse me, have you seen a tall, blonde guy wearing a grey suit come in? He was probably looking for me."
"No, no one like that has come in yet. Maybe he’s running late." The large security guard looked at me sympathetically, as if I were being stood up on the first date.
I’d left my phone in my purse in the back room, so I went back into the indoor reception area, which was still being set up. The guests were at cocktail tables near the ceremony site. I saw Amara and Sam in the corner, with their photographer shepherding them to stand next to each other. Harry and I had foregone a wedding photographer because we were too broke at the time. Our friend had taken some pictures with his camera and sent them to us in a wedding album as a wedding gift, but a lot of them were out of focus and/or the lighting was off. I couldn’t complain. It had been the single best day in my life thus far, and the pictures just complimented the rosy feeling I got whenever I thought of it. One day, we’d take some professional portraits together. If that day ever came.
I tracked down my purse and found my phone. No missed calls. If Harry were running late, he would’ve called. Suddenly, I started to think the worst. Maybe Lainey’s words hadn’t meant that we’d break up due to natural causes. What if something had happened to Harry? Car accident? Hit by a bus? My mind began to fill with worst-case scenarios. I quickly dialed his number as my hands began to shake. He picked up on the first ring. My heart raced. He was fine.
"Oh my god, I was so worried about you! WHERE ARE YOU?" I was breathing heavily, having run across the grounds of the venue quickly, trying not to be seen by Amara or Sam. I ducked into the preparation room, where the bridesmaids were keeping their purses and other miscellaneous things.
"Charlotte, I can’t." He remained silent. I thought he was going to say something like I can’t find my dress shoes. But soon, it became clear that he meant us.
"Harry, can you please come? We should talk. I want you here with me. Two of our best friends are getting married. We should support them, no matter what we’re going through personally."
"I just don’t think I can put on a brave face in front of all of those people. And Amara is your best friend, not mine. I don't even know Sam that well."
"Harry, why are you doing this?" I honestly needed to know. Sure, I’d been acting all sorts of crazy, but spouses should stand next to each other at weddings. It was like number six in the book of marriage rules. No matter what was going on in your personal life, you always supported friends. You always went to their wedding. "You promised you were coming."
"Fine. I will be there in twenty." The line went dead.
What had just happened? I stood there for a minute, staring at my phone. Amara walked in.
"Hey, lady! I’m married! What are you doing in here? You should be sipping cocktails and getting crazy with that hot husband of yours. Speaking of, where is Harry?"
"Oh, he, uh, got held up, but he’s on his way. He wanted me to tell you that he’s so, so, so sorry for missing the ceremony. Traffic woes."
"No worries! I’m married!" She flung her bouquet high in the air and squealed. "Plus, the ceremony is the boring part. But apparently it’s necessary, for the wedding certificate and all."
I laughed.
"Yes, the ceremony is the actual, essential part of a wedding. That is true."
"I’m going to go find my hot new husband now. I’ll see you later?" She squeezed my hand and jogged out of the room. Someone must’ve given her coffee (which she never drinks).
I composed myself in the preparation room for another minute, redoing the parts of my eye makeup that had gotten washed away when I was crying. I was grateful I’d kept my makeup in my purse. I hoped Harry would notice how gussied up I’d gotten. I hoped this would bring him, the Harry that I loved, back to me. In a sudden, fleeting thought, it occurred to me that this was it. Harry said he couldn’t. This was the shit storm. What was going to happen? And then… do I even care what happens at this point?
As I walked out of the room, I almost knocked over Anna, Amara’s childhood friend from Portugal. Amara had moved to the states when she was ten, just in time to eradicate most of her accent. Yet she still had a small, exotic lilt to her words that drove most guys crazy. I’d met Anna once before, when she came to visit Amara when we were in high school. She was just as beautiful as Amara, only taller and thinner, if that were possible. Amara had tol
d me that she was a journalist in Portugal, and she was constantly traveling all around the world to work and write for various Portuguese news outlets. I was intrigued. It seemed like such a dreamy life.
I’d only ever been out of the country once, right after high school. My parents had graciously paid for me to backpack through South America for a month before starting college. Amara, our old friend Nan, Nan’s older sister, and I, had gone off to Peru, Brazil, and Chile for five weeks, alone, lost, and a little bit afraid. But I'd loved it. It was one of the best times I’d ever had and, at thirty, I hadn’t had a chance to get out of the country again, except to Canada and Mexico, which, in America, isn’t really considered another country. Tijuana and Vancouver, although interesting, hadn't exactly felt "international" to me. Also, Harry and I had gone to Hawaii on our honeymoon and a few times for vacation. But that was still inter-country. I'd been introduced to traveling when I was eighteen, and I still felt that same burning desire to travel and see things. Seeing Anna was exciting for me. I wanted to be doing the things that she was doing.
"Charlotte, it’s so good to see you. How is life?" She came up to me smelling of jasmine and whiskey, and kissed me on both cheeks. Her skin was golden and glowing. Being in the same room as Amara’s Portuguese friends and family made me feel freckly, pink, and out of place with my red hair and pale skin. I was also an average of seven inches shorter than any of the females in attendance.
"Life is… ugh. Life can totally blow sometimes." By the time it was out of my mouth, I instantly regretted it. But without Amara to turn to, I'd reached my boiling point. Also, there was something about Anna that was genuine. I felt instantly comfortable around her, inexplicably, and something told me she could help me.
"Well, life can be shit sometimes." She took a swig of her drink, which appeared to be whiskey on the rocks, and motioned for us to sit down in the chairs provided in the prep room. Her accent was intoxicating. "But life can also be beautiful. You have to find the swims when all you can see is the roads."
I didn’t quite understand what she was saying, and I assumed some sort of language barrier was preventing me from totally understanding the metaphor, but I understood the gist of it.
"Yeah. But what if the swims don’t exist in your current life? What if you haven’t found the swims at all, in eight years? Or more? What if it’s just the OKs and the goods? I want the greats, the magnificents."
"Then what are you waiting for? Go back to the last place you found your swims."
I laughed.
"The last place I found my swims was in Peru in 2006."
She looked at me seriously.
"Then, you must go back to Peru."
"I can’t go back to Peru. I’m married. I have a job."
She stood up, took her drink, and began to walk out of the room. She turned to me, before opening the door, and said something I knew I would probably never forget.
"If you have not found your swims in eight years, they are probably not here. They are in Peru, or Argentina, or Bali. Go to Spain, Greece, or Morocco. It is in these places where people go to find their swims, to get away from their roads." She blew me a kiss. "Good luck finding your swims, Charlotte. If you’re ever in Portugal, you have a place to stay for however long you want."
As she left, I sat there for a few minutes, taking it all in. She’d been blunt, but I felt lighter, cleaner, almost new again. It was a sudden realization: I should travel more. I should travel soon. I remembered a professor in college talking about the people you meet in your life, and their importance in shaping who you are and what you become. He said that some people come into your life for years, to mold and shape you, and others, for two, five, or twenty minutes, to momentarily show you the life you’re supposed to have: to guide you to the right path. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just encountered Anna for a reason. Perhaps what she’d said would shape my future. Perhaps I had to go to Peru.
I left the room for the cocktail party where, promptly upon my entrance, I was handed not one drink, but two. Anna winked at me and sauntered off. I drank both drinks in the span of about twenty seconds, so when Harry came and found me a few minutes later, I was laughing vivaciously with the bartender about my experience hiking up to Machu Picchu from the Inca Trail.
I wasn’t drunk, but since more or less giving up alcohol five months earlier, my tolerance had been lowered significantly. I was giggly and the minute I saw Harry, my smile dropped. I didn’t understand it, but it happened. It was automatic. He was my road, and I needed to find a swim. Or something. He walked up to me and put his arm lightly around my waist.
"You look great." He gave me a feeble smile.
"You too." I requested another drink.
"You sure about that? I’m pretty sure I could smell the alcohol on your breath before you even said anything." He took the drink from the bartender and handed it to me.
"You’re right." I set the drink down. Anna’s words had resonated with me. I needed to find my swims. And I needed to be somewhat sober to discuss things with Harry. I walked over to the cheese bar and began stuffing my face with bread and cheese.
"I think we should talk." Harry came up behind me and motioned for the alley.
"Can’t we just dance or something?" I was avoiding him. Deep down, I knew what he was going to say, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to hear it.
"Charlotte…" he shot me a look of warning, as if to say, I’m only here to talk.
"Fine."
I held on to his hand as he led me to the creepy, secluded alley. I felt like this was a place where a lot of people had been murdered. We walked to a quiet, sectioned-off area, with only dumpsters as companions, and he turned to me. That’s when I saw the tears in his eyes. His hand was covering his mouth. He was about to break my heart.
"Char, I can’t do this anymore. What happened to us?" His voice broke on the last word. Us. Broken.
"I don’t know." And to be honest, I didn’t actually know the root cause. No one had cheated. No one had lied (unless you count the fact that I never told him about Lainey and my psychic reading). No one had stolen money from the other, or tried to kill any of the other’s family members. But this thing, our marriage, was not what it was five months ago. He continued.
"You’re different. We’re different. I don’t know what happened. But I feel lost. I have to know what’s really going on with you. Because I know for a fact that though trying to get pregnant has been stressful, there has to be something else. I have to ask you something." He took a deep breath. I could tell this had been bothering him for a while. He looked as though he was finally letting out the question that had been on his mind for weeks. "Are you sleeping with someone?" He looked down at me, expectantly.
"No, I’m not sleeping with someone. It has nothing to do with another person. It’s me."
"But, what about you? Did something happen? Is it me?"
I decided this would probably be a good time to let him in on my psychic reading. I had to tell him. He had to know the truth. I couldn't let him continue to suspect that I was cheating, or something worse, because by all accounts, I now realized I had of course been acting suspicious. He needed answers. He was going to laugh when he found out that I had gambled our entire marriage on a five-minute psychic reading. He looked at me sullenly, desperately.
"There’s something I need to tell you, and it’s not what you think. Five months ago, the same day we started trying to have a baby, I took Amara to this psychic on Laurel Canyon. Amara thought Sam was cheating on her, so she wanted to get a reading for some peace of mind. I decided to be a supportive friend and go with her." I shuffled my feet and looked down at Harry’s arms. They were crossed in front of his chest. I felt more ridiculous by the minute. "Anyways, to be a supportive friend, I decided to get a reading too, thinking it would be quick and painless. But Lainey told me…" I broke off there, not sure how to phrase it. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. "She told me that my marriage would fall ap
art. She told me that we weren’t meant to be together."
Harry stood there for a minute, arms still crossed, processing that information. Clearly, I sounded like a crazy person. He unfolded and then folded his arms again. He paced back and forth between me and the dumpster a few feet behind him.
"So, you’re telling me that our marriage is going to shit all because some psychic said so? What makes you think she’s even credible? Psychics lie! That’s how they make money!" He was fuming now. I could see it in his nostrils: they were flaring. Harry never yelled. He just talked normally, but he paced and his nostrils would flare.
"She predicted Amara’s engagement. How could she have known? She said it would happen that weekend, and it did. She said Amara would get married in June, which she did. She said our marriage would dissolve shortly after Amara’s wedding, which it is. What about this makes you think she wasn’t right?!"
"You’re crazy. You’re absolutely fucking crazy. I’m sorry, but the woman I married would not have listened to a psychic about marriage advice. The Charlotte I knew was a lot more levelheaded and sane. This… whoever you are… you are not who I married."
"I’m sorry, I really am. But when Amara got engaged, and when she out-of-the-blue chose a wedding date in June, completely by chance because another couple had canceled, I thought for sure Lainey was right. Well, I don’t know if she was right, necessarily, or if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. That’s not the point. What she predicted had happened. I think she may have actually been right. Clearly, she was right on some level, because here we are, at Amara’s wedding, in June, and this definitely isn’t the kind of fight that will end well. In fact, I’m pretty sure you came here tonight to leave me."
The Foretelling (Charlotte Bloom #1) Page 5
