Crossroads

I flew into Austin for my best friend Christie’s wedding with an orange bridesmaid dress crammed into my suitcase and irritation already brewing. Orange, really? In Austin that color belonged to the Longhorns and nobody else. What was Christie thinking?

At least my own life looked respectable on paper. I’d recently moved in with Tom, wore his ring on my left hand, and according to my mother, things were “headed in the right direction.” Whether it was love or not hardly seemed to matter anymore. After years of weddings and engagements among my friends, I was tired of explaining why I kept showing up with a different man every time. Fitting in had its advantages.

Still, I hadn’t invited Tom to come.

Bob and Andrew met me at the airport. Bob looked older than thirty, broad-shouldered and red-haired but worn thin around the eyes. Vietnam had sanded something off him. Andrew stood beside him in faded jeans and battered cowboy boots, lean and dark-haired and painfully familiar.

My stomach tightened the second I saw him.

I’d thought he was still stationed in Germany. But of course he’d come home for Christie’s wedding.

I was happy to see Bob.

Andrew was another matter entirely.

We were halfway to Christie’s house when Bob said flatly, “Guys, I can’t go through with this.”

“What?” I nearly choked on the word.

“Will you talk to Christie for me?”

I didn’t need to ask why. Christie and Bob had promised to marry as soon as he came home from Vietnam. He’d survived, which already made him luckier than too many others, but survival and readiness clearly weren’t the same thing.

Andrew sighed. “Robert, man up. This is on you.”

We stopped at a bar because apparently impending disaster required beer. I didn’t see the point. Calling off a wedding was cheaper than divorce, even if it was humiliating. But Bob needed courage, and somehow people always believed courage lived at the bottom of a glass.

After four beers for Bob, two for Andrew, and one for me, Bob announced he was ready.

Andrew and I dropped him at Christie’s house and drove away to give them privacy.

The second we pulled from the curb, I knew it was a mistake.

I’d fallen in love with Andrew when I was nine years old, and apparently time had done absolutely nothing about it.

The last time I’d seen him was three years earlier when he showed up at my apartment after my graduation from UT. I’d thought it was a date until he introduced me to his fiancée.  What was her name? Maybe I never learned it. I still remembered the strange numbness that settled over me while I smiled politely and offered iced tea like a well-brought-up Southern girl. Andrew spent the afternoon laughing with me, playing guitar, telling stories, completely oblivious. His fiancée barely spoke.

After that, I shoved every feeling I had for him into storage and locked the door.

Downtown Austin felt unchanged. We wandered Sixth Street and stopped at The Break Room for crawdads dumped across newspaper-covered tables. The place dragged memories behind it. Once Andrew hustled a man at pool there to pay for our date, and afterward we ran laughing through alleys while the furious idiot searched for us.

Back then everything between us felt reckless and alive.

Driving back toward Christie’s house, silence thickened between us until it became unbearable. Andrew pulled onto the shoulder without warning and killed the engine.

I turned toward him.

The look between us felt dangerous.

Years of unfinished business crowded the space between us until I could barely breathe. Then his mouth crashed against mine—hot, desperate, familiar enough to make me forget myself for one terrible second.

I shoved him away.

“You’re married,” I snapped. “Did you forget?”

He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white. “She’s in Germany.”

Only then did I realize I hadn’t asked about his wife once all evening. Not because I forgot. Because I didn’t want to remember.

Without looking at me, he asked quietly, “Does that ring on your finger mean anything?”

I stared down at my left hand.

“Not enough,” I admitted.

His jaw flexed. “We don’t have time.”

He was right. We didn’t.

Relief washed through me at having the decision taken away. Because if time had stretched any longer inside that parked car, I wasn’t entirely sure who I would’ve become.

“Bob’s probably in bloody pieces by now,” I said lightly.

Andrew started the car.

When we got back to Christie’s house, I braced for disaster. Instead Christie greeted us smiling while Bob sat on the couch with a beer in his hand looking miserable.

He hadn’t said a word.

Anger rose sharp and immediate. Christie had spent the evening glowing with excitement while Bob hid behind cowardice, and I disappeared into feelings I should’ve buried years ago.

The next day I stood beside them at the altar drowning in orange lace and taffeta and guilt.

When the minister asked whether anyone objected, my pulse thundered so loudly I thought the whole church could hear it.

Bob looked directly at me.

For one awful second I wondered if he wanted me to stop the wedding for him.

I said nothing.

Two years later Christie and Bob divorced. She told me she felt like she’d married a stranger.

I never told her what happened that night.