Excuse Me

I had a lot of practice talking to brides, especially crying ones. This one was past the gushing snot phase and into the tear-stained hiccoughing phase: a good sign that she had already made up her mind. She just needed someone to tell her she'd made the right choice. "You made the right choice."

Clutching a damp tissue to her cheek, she whimpered, "I'm just...there was no overlap, okay? That's why I didn't tell anyone. But I have all these feelings for him! What if they never go away?"

"Oh, sweetie," I said, brushing hair out of her face. I'd forgotten her name; 'sweetie' would have to do. "Never is a very long time. Do you love the man you're marrying?"

"Of course I do!"

"And there was a time when you didn't, right?" I reasoned. "But you changed. Those feelings grew. And that's the man who's here for you."

The bride studied the crumpled tissue in her hands. "You're right," she said. "I'm just making excuses."

"Every bride goes through this," I promised. "It's perfectly normal to feel this way. And tomorrow, your feelings will be entirely new. Feelings can change, great waves crashing over you, and then they fade away. It's your choices that really matter."

She sighed, wiping off the last of her melted makeup. "Yes. I choose my husband." She smiled at me. "Thank you."

"You can do this," I told her, squeezing her shoulder. "There's no real reason not to." I strategically stepped out before she faced her puffy, reddened reflection.

Ignoring the 'No Smoking' sign, I fished a pack of cigarettes out of my coat. There was limited time before the bride pulled herself together, and I was going to seize a private moment while I had one. Before I flicked my Bic, I listened, ears straining against the carpeted quiet. Down the otherwise empty corridor, I could hear someone, very faintly, muttering under their breath.

The man was squinting at a small scrap of paper, lips moving in his effort to memorize the words. When he saw me, he scrabbled to conceal it, as if anyone could read that cramped chicken scratch. "You okay?" I asked him.

Defensive tension melted from his shoulders, his pomade failing with the gravity of his slump. "I, uh...it's a rough day."

I'd never seen this particular stance in person before. In movies, though, I'd seen it thousands of times. "Are you...planning to object?"

"No!" Too fast, bud. I crossed my arms, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, hanging his head. "I don't know," he said. "I don't want to ruin her wedding day. Not in front of her whole family. But if I don't say something--"

"You'll let her ruin her whole life?" I leaned against the wall, helping him hold it up. "Her family wants her to be happy, not just today, but every day. You care about her, don't you?"

"I do." He winced when he said it. Such an innocent phrase on any other day. "I don't want her to hate me."

"Well," I shrugged. "Would she hate you more for saying something? Or not saying anything when you had the chance?"

Withdrawing the crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, he ran his finger over the smearing ink. "I don't know. She could have a perfectly happy life without me."

"Maybe," I said. "But you don't know that she would. You know you could make her happy. Nobody cares about her the way you do."

He perked up a little at that. Then, he faltered. "It, uh...didn't work for us before."

I waved this away. "That's the past. You've grown so much since then. And today is about the future." I pointed to the paper. "When are you going to get another chance to tell her how you feel?"

It took a still, small moment for him to think it over. Then he stood up straight, pocketed the note, and brushed his hair back from a determined face. "You're right," he said. "This is my chance. No more excuses."

"That's right!" I encouraged. "There's no reason not to!"

And off he went, with singular focus and unbridled confidence, to derail the wedding I had just recently gotten back on track. I wouldn't really care if he did.

It would not bother me either way if the groom were unloved, if the bride were miserable, if the marriage only lasted a year. I wouldn't lose any sleep at all over a best man with a black eye, a MeeMaw with a heart condition, a two-thousand-dollar cake gone to waste. I wouldn't care if this whole extravagant ceremony erupted with the full fury of Episcopalian self-restraint, and slowly burned.

Or maybe everyone would enjoy a smooth, serene program that runs on schedule and under budget. Doesn't bother me. Even without disasters, the anxiety's the same.

I am a creature that feeds on excuses. All that delicious indecision, that doubt. That reasoning, Maraschino-sweet, as people question their life choices. It doesn't matter to me what people do as long as they come up with juicy reasons why they shouldn't.

The reasons don't have to be clever. They don't even have to make sense. I can digest prayers and principles just as easily as budgets and pros-and-cons lists. Whether you're jaded, frightened, loyal, hedonistic, let me validate your worries away. Go ahead, catastrophize. Feed me hypotheticals. I gather up all that back-and-forth, form it into morsels, and guzzle it down. Gorging on caramelized inhibitions. Hot drama pouring down my throat.

I hunt for the sounds of pacing footsteps. Teeth on fingernails. The hum of a thumb that hovers between 'send' and 'delete'.

Weddings are excellent hunting grounds, stuck on the cusp of 'now or never'. Existential crises all the way down the aisle, emotions in a pressure-cooker as everyone over-estimates just how much of today they'll remember next year. Quandaries born of bubbling insecurities, from a flower-girl's fart to a priest's secretive tequila to new in-laws covertly certain they met before, on Grindr. Go on, leave early. Have a second slice. Steal an unlocked Nissan Altima. There's no reason not to. Not when I've had my fill.

What's amazing to me--baffling, really--is that people rarely stay hurt. When someone gives in to their darkest impulses, dares that double-dog dare, almost everybody understands. Mistakes are forgiven. Apologies made. And the world moves on. Those big, life-changing dilemmas were really just momentary lapses. People heal, and give grace, and preserve their connections. Sacrificing their own bruised egos for the sake of salvaging relationships.

I wish anyone in the world could relate to me.

Still hungry, I followed the sound of shuffling feet. The rhythmic scuffing of polished shoes as the ring-bearer, stranded on the bride's time, was reaching the end of his five-year-old attention span.

The little boy, all combed and clean, swung his legs off the edge of the pew. Bored out of his mind in his little pressed suit, he stared hard at the object in front of him, the gold rings on the white satin pillow. He fidgeted with the ribbon keeping the little gold hoops in place, tugging at the silk-slippery tether. All at once, the knot dissolved, and the spinning rings burst free.

They rolled in opposite directions. One immediately disappeared under the bench, the other bounced and revolved, catching the sun in a polished glare, metal edge singing as it struck tile. The bright circle gyrated, oscillating tighter and tighter in an exquisite display of physics before it came to a shuddering stop.

The boy scooped it up, curled tightly in his well-scrubbed knuckles. Quite a small, smooth thing, actually, that little gold trinket. Very small, flat and flawless as a cough drop. Like hard candy caramel, gleaming in his pudgy pink fist. Almost exactly bite-size.

The little boy's eyes, already guilty, rolled up to meet mine. He copied me when I licked my lips.

There was no reason not to.