Kelsey and I could easily have taken the subway here, but I got us a car instead. Now, in the backseat, I’m getting itchy. I glance at her as we glide across Court Street and remind myself, this is still a luxury to her. To Kelsey, who’s only been famous for a couple of years, every black car is a sign that she’s made it. Meanwhile, they mostly remind me of my youth: all the nights I spent trapped in backseats like this one, being chauffeured from meaningless events to equally meaningless parties, afterparties, and after-hours clubs.
We pull up to the curb, and the driver is opening the door and helping Kelsey out before I’ve even completely registered that we’ve arrived. It feels like it takes me forever to make my own exit and unfold myself into the chilly October night. On the sidewalk, I smooth out my suit pants and fiddle with my shirt cuffs while Kelsey pulls out her phone to check her makeup.
Then she turns to me. “I know you said—you know.” She wiggles the phone at me. “But can we just take one selfie? I won’t post it. I just want to remember how handsome you look. Please?”
I know you said—you know. It’s her way of glossing over the fight we had before we left the house. I probably should have told her earlier. It just didn’t occur to me to warn her that she couldn’t make content about—couldn’t make content even mentioning—my intensely private former bandmate’s wedding.
“But Jake, that’s why the designer loaned me this dress,” she explained patiently, as if I had misunderstood something obvious. “Specifically for the exposure she’d get if I wore it to this.”
I never tell Kelsey what to do, which I have to imagine is one of the things she likes about me. So I think I surprised us both when I held firm. She pouted most of the way over, but, apparently, I’ve been forgiven.
This is one of the things I like about her: she’s not one to hold a grudge.
I reach out my arm, and she tucks herself underneath it. Her dress is beautiful: a low back that’s impractical for the weather and bronze silk that’s almost the color of her skin. A man about my age passes us and quirks an eyebrow at me. The expression is half compliment, half question: how the hell did you land her?
Good question. Honestly, I should remember how lucky I am to be with her.
Kelsey presses her lips to my cheek, careful not to smudge her lipstick in the process. Then her mini ring light flashes at us, and my vision goes briefly white.
I’ve never liked weddings. In my twenties, I wrote them off for being sappy and stuffy: overly expensive, too-long parties where the bar was theoretically open, but bartenders were always cutting me off anyway. In my thirties when I finally got sober, weddings became nights spent watching other people get trashed. I’d sip soda water and count the minutes until I could escape.
Tonight should be different. It’s Charlie. It’s Maya. They tied the knot at City Hall this morning, and all we have to do is show up at Frankies in Brooklyn, the restaurant they’ve bought out for the celebration. It’s a neighborhood spot—their weeknight favorite. It’s all very nauseatingly charming, cozy, and sweet. Just like them.
And I’ve been dreading tonight ever since Charlie sent me a picture of the custom ring he’d had made for Maya.
Inside, I find my seat with Devin and Chris and their wives, plus Devin’s daughter, Opal, who’s teetering in her first pair of heels but clearly having the time of her life. I search for the bride and groom and spot them with their heads together at the corner of the bar, like they could be alone in the room. Maya is glowing, but it’s Charlie who looks utterly dazed with happiness, so overwhelmed by good fortune that he hardly knows what to do with himself.
Once we’re done with dinner, servers whisk away the family-style platters along with the tables and chairs, and the dining room becomes a makeshift dance floor with just enough space for Charlie and Maya and Opal and whoever else is in the mood. Kelsey grabs the younger girl’s hands and pulls her into a spin as the opening bars of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” spill through the restaurant. Opal shrieks in delight.
I don’t realize Charlie is at my side until I hear his voice over my shoulder. “I hope Kelsey knows that she’s making Opal’s night.”
“She’s just happy to have found someone who’ll dance with her.”
“Oh c’mon.” Charlie elbows me gently in the side. “It’s nice. Not all of your girlfriends have been this nice, Rams.”
That’s certainly true. Before Kelsey, there was Inez—short-lived, but she still managed to tell Charlie that his music was “too old-fashioned”… directly after one of his concerts. And before Inez was Karolina, who Charlie never even met because I knew how it would end. On the dance floor, Kelsey is instructing Opal in the subtle art of the shoulder shimmy. She glances my way and gives me a radiant grin.
This should be it. Maybe this is it. Kelsey is gorgeous and successful and she drives me crazy but she also makes me laugh. And for once, my friends seem to approve. I should feel settled, or happy, or… something. Instead, my stomach is hollow, like there’s a vacant cavity below my ribcage.
A waiter comes over and stations himself at Charlie’s side. Charlie hands the man his water and turns to me. ”You ready?”
Oh, right. The song. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“That’s the spirit.” He squeezes my shoulder and gets to his feet.
The music fades out, and the waiter hands Charlie a mic. Charlie switches it on and clears his throat. “Can I have your attention, please? Just for a moment, I promise.”
Devin and Chris make their way through the crowd to us, and there’s a rustle of excitement as everyone realizes what’s about to happen.
“When I first met Maya, I was completely knocked out by her,” Charlie says. “She was brilliant and passionate and intimidatingly well-spoken. And I honestly felt like I just didn’t have much to offer someone like that.”
Maya shakes her head furiously in response.
“But the one thing I did know that I could offer—that I knew she loved—was music. My music, specifically. Or, well, the music I made with my friends. And so I thought maybe that was the best way to impress her. I was never going to sweep her off her feet with a speech, but I thought, maybe a song could do it.” He’s starting to get choked up, and I wonder if we’re going to make it to the actual singing part. But Charlie is even more of a professional than he is a sap. He takes a breath, and when he speaks again, his voice is soft. “Maybe this song.”
Charlie hands off the mic and the four of us arrange ourselves in a line, the instinct still so habitual that I don’t have to think about it. I stand next to Charlie, who’s next to Devin, who’s next to Chris. Chris is the shortest, and he protests being too close to me or Charlie, because he says we make him look shrimpy in comparison. Chris and I, on the ends, turn in just slightly, making us into a half-moon sliver, a little crescent curl.
I always thought we would lose this eventually, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been. Our voices blend exactly the way they did the first time, and every time after that. I’m the bass of the group, and I rumble my way through the harmonies, the words tumbling out of me as easily as breathing. I thought I knew what love was / I thought I knew the seasons’ change. We’re singing a cappella, and I can almost hear the reverent hush that surrounds every word.
I don’t have to look at Charlie to know all the ways he’s transformed since he wrote those lyrics twenty-some years ago. He’s broader than he used to be, thick with muscle that’s replaced his teenage lankiness, and his hair is threaded with gray. But more than that, he’s settled. He’s happy. He’s a real grown up.
It takes me a moment to understand what’s happening in my body, in my stomach and throat and behind my eyes. The emptiness I felt before is replaced by the distinct sensation of flooding, as what I mistook for blank indifference reveals itself to have been a cover: a way of masking an enormous, aching sadness.
I get through the rest of the song on autopilot. We’re barely done before Maya is flinging herself into Charlie’s arms, pulling him in for a kiss that feels too intimate to witness. I turn away and my gaze catches on Kelsey’s.
She’s smiling again, a soft, sweet thing. But her eyes are dry. She’s heard a good bit of Mischief’s music, but she doesn’t know that song. And even if she did, I think, it wouldn’t mean much to her, the same way it didn’t mean much to me in my twenties. Before I’d lived through quite so many seasons.
I make my way over to her anyway, and wrap her up in my arms.
“That was gorgeous,” she says.
“Thanks.” I press a kiss to her forehead.
The servers hand out cups of hazelnut semifreddo and batched Negronis. Everyone cheers and claps as Charlie and Maya toast to one another, and kiss, and kiss again.
I’ve never thought much about my own wedding. I always assumed that if I had one, I would suffer through as best I could. Let my bride pick out ostentatious floral arrangements and expensive silverware and a corny DJ that I would ultimately hate.
Which I always assumed meant that I hated weddings. But it occurs to me now that I’ve only ever really been to one kind.
This wedding is different. If I could have something like this—
Maybe I wouldn’t mind it.
I run a hand absently across Kelsey’s bare shoulder. I’ve never broken up with anyone in my life. I’ve never understood how you knew it was time. I’ve been unhappy in relationships, sure, but it always seemed like a better idea to stick around than to set out on my own. My brain is bad company, so I’ve always looked for people who could keep me from being alone with it too often.
But surrounded by the honesty and ease of Charlie and Maya’s love, the thing I have with Kelsey feels like a way of killing time. I’m too old for it, I think, and she’s too young.
For years now, I’ve been living like I’m caught in a time loop: every day distinct in its particulars and yet somehow blending together, ultimately completely the same. I try to imagine a future with Kelsey. I try to imagine a future at all.
Instead, what comes is a memory: the last morning I woke up hungover. I had been in and out of rehab for years at that point, and I was no stranger to the relapse. I had been drinking again for weeks, one glass of what-can-it-hurt beer at a friend’s birthday party rapidly spiraling into an endless stream of vodka sodas, which I ordered at bars because they could plausibly be mistaken for soda and lime. Until someone got close enough to smell me, anyway.
This particular hangover wasn’t even that wretched. I was nauseated and dry-mouthed, struck by a piercing headache. My hands shook when I reached for my phone. But I was at home in my own bed. No wayward stranger was there with me. I had even managed to take my shoes off before passing out.
So it wasn’t waking up that morning, exactly. It wasn’t whatever had happened the night before, either. It was that it was the first beautiful day of spring, and I knew that I was going to miss it. I was going to lie there until I could crawl my way to the kitchen to take the day’s first shot, and then I was going to stay at home, taking more shots, because I didn’t want to go out into the world and run into anyone with that much alcohol on my breath.
I had wasted thousands of beautiful days before. I’ll never know why that one was different. All I know is that I took my morning shot. And then I showed up to an AA meeting drunk, and tried, once more, to start my life over again.
I haven’t felt anything quite like I did that morning—grief, and certainty, and lightness—in all of the years since. But it comes over me now as a slow song starts and Kelsey finally succeeds in pulling me onto the dance floor. Something about tonight has flipped a switch for me. I have the sense that I’m leaving the life I’ve been living. That a new one, unimaginable as it might seem, could actually be just around the corner.
