I wasn’t shaking.
And, strangely enough, that surprised me.
I sat in front of the mirror with a cotton pad pressed gently against my cheek, carefully wiping away the blush that had smudged slightly during the dancing.
My wedding dress hung loosely at the back where I’d already unzipped it halfway. One sleeve had slipped from my shoulder, and my hair, once carefully arranged, was beginning to loosen around my face.
The bathroom smelled faintly of jasmine, burned tea lights and the vanilla body lotion I had used earlier that evening.
I looked at myself in the mirror.
I wasn’t shaking.
For once, I wasn’t even lonely.
I was alone, but that was different.
Instead, I felt suspended somewhere between the life I’d just finished celebrating and the life I was supposed to begin.
Behind me came a soft knock.
“Tara?”
It was Jess.
My best friend since college.
“You good, girl?”
“Yeah,” I called back. “I’m just… breathing. Taking it all in, you know?”
There was a pause.
I could almost picture her standing on the other side of the door, arms folded, eyebrows drawn together as she decided whether she should come in.
“I’ll give you a few more minutes, T,” she finally said. “Just holler if you need help getting out of that dress. I won’t be far.”
I smiled at the mirror.
It wasn’t quite a real smile.
“I will.”
I heard her footsteps disappear down the hallway.
And suddenly, the room became quiet again.
It had been a beautiful wedding.
I couldn’t deny that.
We had held the ceremony in Jess’s backyard beneath the old fig tree that had seen almost everything our friendship had survived over the years.
Birthday parties.
Breakups.
Late-night conversations.
Even a summer storm that knocked out the power and left us eating cake in the dark by candlelight.
It wasn’t fancy.
It wasn’t extravagant.
But somehow, it felt right.
Jess had always been more than a best friend to me.
She was the person who knew the difference between my being quiet because I was content and my being quiet because I was falling apart.
She had been my fiercest protector since college, and she had never been afraid to tell me exactly what she thought.
Especially when it came to Ryan.
“It’s my fault, Tara,” she’d told me once. “There’s just something about him. Look, maybe he’s changed. Maybe he’s a better man now. But I’ll be the judge of that.”
She had even offered to host the wedding herself.
She said it would keep everything “close, warm and honest.”
But I knew what she really meant.
She wanted to be there.
Close enough to look Ryan directly in the eye if he ever started slipping back into the person he’d once been.
I didn’t mind.
In fact, I liked knowing she was watching over me.
Ryan and I had decided to take our honeymoon later in the year, so we’d planned to spend our wedding night in Jess’s guest room before returning to our house the following morning.
It felt easier that way.
Like a quiet pause between celebration and real life.
Ryan had cried during our vows.
So had I.
And yet, despite all the happiness around me, a strange question kept returning to the back of my mind.
Why did I feel as though I were waiting for something to go wrong?
Maybe because that’s what life had felt like in high school.
I had learned to brace myself before entering certain rooms.
Before hearing my name called.
Before opening my locker.
Before looking at a mirror and wondering whether someone had written something about me.
There had never been bruises.
There had never been shoves.
Ryan had never screamed at me.
He didn’t have to.
His cruelty was quieter than that.
More calculated.
He knew exactly how to make a comment loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, but quiet enough that no teacher could accuse him of anything.
