Skinny Love

The moon, if you tilted your head a little to the right, looked like a fabricated smile. I’d never seen a smile so insincere and crooked. Gleaming not as bright as they were in summer sky, those autumn stars rather seemed like a pair of tired eyes. The night was still young, but there was no tenderness left of it.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

I lifted my back off of the ground to see if the familiar voice had a familiar face.

Turned out it was Joshua, my soon to be brother-in-law, leaning back on a swing pole not far away from where I sat.

“Hi,” I forged a smile.

“What are you doing here, Nora? Everyone’s been looking for you.”

“They have?” I hesitated.

“No, not really. Our fathers are too busy arguing about Obamacare— can you imagine if one of them were Republican?”

“I guess that’d be interesting. I wish one of them really were, and then maybe this wedding would never have to happen to me. No offense, though.”

“None taken.”

“Hey, what about James?”

“What about him?”

“Hasn’t he noticed that his fiancé is missing?”

“I don’t think so. He’s stuck with our mothers, they were talking about catering menus when I left.”

“I can only imagine the misery.”

“Don’t you think we should go back and save him from our crazy mothers?”

I ran through the idea in my head. But it’s not a very pretty picture.

“I think I’ll stay here for awhile…”

“Yeah, I’m sure James will live.”

Arbitrarily, Joshua stepped closer and sat next to me. Then he took out a pack of Marlboro from his back pocket. “Want some?” he offered. I didn’t really smoke, but I took one anyway. What the hell, I thought.

. . .

I never thought our relationship would last this long. It’d been a year and a couple of months. I remembered the first time we exchanged numbers. It was on a taxi ride, halfway from Death & Co. to my apartment. That day I had just passed the bar, so I was out celebrating with some friends. On her way to the ladies’ room, Olivia, my friend who had just started working at Shaerman & Sterling, ran into her new co-workers. They soon joined our table. Most of them looked like conceited stuck-ups, most of them but one. That one guy with delicate green eyes and square jaw was James. He struck me as a family person. The kind of guy who actually had long-term plans. The kind of guy I used to avoid being involved with. But then he was smart and established, and before we even knew it, we were already at his apartment, having dinner on our third date. The third led to the fifth, and now we’re planning a wedding.