Even at the Wedding I Never Had Her

The bridal studio smelled like steam and fabric sizing, and the woman at the front desk kept calling me the groom in a voice that suggested she had already forgotten my name. I had been standing under the lights for forty minutes. My collar was too tight. The trousers pulled across my thighs because the rental place had measured me wrong twice, and Callie had promised we would fix it before the ceremony, which was six weeks out, which meant there was time, which meant I was not allowed to complain about anything yet. "Turn toward the window," the photographer said. "Chin up. Hands at your sides. No, softer. Like you love her." I laughed, and he didn't. Callie stood on the riser in a dress that was not the final dress, just a sample, ivory silk with a train pinned in three places. She looked like she had stepped out of a magazine that had been printed specifically for her. Seven years, and she still made my chest do something tight and stupid when she turned around. "Gray," she said. "You're slouching." "I'm standing straight." "You're slouching in your soul." Drew laughed from behind the curtain, and Callie's head turned toward the sound before she could stop it. I watched her do it. That is the thing I keep coming back to, when I think about that afternoon. Not the suits, not the camera, not the way the photographer kept repositioning us. Just the way her chin lifted and her eyes went bright and quick toward the sound of his voice, like a dog hearing a car in the driveway. Drew Marsh had been my roommate at Halston for three years. He had introduced me to Callie at a house party off campus, senior spring, when I was too drunk to be charming and too nervous to be anything else. He had told me she was smart and mean in a good way and that I should talk to her before somebody else did. He had been right about all of it. He had been standing at the edge of our whole relationship since the beginning, in the way that a good friend stands at the edge of a room, warm and useful and easy to forget. The curtain pulled back. "Holy hell," Callie said. Drew stepped out in the groomsman suit. It was a charcoal wool three-piece, cut close at the shoulders, and I understood immediately that my tuxedo was not the same thing. Mine was stiff and boxy and smelled faintly of the last guy who had worn it. His fit like it had been made on his body in a room with better light. He looked like a man in a movie about men who own horses. He also looked uncomfortable, which made it worse. "This is too much," he said, tugging at the lapel. "I'm a groomsman, not a Bond villain." "You look incredible," Callie said. She said it the way you say a fact. Water is wet. Fire is hot. Drew Marsh looks incredible. "Thanks," he said, and then he looked at me, and his face did the thing it always did when he remembered I was in the room, which was to become gentler. "Gray, man, you look sharp." "I look like a rental." "You look like a guy about to marry the best woman in the state of California." Callie smiled at him. Not at me. At him. That was the first thing. The second thing was her hand on my sleeve. "Babe," she said, "come here." I followed her because I always followed her. The photographer had set up a shot on the riser, a wide frame with the two of us in the center and the train spilling out to the side like water. Callie adjusted my tie. Her fingers were cool. She smelled like the citrus lotion she had used since college. "Okay," she said. "Now Drew." "Me?" "Get up here. You're part of this." "Callie," I said. "It's an engagement shoot." "I know what it is." "He's the best man." "Which is exactly why he should be in some of them." The photographer shifted his weight. This was not unusual, I told myself. Couples took photos with their bridal party. I had seen it on the internet. I had seen it in magazines at the dentist. There was nothing wrong with a woman wanting her fiancé's best friend in a picture. Drew stepped up onto the riser. He was taller than me by two inches. I had known that since college. I had just never had to stand next to him in front of a lens. "Okay," the photographer said. "Center three. Groom, step left. Best man, move in. Closer. Good. Now the bride, lean in." I stepped left. Callie's hand closed around my forearm and pulled. Not toward her. Away. "You're blocking the light," she said. "Move over. Just a little more. There." I was on the edge of the frame. Drew was in the center. Callie was in the center. They were shoulder to shoulder, his hand resting at the small of her back, which he had done a hundred times at a hundred parties, which was just how he stood with everyone, which meant nothing. The photographer's flash went off. "Beautiful," he said. "You two are a gorgeous couple." The room went very quiet. Drew's ears turned red. Callie laughed, one short note, and didn't correct him. I stood at the edge of the frame in a rental tuxedo with my hands at my sides and felt the floor tilt slightly, the way it does when you stand up too fast. "He means the whole party," Drew said. "Sure," the photographer said, not sure at all. "Let's get one with the groom in the center. Sir, if you could step in." Callie looked at me then, finally, and something passed over her face I couldn't name. Not guilt. Not quite. Something closer to surprise, as if she had just remembered she had left the stove on. "Gray," she said. "Come here." I came. But I kept thinking about the way she had said Move over, and how fast her hand had moved to do it, and how her eyes had gone to Drew in the doorway before they had gone anywhere near me. When the shoot was over, we walked out into the parking lot and Drew pulled me aside. "Hey," he said. "That was weird. The photographer thing. I'm sorry." "It's fine." "It's not fine. It was weird. I'll talk to her if you want." "Don't talk to her." "Okay." He looked at me, and there it was again, that gentle thing, and I wanted to hit him, which was new and ugly and I pushed it down because he had done nothing wrong. He had done nothing wrong. That was the problem with Drew Marsh. He was the most innocent person in every room he walked into. Callie came up beside me and slid her arm through mine. "You're quiet." "I'm tired." "You're mad about the picture." "I'm not mad." "You're doing the face." "I don't have a face." "You have a face." She kissed my jaw, quick, casual, the way she had kissed me for seven years. "It's a good face. Don't do it." I drove her home. I did not tell her what I had seen. I did not tell her that the flash had gone off exactly at the moment her shoulder pressed into Drew's chest and her head tilted toward him, natural as breathing, and that in the frozen light of that second I had looked like a man waiting to be told where to stand. Which, of course, I was.