I can't
337 Words
Elena Reyes had one job today: say two words and become someone's wife.
The chapel was dressed in white roses, wilting slightly in the summer heat despite the air conditioning humming somewhere behind the altar. Three hundred guests filled the pews, dressed in their Sunday best, phones tucked away out of respect, eyes forward. Her mother sat in the front row dabbing at tears that hadn't started yet. Her father stood a few feet away, hands clasped, looking prouder than she'd ever seen him.
She'd rehearsed this moment a thousand times. In mirrors. In the shower. In the quiet dark before sleep, when doubt sometimes crept in and she'd silence it by picturing exactly this — Marcus in his charcoal suit, the officiant's calm voice, the weight of the ring about to slide onto her finger.
Now that she was actually standing here, the words felt foreign in her mouth.
"Do you, Marcus Whitfield, take Elena Reyes—"
Marcus's hand was damp in hers. She noticed that first — before she noticed anything else. His palm, slick with sweat, trembling slightly.
"I—" he started.
Then stopped.
The officiant paused, kind and patient, the way officiants are trained to be. "Take your time."
Elena looked up at him then, really looked, waiting for the words that would make this real. But Marcus's eyes weren't on her. They'd drifted somewhere past her shoulder — to the second row, where her sister sat in pale blue silk, knuckles white around the clutch in her lap, refusing to meet anyone's gaze.
The silence stretched half a second too long. Long enough for whispers to start rippling through the pews like wind through wheat.
"Marcus." Elena's voice came out smaller than she intended.
He looked at her then. And in his eyes she saw something she recognized instantly, something that made her stomach drop before he even said the words — guilt. Not nerves. Not cold feet. Guilt.
"I can't," he said.
Two words. That's all it took.
- Writer
