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He leaves the reception hall and still he can't breathe. The feeling is perhaps even more unsettling out there; staring out at the pond that almost looks scenic with impending sunset and oppressiveness from inside persists, as if chasing him. He stumbles until there's grass under his boots, until he can gasp enough to light the cigarette he had waved as an excuse for his departure when Frank looked like he was making to stop him.
The sound of the party gets louder behind him, momentarily, before it's deadened again.
"Bob?" Jamia calls quietly.
He presses himself closer to the shadow of the building he finds himself in, hoping it can hide him.
"I can smell your cig. Don't be a dick. It's cold." He watches her shiver in her ridiculous dress and feels like an ass.
He takes a drag and steps back toward the patio. He shrugs off his guilt—that guilt, at least. "You don't actually have to be out here, you know."
"Yeah," she says softly, "I really think I do. Bob—"
"Hey, congratulations on the marriage," he interrupts, feeling the slightest edge of hysteria as the grip on his chest squeezes tighter.
"Bob—"
"You two are gonna be really happy."
"Bob, fuck. Will you stop?" Her tone is forceful enough that he almost listens.
Instead he closes his eyes and says, "Please don't," quietly enough that it's carried off in the wind. She hears it, though. Jamia was always good at hearing things better left alone.
She doesn't leave. She stares out at the pond as the sun begins to stain it red. He smokes and pretends he isn't staring at her.
"I never asked for all his love," she says. "You. The four of you, but you." She sighs as if frustrated for words. Behind them, her reception is going on without her. Her husband is wondering where she is.
Frank had showed him the ring before he even asked Jamia. 'Her and me,' he had said. 'Forever.' He had looked equal parts terrified and thrilled.
Bob says, unnecessarily, "But you got all of him."
Her hand smoothes across his shoulder; he startles, he didn't realize she was so close. "It doesn't have to be any different." She breathes in deep and calming, he can't help but mirror it. "I don't want to lose him," she says. Her voice is thick with the honesty of it. "I don't want him to wake up in a year and only see the way things could've been if it wasn't me he was waking up next to."
His laugh is thick and bitter. "You don't mind the smoking so you had to get creative with the bad habits you compromise over?"
"It's not that."
He throws down the stub of his cigarette like it offended him by burning down to the filter. "It really kind of is." He turns to face her; when he does, he can see the reception hall in the corner of his eye. Frank is framed in the window staring out at them. "You don't have to worry about him regretting it," he says slowly. He's surprised by how clumsy the words feel on his tongue. "He made his choice."
He turns his head to look Frank fully in the eye, sees the open curiosity there before he turns his attention back to Jamia. "I'm not feelin' too hot. I'm gonna go back to my hotel." He waves at the door, tries to make it look friendly, before he heads for the parking lot.
He pauses to look back at the reception hall when he is safely behind the wheel. Frank is on the patio with Jamia. She's in his arms; the line of his back is strong and sure. She rests her head on his shoulder. Her arms are loose on his hips, intimate like a lazy slow dance for all the world to see.
Bob watches Jamia give Frank something he never could and tries not to be jealous of it, of the times that aren't for him anymore. That never really were in the first place. She catches him looking over Frank's shoulder, Bob can see the way her arms tighten around Frank. He thinks what he sees lingering in her expression is fear.
He backs out of the space. His tires screech a little in the quiet of the settling night.