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You couldn’t do that, you just couldn’t. As much as you wanted to be brave, you didn’t think you could see him marry someone else. Brock had been your best friend since you were little. They had both been neighbors and then they had become friends. The friendship lasted for many years, surviving through Brock’s enlistment, the death of your parents, the thousands of deployments. You have always stayed together. However, today you weren’t so sure that you guys were going to recover from that.
More than a year ago Brock had met someone, ‘the one’ as he called her. At first you had paid little attention to her because, what girl was going to stay with a Navy Seal who was always deployed? However, against all odds, she stayed and after a few months, she had proven you wrong. Three months ago she had moved in with Brock and two months ago he had proposed to her. You remembered that day clearly, as if it were yesterday. He had taken you with him to buy the ring for her. Damn irony that you had chosen the ring that you would have liked him to put on your finger. Life was just cruel and unfair. You had been friends with him since you were 6, you had been in love since you were 16 and you were going to see him marry someone else at 32.
Brock had never known about your crush on him, though you were sure it was pretty obvious on its own. After being in love with him for so long, you had learned to pretend very well, burying any feelings for him in the depths of your being and you had repressed them for almost two decades with great success. She wasn’t a bad girl, but you weren’t the one walking down the aisle.
At first you had promised yourself that you were just going to go with the flow of events so when she asked you to be her maid of honor, you couldn’t say no, she was actually super sweet and incredibly adorable, which It was a shame because you wanted nothing more than to hate her. This morning when you woke up, you had incredible nausea. You felt sick at the very idea of going to church, as if it were your funeral. After thinking about it, you sent a message to Brock to tell him you would not do it and then a separate one apologizing to her girlfriend and telling her you didn’t feel well. Of course, a few minutes later, Brock had read your message because he had bombarded your phone with endless calls. Around noon, you decided you were going to answer him so he would stop calling you.
“I got your message. Why don’t you go to church?” he said as soon as you picked up the ringtone.
You took a breath. “I can’t be the maid of honor, Brock,” you explained softly, sitting down on your couch.
“Why not?” he asked
“Because I can’t!” You exclaimed without wanting to give too many explanations “I’m sorry”
“Don’t be sorry, just come here” you could almost imagine him running his fingers through his hair in desperation.
You made a sad smile as if I could see you “I wish I could,” you said in a whisper.
“What is going on, (Y/N)?” he asked and you heard how he closed the door. He was probably already back at his house after the bachelor party night.
You took a breath and threw your head back in frustration. He would not stop insisting without a good reason to leave you missing because he was definitely not going to accept the excuse that you were sick. “(Y/N?” he asked on the other end of the call when you didn’t answer right away. The way he said your name, almost like a plea, made you feel bad for him too, dumped by his best friend the day of his wedding.
“I’ve loved you for a long time” You admitted with a whisper biting your lower lip, almost hoping that he hadn’t heard you “Since we were sixteen, actually” You clarified to emphasize that it wasn’t something that had come up Suddenly or that you were having an attack of jealousy because of his wedding “I’m sorry” The weather could be cut with a knife and you almost expected him to speak at once, he was a man of few words but you needed to say something “I really wish I could change the way I feel about you, I really do, but I can’t.” You hoped he could really understand that one did not choose the person he fell in love with. Unfortunately for you, that person in your case had been the “Brock?” you asked after a few seconds of silence on the line.
“Why are you telling me this now? I’m about to get married” he asked with a hoarse voice and you could feel the gears of his brain turning at full speed.
“I know, I know and I wish I had the guts to tell you this before” You admitted letting out a moan and getting desperate to explain it to him you couldn’t control what you felt “I didn’t want to lose our friendship over this”
“You should be there,” he whispered, and you closed your eyes and bit your tongue to keep from telling yourself you were going there.
“Don’t ask me that, I’ll do anything except this, I can’t be there while you marry her” You had a lump in your throat and you could feel how it was closing at the thought of even setting foot in the church that afternoon “I’ll stay here and on Monday I’ll be ready to be your friend again as if today hadn’t happened but I can’t be there for you today”
“Nothing will ever be the same after this,” Brock told you and you felt as if everything was collapsing around you. You didn’t expect everything to be the same after that, but at least you hoped that your friendship would be strong enough to overcome that “I don’t think I can be your friend anymore”
“I’m sorry” You apologized trying not to let him get mad at you for it “I’m sorry”
“I’ll talk to you later,” he replied before ending the call.
You couldn’t help but start crying. It was unavoidable. You wished there had been another way, but you knew that eventually you should have told him, anyway. It was impossible to hide it forever. You had become steel, but not enough to see him form a life in which you were not included. You couldn’t see him marry another or have children. Children. Eventually, he was going to have children with her. Maybe it was time to move on with someone else, it had never worked out, every time you had a date you were comparing them to him but now that it seemed like your friendship was over, maybe you could finally get him out of your system.
When there was a knock on the door and you peeked through the peephole, there he was. What was he doing there?
“What are you doing here? You are getting married in less than two hours,” you told him as soon as you opened the door and he walked past you to enter your house.
“I need to talk to you”
“I thought you were done talking,” you told him, raising your eyebrows to look at him and closing the door behind him.
“You can’t just throw a bomb at me like that and expect me to do nothing,” he growled before you shrugged.
“It’s okay, Brock” You assured him and you noticed for the first time since he entered your house that he had messy hair “You probably don’t think about me at all, and that hurts but I’ll be ok” You gave a reassuring smile.
“That’s the thing, I don’t want you to be okay with that,” He said, moving closer to you and you backed away a bit.
“I’ll be fine; I’ve been repressing it for a long time,” you assured him, wishing he wasn’t there. You didn’t want me to come in here like ‘best friend concerned about your mental health after confessing him’.
“You know, I’ve been in love with you for a long time,” He told you with a lopsided smile and you felt your breath catch.
“Don’t do that,” you told him, shaking your head.
“Do what?” He asked with a confused expression.
“Lie to me to make him feel better,” you whispered to him.
“I’m not lying, since the summer before I enlisted I couldn’t stop thinking about you” What? That meant that you had never noticed that he felt for you the same way you felt for him. But it couldn’t be, because that would mean that you had never realized it. He had to be lying. The summer before he enlisted, you had been 17 years old.
“Don’t do this to me, not now” You shook your head and crossed your arms over your chest hugging yourself.
“So you can drop bombs like that and I can’t?”
“You can’t do that!” You yelled pointing your finger at him “Stop lying to me”
“I told you I’m not lying to you” He took another step towards you and you backed away again
“Brock, you’re getting married in less than two hours. We can talk about this another time” With any luck that time would never come.
“Not anymore”
You must have heard wrong; the wedding would not take place? “What?”
“I cancel the wedding”
“What?” you asked, horrified, feeling how the world spun around you. You leaned against the wall to recover from the shock before speaking again. “Why?”
“Because you gave me hope. I thought you would never look twice at me, but yet here you were on my wedding day telling me you had been in love with me for almost as long as I have been in love with you”
You were speechless. Completely shocked. You weren’t sure if you were dreaming or if that was real. If he was really there telling you, he loved you and giving you hope. Before you could process all that, he came over to you and took you by the cheeks to kiss you. You had wanted him to do that for so long that now that it was finally happening, you couldn’t believe it. It just didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be. Suddenly, in just a few hours, your life had taken a 360-degree turn. If they had told you yesterday that this was going to happen, you would not have believed it. You felt in the clouds as if something exploded inside of you. Your teenage self was squealing with happiness inside of you. His lips against yours felt so good, so magical, like it was. You had always wondered what it would be like to kiss him and this definitely exceeded your expectations. It was crazy how good he felt against your lips. When they finally parted, you just stared at him.
“Yes, it’s much better than he imagined,” He murmured and you smiled totally in agreement with him.