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“We should try getting married, I think it would solve our problem.”
August immediately chokes on his Chinese takeout.
“Oh my god, that came out so wrong.” His roommate’s face morphs into one of horror, turning as red as August’s felt. A warm hand reaches to rest on his back, checking to make sure August isn’t losing the fight to his lo mein.
“Hope, what the fuck,” August coughs out, blindly reaching for his drink on the table, only to find it being placed gingerly in his hand.
“Not to each other! Proxies! We should try being proxies! My dad’s college friend and his son do them for deployed soldiers, and I guess his secretary just got engaged so he won’t do them anymore because it’s ‘bad luck’ or something? August, it's a hundred bucks per wedding, do you know how much that would help with bills?”
August still can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Hope,” he says carefully around a sip of water. “Do you understand that you can’t just...say things like that?”
Hope rolls his eyes so hard that August’s own twinge in sympathy. “Get over yourself, I already told them to put us on the schedule. I think it’ll be a good bonding activity for us.”
August sputters in protest, but has no suitable retort for Hope’s snickering other than “but that sounds absolutely terrifying and not fun at all why did you volunteer us to get married to strangers,” but he doubts that supersedes a $100 paycheck earned in the same time it takes to go for a coffee run. He still allows himself the night to sulk, piling more and more blankets on top of him until Hope rolls his eyes in fond exasperation, shoves the blanket mountain on the floor, and tucks August between his arms. He doesn’t say anything, but August hears what he means to. Half the time, they don’t even need words. That’s just how they’ve always been.
And that’s how they got pseudo-engaged.
August met Hope on a sticky August afternoon. The humidity was so thick it was suffocating. The rumble of gray clouds in the distance meant August awoke with a migraine that would last until the clouds broke, soaking the dry, California pavement into a state of sated reprieve. Then, he too would let out a sigh of relief as unsuspecting as evening fog, yet as satisfying as a spring day. August loved the rain, hated the scarceness of it in Sacramento, and tolerated the blinding rays of Pacific sun only on his best days (which were few and far between, and usually only accompanied by gray, rolling clouds and a palpable tang in the air).
High school was a vapid monotony, the days only differentiated by the availability of the auxiliary basketball court (Mondays and Wednesdays), or when his history teacher would convince him to grace the drama club’s sound crew with his presence (any given Friday, once per month). August could really have given less than a fuck about a bunch of Broadway-wannabes singing and dancing circles around each other, but the drama club was his only time to mess around with industry-sized equipment. So he gritted his teeth every time he had to explain ( again) the basic operations of a soundboard (if the lights at the bottom are red, the mic’s off, dipshit) to some bumbling freshman with eyes only for their lab-partner playing the supporting actress or whatever, and tried to pretend it was possible to adjust feedback levels while blaring Nas out of his bass-boosted headphones. It was an absolute annoyance, but it gave him more leniency with the history homework he always forgot to do, and most, most importantly—the thing worth throwing away his Friday nights to basically play babysitter: complete access to the school’s old cassette collection. The vast majority of it was musicals and holiday music, but August was skilled (read: insane) enough to flip anything into a hip hop sample. The rush of finding the perfect final puzzle piece for a beat, after hunting through dozens and dozens of stacks, was worth all the noise and the crowd and the stupidity.
It was only the second week of his junior year and he was already struggling to keep up in his classes. Yet here he sat, in the back of the dimly-lit auditorium, trying to drown out the nauseating buzz of ice-breaker games by rattling out a rhythm on the table in front of him with a broken pencil. His old history teacher looked bemused to see August slouching behind the soundboard again, but he was just praying he wasn’t going to get asked about the tape recorder he may or may not have “borrowed” in May…so technically it was the school’s property, but August watched it slowly collect dust all of last year before spontaneously shoving it in his backpack the night of spring dress-rehearsal, and he couldn’t imagine anyone but him still interested in the decades-old thing.
A piercingly loud senior with obnoxiously bright pink lipstick demanded everyone sit down to listen to her explain the semester’s calendar, punctuating the speech with an amount of bragging that was almost impressive.
No one looked impressed.
August craned to catch the time.
Again.
And again.
And that’s when the door slowly creeped open. A single beam of yellow light crept onto his restless hands, and then quickly receded as the door slid shut with a tch.
“Oh shit, am I late for the drama club meeting?” a voice much too loud to be considered whispering hissed into his ear. He jerked at the sudden proximity.
“Um , yeah, you can hear them talking right now.”
“How did I manage to hear that eye roll?” the voice laughed, despite a truly scraping delivery by August. The latecomer was still much too close for his liking. The force of his reedy yet hearty laughter just forced a puff of hot hair directly into his ear. He shivered despite himself; there was an almost musical quality to it, accents perfectly staccatoed on rhythm. For a moment, it drowned out the grating sound of the club president and blended perfectly with the pencil still rapping. It was enough of a small relief and an unexpectedly crisp kick-drum-accompaniment that he dropped the barbed-wire for a sec, forgetting his usual policy of non-interference-unless-in-extreme-cases-or-maybe- maybe --if-you’re-teaching that he reserves just for the drama club kids.
Or, maybe it was just a long summer spent alone.
“Honestly, it’s mostly just the president listening to herself talk, right now. Everything important she’s saying is on the website, this meeting is more for overly-complicated ice-breakers than anything else.” He jerked his head to point without having to stop his hands, “Far right corner’s cast, left is the pit members, back is the crew.”
“Where are…the dancers?”
There was only a slight hesitation, but August caught it anyway. What it is about cataloging this guy’s voice, he wasn’t sure, but it was probably just the uncomfortable proximity (can he take a hint?), combined with it being near pitch-black all the way in the shadows of the mezzanine. Or maybe it was that he sounded like the new style he’s been trying to master: honey-sweet with an ever present rasp, yet this guy is far too emphatic and just plain...loud than what he was going for. He wonders if he raps.
“Come back next semester, they do the musicals in the spring. Fall is plays.”
A small noise of annoyance.
“They couldn’t have put that on the flyer?!” he whined, “I would’ve gone to the cross country meeting instead.”
August snorted. “Cross country’ll take you even if there’s only a week left in the season, you’ll be fine. You a freshman, then?”
The kid slid into the seat next to him, folding his hands under his chin. The upturned slope of his nose cut through the dark like a knife. “Mmm’m. Sophomore.”
August waited for him to continue. It was the first time this kid paused long enough to take a breath, let alone a minute’s worth. He unconsciously found his hands speeding up, the tapping starting to carry down the plush aisles.
“That’s a pretty solid beat, are you, like, the drummer for the pit band?”
August let out another snort. “Fuck, no, I just help run light and sound when the crew gets stretched too thin. Or when they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
All he could make out in the dark was the clean ski-slope line of that nose, and the constant twitch of long, slender fingers, as if trying to physically unravel the unsaid truths August wasn’t saying into dark.
Why are you the only person out of nearly 100 sitting all alone back here?
Why do you use “they” as if you don’t consider yourself a member of the club?
Why are you here if you’re acting as if you can’t wait to get out?
Are you alone, like me?
The shrill piercing voice of the president finally stopped, only to be replaced by an immediate wave of conversation, shuffling, and laughter as the herd of drama kids swept out of the auditorium. August put his pencil down and waited for the crowd to disperse. The kid looked at the sea of faces passing him, eyes flicking back and forth like some frenetic bird, but otherwise he stayed still. A small group of e-board members remained on the stage, but the auditorium was otherwise empty. August cracked his back, yawning through the question:
“So what kind of dancer are you?”
“Hip hop.” The reply was quick, sure. The doors were propped when the crowd swept out, August finally able to make out more than a silhouette of this odd sophomore who appeared to be trying to befriend him. His lips twitched a bit; this kid definitely didn’t keep his ears open enough in the lunchroom. This was a face he might need to remember. He drank in his set jaw and deep brown eyes so sharp he’s almost caught off-guard. Well, at least the kid had the confidence to back up such a ridiculous declaration. Hip-hop and show tunes, who would’ve thought.
“Hip-hop, huh? You’re in the wrong fucking place if you’re not a tap dancer.”
“I want to dance,” he rebutted simply, eyes startlingly clear, even through the semi-darkness. “If they don’t think my style fits the show, I’ll choreograph a new show and prove them wrong.”
August couldn’t help it. What kind of fifteen year old has the confidence to walk around threatening to wage revolution on something as banal as a high school theater program, and mean it. Just so he could perform on the stage. He couldn’t tell if he found this kid’s ego or a b-boy barbershop quartet more hysterical. He folded in half on the desk and let himself laugh for a solid minute straight, maybe two. He couldn’t remember the last time he laughed so hard, nor the last time he encountered such raw earnesty. It was a rare proof that could slowly fill an entire room, sharp and bright, blending sound and emotional into a finite tangible something— something he hadn’t felt for a very long time.
Passion.
Drive.
That ache from dreaming.
That shiny, fragile feeling of excitement.
That hunger for competition.
The want.
In that moment, it all came rushing back.
And for a moment, it was all he could do to just breathe it in.
With a final huff that wandered dangerously close into the beginnings of another laughing fit, he swiped his hands through his inkjet hair and sat upright. “Sorry, sorry, I was just imagining breakdancing in the middle of Singin’ In the Rain.” Not, know, succumbing to existential hysteria.
The kid’s heart-shaped mouth twitched into a frown. “But that would be cool.”
“Not with this crowd,” August replied and stood up, closing the lid to the lights and soundboard with one hand and scooping up his backpack with the other. “Hey kid, what’s your name?”
“Hope.”.
“August,” he supplied, before pocketing a massive keyring and slipping out into the hall.
Hope scrambled to catch up, “where are you going?”
But August ignored him, jangling with every hurried step towards the basement. “So, Hope, what rappers do you listen to? Ever listen on tape?”
The days grew shorter, opening night drew nearer, and a persistent bite wove its way under August’s skin. Some days, it was more of an itch than anything else; a restless urge to create something more than flipped and remixed noise filtered under esoteric insults and cheap bravado. Some days, it was more of a siren song to the dark; a constant buzz of dissatisfaction and anger and self-doubt that urged him to build his walls higher and higher, fortify them with sharper and shaper barbed wire, and attack with only the deadliest aim. And then other days, it was like a constant weight on his chest, pushing him down, down, down underwater and holding him hostage in his own current; drowning faster and faster the harder he tried to reach shore.
But Hope was a human tuning fork.
Whenever August hung out with Hope, that constant dark buzz in his veins shifted into the ringing of bells. It was a call to action; a beckoning to the unknowns; the bright, clear sound of laughter. Hope greeted life with a tenacity that was as steadfast as it was sanguine. He tried anything and everything, and embraced failure because it meant a laugh. Ever since that very first meeting when they spent hours messing around with old tapes in the basement storage room and choreographing stupid dances to them, they stuck together like broken clocks in a detention hall. Evenings were spent working lights and sound for the drama club, the back of the auditorium always filled with tense whispering, poorly-concealed laughter, and far too many sound effects all over a constantly evolving beat. They definitely should’ve been fired, but they were the most knowledgeable and seamless team to work the boards in years, so somehow they were spared.
August felt his bones shifting from the aimless, angry drifting he could barely describe to his psychiatrist, to believing in something as fulfilling and naive as achieving your dreams. He made the beats, he poured his soul onto paper (but not just to make baseless noise, but to turn that noise into art ), and Hope supplied backing vocals and choreography. It was a tacky dream, something you’d find in 90s Brooklyn, but it gave them a liferaft in the stormy confused waters of adolescence, and a paddle for pathfinding their way through their approaching college years. They were each other’s compass: August kept them grounded to reality; Hope charted them through unknown waters. A strange pull—like the sparkling rush they both felt in their high school auditorium on that very first day—was their guide, pulling them forward and pushing them together.
(perhaps it is what we know to be fate?)
The clearest comparison August can make of it dawned suddenly on him on his 17th birthday. For the first eight days of March, it rained constantly . August spent all of them suffering from terrible migraines, the kind that’ll make your nose gush claret. By 10pm the night before his birthday, he was fully committed to staying in bed until the storm passed and the red sea parted, but Hope adamantly refused. He eventually took it upon himself to drag August out the front door swaddled in his comforter. Newly licensed, Hope drove them down to the beach to camp out, play basketball, and watch the sunrise.
They sat in a rain-battered car for nine hours.
They both nearly cried three separate times.
Hope almost broke his ankle trying to prove they could “still play basketball.”
But slowly,
as it neared 7am,
the rain began to lull.
Miraculously, the clouds began to open like a cracked egg, shells decorated in pastel pinks, oranges, reds, purples, just as if it was easter, and
after what felt like weeks, the sun was shining, crawling up the horizon and sand like luminescent ivy.
They jumped barefoot out of the car onto freezing wet sand and tilted their faces up to the sky, palm raised upward, as if reaching, offering. August soon ceased his tireless spin of circles to pause to bask in the warm light. Squinting, slowly, he opened his eyes.
The sight before him, one that is now ingrained so deep into his memory that he’ll never, ever be able to forget what it tasted like, was this:
the ocean is a smooth, glass disc. rolling waves on the shoreline gradually smooth out into a mirror-image reflection of the watercolor sky. It is impossible to tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins. The scene looks as though god painted it herself, but woke up a bit too early, a bit too young, a bit too fussy, and ran her fingers through the wet paint at the last second, pastels bleeding into the vibrant hues of morning. And then, like the birth of venus, in a moment of serendipitous euphoria, August turns and sees the most beautiful solar eclipse he can fathom he’ll ever his eyes upon. Hope—charming, alluring, effervescent, beaming Hope—with freshly dyed chestnut hair a glowing halo backlit by the morning sun, turns to him to say softly, almost as if casting a spell: “happy birthday, August.”
It was at that exact moment that August understood.
And it was like the sun had broken free from the clouds.
Attending UCLA might’ve been a dream come true, but the bills were the stuff of nightmares. Tuition was already a pain in the ass, textbooks were a pain in the back and the ass, rent was closer to devil incarnate, the LA cost of living is obscene, and if you weren’t spending way more than you know should on take-out and alcohol, what was the point of putting your money down the capitalist garbage disposal for all those other staples of “living in your 20s”, anyway? A pre-made path to a stable, profitable career? August sweats in “music major” . Maybe if he had more time to dedicate to commission tracks he wouldn’t be so stressed all the time. Because then he’d have more money, and would be actually making music, rather than writing papers theorizing the “right” way to do it.
But, yeah.
No time, no money, no days-off, no room in his disgustingly expensive apartment. He trips over one of Hope’s chelsea boots that’s laying directly in the middle of the hallway for some reason. He contemplates beaning it at the wall. He considers the very real possibility of it either knocking a chunk out of the drywall or bouncing back to impale him. He decides to step over it and carry on with his day. Who is he to disturb a creature in its natural habitat.
“Hope,” he raps on his roommate’s door as he pushes it open.
Hope looks up from an elaborately cluttered desk setup. How his laptop is balanced on two opened and dog eared textbooks of vastly different thickness, how he can make any sense of his serial killer-esq collage of sticky notes adorning the desktop and surrounding walls, and how Hope is surrounded by a litter of empty coffee cups and energy drinks yet appears to still be functioning is truly beyond August. Usually he’s the caffeine-addict trying to decipher what class this page of notes is for because he only uses one notebook, and creates calculations for exactly how fast he needs to type per hour to catch up on two months of backlogged busy-work because he simply forgot it existed...and that it counted towards 30% of his final grade. Hope has a weird proclivity for study groups, especially in gen eds, but they always earn him at least 3.5s and a smattering of new acquaintances every semester. Although he refuses to attend another one after the Tomato Soup Incident, he can’t deny that they’re a perfect environment for Hope to study in.
“Oh, hey, is it time to start cooking dinner yet? Sorry, I’ve been studying for the past…” his gaze wanders to his alarm clock. It looks like it was violently thrown across the room at some point. Luckily it landed safely in a pile of dirty laundry. Hope looks sheepish, “I have no idea, actually.”
August stalks over to the jenga tower of study materials and yanks out a book. “Marketing 101? Why the fuck are you studying for a class you’re not taking.”
“Well I’m taking the midterm tomorrow for $50, so until then I’ll be studying.”
The exhausted attempt as an annoyed glare he fixes August with as he rips the textbook back is about as threatening as a baby horse on ice skates. August has half a mind to snatch back the book and smack him upside the head with it, and half a mind to cocoon him every spare blanket in the apartment and let him sleep til next Tuesday.
“Hopie—”
“It’s fine, it’s fine, it was a last minute favor for a friend, and we can always use the extra cash, yeah?”
“You have a dance team review in two days, you need the rest. Tell your friend you have a previous commitment you forgot about or something.”
Hope starts shuffling his notes. “Actually, uh,”
“Jesus christ, your friend is on the dance team, too.”
“Listen, he’s like...kind of awful at our newest combo, so I figured I would help him out so he could get in more practice.”
August pushes his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose and kneads his temples with a sigh. “I am so tired...of being broke. And you—” he flicks the gold-hearted idiot in the forehead. “Stop undermining yourself when you’ve worked your ass off for the past five years to get where you are today. Your blood, sweat, and tears are worth a lot more than $50, Hopie.”
“I know, I know—”
“Promise me you’ll start looking out for yourself more, hm? And me, too, please. Stop leaving your shit in the middle of the hallway.”
“Shit—chelsea! Sorry, I left her out there as a reminder—don’t give me that look, I ran out of sticky notes about fifty vocab words ago—Mr. Philip got back to me, he has a couple clients lined up for Saturday.”
August lets his face go blank as he wracks his brain to figure out whatever the hell that means. Cli—.
“We are not getting married.”
“Well technically, we aren’t getting married, we’re each going to marry a military wife. And technically, we aren’t even really getting married, we’re just stand-ins for the war heroes.”
Hope waggles his eyebrows and begins to hum the first few bars of “Marry You”.
August’s head is still spinning. Legally binding or not, he was about to get married ...as in agree to “til death do us part” on behalf of a man with already a foot in the grave...that level of unconditional devotion and commitment was so...he couldn’t pinpoint what word he was reaching for. Foolish? Unrealistic?
Maybe his middle school stand-partner in band was right: growing up raised by a single, artistic, wild, practical, wise, ambitious bachelorette did make him fucked in the head. But he wouldn’t trade his mother for anything. She taught him everything he knows and how to learn what he doesn’t. And most importantly, she taught him that you are your sole keeper, and you alone. One is never alone when they trust in themselves.
It’s these sayings that well up in his mind, sounding off a jarring dissonance of warning bells in his stomach. Either Hope is completely oblivious to August’s panic or imperceptibly conscious, because all he does is stand up, take August’s hands, and start twirling them around the room. Perhaps it’s that signature heart-shaped, mischievous grin that does him in. Or maybe it’s the ridiculous sprout bobbing on his head, because he hates his hair falling in his eyes when he’s stressed. Or maybe it’s the garishly over-the-top, 90s, R&B crooning that started when humming didn’t seem like enough anymore. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the sinewy roll of those dancer hips as he spins them round and round his hurricane of a room.
Really, who’s to say? It’s all Hope, isn’t it?
August snorts out a laugh as Hope yelps after stepping on what felt “suspiciously crunchy like a beetle”. They ignore that corner for now. Hope tries to dip him, and they both nearly pull something from laughing too hard on the way to the ground. Gasping on the hardwood floor, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars August put on the ceiling as a joke, only for Hope to fall in love with them and put up more mapping out his favorite constellations, they yell “Marry You” at the top of their lungs with all the air they have left. The sound of their downstairs neighbor pounding a broom in their direction only succeeds in making them laugh harder, pinky fingers linking like a highschool inside joke.
“Hey August?”
“Hey Hope?”
“Do you promise to never stop performing concerts with me?”
A smile. A quick squeeze. A quick squeeze back.
“I do.”
(Maybe it’s just the blood rushing to his head, but for a minute there, it sounded like those warning bells were pitching higher and higher, until they were nothing more than a tinkling sparkle, ringing so sweet and clear he swore he could feel it.)
Saturday morning finds August and Hope in white-button downs and chelsea boots, faces slightly flushed from sprinting all the way from the bus station. Hope had spent every ten minutes since they first woke up reminding the perpetually-tardy August of the time, yet it was Hope who turned 45 degrees in the bathroom mirror, yelped, and refused to come out until that one wretched piece of hair lay correctly. He had to be dragged out of the apartment by the belt loops. The secretaries at the county clerk’s office keep looking over at them and tittering, especially amused whenever August would slap Hope’s hands down from messing with his hair again .
“Would you stop fidgeting, this is a legal ceremony!” he hisses.
“I’m fidgeting because I’m nervous because this is a legal ceremony!” Hope hisses back, chapped lips bumping the shell of August’s ear. He suppresses a shiver.
“Sorry I’m late!”
A young, bleach-blonde man flies through the door, holding a precariously balanced Starbucks tray in one hand and a leather briefcase in the other. Hope sweeps in to grab the coffee before it has the chance to tip. The man pants out a, “thanks,” and immediately starts to rifle through his briefcase.
“I’m Cameron Philip, you can just call me Cam. You guys have been emailing with my father, Mr. Cameron Philip, but I’m the one who conducts the proxy marriages. He just likes setting them up, says it makes him feel like a gameshow host, or something.” He laughs nervously, as if sensing the frozen expressions on the proxy grooms’ faces, despite still being buried in his briefcase, “we’re both lawyers though, we just like to mix things up on the paperwork side of things sometimes when it gets too boring. Aha!”
Cam produces a monogrammed fountain pen and a black leather book. “Guest book! Please sign if you feel comfortable, I love keeping track of how many people’s lives I’ve changed, you know? This is so important to these people, it’s such an honor that I’m able to marry them across two different countries.”
August tries to hide his grimace. He quickly flits his eyes over to Hope but finds him smiling softly. He takes the pen from Cam and signs the book without a word. There’s a surprising amount of signatures within the thick pages. Some are messages of gratitude, others of congratulations, and some are scrawling love letters, favorite lines underlined and highlighted by later “guests”. He has absolutely no idea what to offer besides his name.
“Why don’t you write some of your lyrics?”
Hope appears directly behind him, breath warm on his neck and hand pressing gently to his hip. It’s a normal gesture of comfort between them, but all it did now is spike his heart’s vivace. He takes a breath, scrawls out “ because your laughter and happiness is the scale of my happiness” , and passes the pen to Hope. Tragically, Hope is more than content leaning against him, and boxes him in even more when he leans in to write in the guest book. August is actually grateful they sprinted here. He can feel his face turning redder and redder, but at least the secretaries won’t notice a difference worth teasing about. His eyes keep blurring out staring at the whitewhiteweddingwhite of the paper. He can’t even tell what Hope’s writing, but it is far too long in his opinion. He’s considering dropping out and letting Hope play proxy groom four times instead of twice (and is actually opening his mouth to say so) when the door bangs open again. The immediate doorbell chorus of “oh my goodness, look at you!”s signals that the first bride has arrived.
It may just be a county clerk’s office, but the bride glides in like she’s walking down the aisle. Her hair cascades in soft waves down her back, she’s glowing in an elegant purple sundress, and delicately clutches a small bouquet of white roses. Even the half-asleep line for paying off parking tickets perks up and applauds when she comes in. In her giddiness, she performs a little twirl before gliding into the glass-walled office reserved just for her.
“How are you, you’re just absolutely glowing!” Cam gushes at the bride before giving his debriefing. “As soon as you’re ready and the connection’s steady, we’re good to go!”
You can tell the second reality set in. Her sparkling smile remains, but freezes into an almost-grimace.
And that is the weight of forever pressing down on you in an instant.
August tries to remind himself that this could not have anything less to do with him, but human-puppet or no, he’ll still be exchanging vows within the same vicinity as his closest, most trusted friend. It’s simply a bit too surreal.
But Hope, of course Hope, is the first to comfort the bride’s jitters. “How are you feeling?” he asks politely, offering out his hand. “I’m Hope, I’m one of your proxy options. You look beautiful, by the way.”
The Bride blinks, crystalline tears already starting to form. “I am so, so, so excited,” she whispers. “Thank you so much for standing in on behalf of my fia—oop, well soon to be husband,” she giggles and returns the handshake. “It truly means the world to us that we’re still able to get married all because of stranger’s like you.”
August is a bit...shocked, to be honest. This woman thinks that highly of a virtual blessing intruded upon by two, broke, college students? What is the point in idolizing a banal set of vows, believing that that is how your relationship grows, and that is how your relationship is defined? What power does a mere label hold over two complex individuals? It was utter semantics. His face must be betraying him, because suddenly Hope thrusts an absurdly pointy elbow into his side.
“Hello,” he greets, trying his best to smile through the pain. “I’m August, it’s nice to meet you. Congratulations.”
At least their antics earn a giggle out of the bride. “Oh, you two are such cute friends, that is so sweet you proxy together. It really makes me feel better to know that there’s some real love in this room today. I wish I could pick both of you, that would be so sweet.”
She sneaks a look at Cam, who has been furrowing his brow at the dated desktop in the corner. “I wish, sweetheart, but I can’t guarantee the legality of it. Now if you give me twoooo moreeee seconds—”.
And then the room is filled with light as the overhead projector finally kicks on, delight as the soon-to-be-spouses greet each other, and the illusive twinkle of chimes. But then again, it could just be the whirring of the projector.
As Cam calls for the proxy to step forward, August pushes Hope forward without thinking. He will not let an ounce of his deeply guarded cynicism leak out and contaminate the joy radiating in the air right now. Hope, of course, always smiling Hope, looks overjoyed to be a part of it. The whole thing takes less than eight minutes, but the high of it all glimmers in the air, where it will stay for hours.
Sipping his lukewarm coffee to the sound of Cam’s frenetic typing, sitting across from his truest friend in the world, August thinks he understands now. How some people can love so completely and fully from so far away. How “forever” is meant to be a promise, not a prize to be fought and won. How milestones and labels aren’t meant to be “level-up” prizes, but old sweaters you reach for again and again because they’re comfortable and familiar and always there. How when fate beckons you, it’s with a call so familiar you often forget that it’s not really the sound of your blood rushing to your head, but rather the sound of your blood rushing to your heart, and to his heart, and it’s the sound of laughter, bright and clear, it’s a bit like the musings of an old love song, it’s the crescendo crash of ocean waves, and it’s the sweet, sweet, sparkling of bells.
(August looks up from the precipice of being lost in thought. Hope, his beautiful and charming Hope, is gazing at him with his most saccharine, sanguine, truly adoring smile, his heart-shaped face cracked in two by the stretch of his heart-shaped mouth. The buzzing fluorescent lights rest directly behind him, lighting up his crown into a halo. Deft and quick, his fingers fly over his keyboard without taking his eyes off August. He is truly the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. A single, crystal clear chime rings out from his phone, sure and true, harmonizing with the fluorescents before fading. August doesn’t move to check it. He already knows what it says.
“I do,” he mouths, and watches Hope repeat back the same.)