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Weddings are a lot.
It’s a thing you hear second-hand often; from aunts or cousins twice removed or your mom, as she’s talking about how things were with your father, “back in the day.” So much planning, they all said; so much money, so many people, such a whole lot of stuff.
The thing about aunts and moms and cousins twice removed, however, is that they did not account for Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg.
Planning, money, people, stuff? That is Constance Blackwood’s fiancée’s thing.
The instant she heard the fateful yes, yes, oh, my God, yes, slipped the ring on the appropriate hand, and lifted off one knee, Ocean got to work.
“Where do you think we should have it?” she’d asked over coffee the very next morning, silver band barely even warm around Constance’s finger. “I was thinking an estate. Or, maybe a manor. Thoughts?”
Constance set down the cup she was nursing. “Are those not, like, the same thing?”
It was at that moment that Ocean looked at her as though she were in need of immediate psychiatric attention. “Of course not, Connie!” She barked out a laugh, like Oh you lovable jokester, you. “What, are you going to tell me a barn and a Four Seasons are the same thing next?”
She let loose another fond titter, before promptly downing the rest of her espresso in one go like a shot, crossing the floor to kiss her cheek, and agreeing to postpone it until dinner.
They did, and so the planning commenced. And sure, some other, possibly more normal people might have categorized the whole process as “mildly over-the-top,” in regards to the color-coded binders (blue for venue, red for guests, purple for food) and budgeting spreadsheets (when did she have time to make them?) and vision board already pasted to the office wall (once again: when?), but Constance knew what she signed up for when she willingly chose to be best friends with the line leader in Pre-K. This was Ocean’s thing.
At first, there was some struggling, however. Having your own personal event planner for a fiancée does turn out to be pretty convenient when you get engaged, but what that situation fails to account for is a perfectionist, type-A personal event planner for a fiancée.
It was a wrestling match to wheedle a responsibility from Ocean’s iron grip, and initially, Constance came out on the bottom of that fracas with nothing but catering and the cake. But one too many late nights with Ocean passed out at the coffee table with her cell to her ear and her color-coded binders in her lap led to a quiet conversation.
“I know you don’t want to make more work for me,” said Constance, softly, because she did know. That was always what it all came down to. “But, what if I want to plan the beginning of the rest of our lives with you?”
Ocean listened, for a long time, and then, she agreed.
After that, wedding planning turned out to be a little akin to collaborating on a group project in junior high. A couple of nights a week, there would be pow-wows around the coffee table with “homework” from the night prior (some notable assignments being compiling potential flower arrangements or figuring out a way to combine both of their favorite cake flavors without making the whole thing taste weird), but, if Constance is being real, it was way better than any biology assignment.
By the time the whole thing was over, the wedding was planned, the thing was like their baby; the Rosen-Wood (they came up with that one) brainchild of their collective areas of expertise, complete with seating arrangements and perfectly chocolate-strawberry ganache cakes and code names and everything.
And all of a sudden the day they picked—together—is here.
Constance wakes up alongside Ocean at ten a.m. sharp with the distinct urge to leap out of bed, click her heels, and boogie down the hall. Which, she has the self-control not to do, but she still twists over and there is Ocean, laying horizontal but wide awake, looking straight back.
“Operation: Wedding, commence,” is the first thing out of her mouth, red hair wavy and tousled in her face with sleep and oh so beautiful.
“Are you ready for this, Red Velvet?” says Constance.
Ocean nods, with that trademark fire of hers. “Let’s get this show on the road, Buttercream.”
And so they do.
Constance swings out of bed with her, performing what’s almost a choreographed dance, at this point, around the bedroom and bathroom, taking turns at the shower then sink then closet in perfect harmony, none of it discussed. They down glasses of espresso, pull on shoes, share one last chaste peck on the lips, and: “It’s go time,” says Ocean.
With Ocean hand-in-hand, heart-in-heart, Constance takes the first fateful step beyond their quaint little apartment building.
And then has her jaw plunged to the floor.
“What,” she splutters, like an idiot, on the side of the street, “what’s all…” Her hand gestures in vague, frantic circles in the general direction of the driveway
“Oh, this?” Noel has a grin on his face like he’s World’s No. 1 Shit-Eater. “Yeah. Almost forgot I rented a limo for you on your wedding day. No big deal.”
“You did not,” states Ocean, plainly, staring straight at the fact that he did.
“I did,” says Noel, accordingly. “What, did you think I was going to let you roll up to the joint in your Nissan Rogue from thirty years ago?”
Ocean starts mumbling from the corner of her mouth. “It’s a Ford from ‘09…”
Constance gifts to her a lovingly gentle jab to the ribs. She squeaks. “It’s perfect,” corrects Constance. “Holy mother of God. You did not have to do that.”
“I did,” he says again, “because I love you. And you two deserve the perfect day.” Then, he promptly finds his nails very, very interesting. “I, I mean, if you didn’t completely sicken me. Like, gross, sappy, coughing up blood, my-God-if-you-hold-hands-for-one-more-blasted-second-I’m-gonna—”
That’s when Ocean shuts him up with a hug.
Constance almost doesn’t want to move, like it would be disturbing a wild, endangered species engaging in a rare ritual occurring once every thousand millennia or so.
Then, it ends when Noel whispers something unintelligible in Ocean’s ear and she recoils from him like he reeks of rotten eggs.
They get in the limo pretty quickly after that.
When the car starts moving without even having to holler out a destination (because of course, this is a limo. And Noel booked it. To take them to their wedding.), it hits Constance in full force.
“We’re getting married,” Constance tells her fiancée, almost giggles out loud, like a crazy person.
She half expects her to call her as much, maybe look at her funny, say that yes, the date’s been saved for at least twelve months now, what else did she think they were going to get up to today?
But then her best friend, wife-to-be, does not do that. Instead, a smile breaks across her lips, wobbly, like she can’t totally believe it herself. “We are,” Ocean says, the greatest revelation ever made.
“I feel like I need to jump up and run a thousand laps,” Constance really does laugh this time, crazy, sure, but in love. “My—everything—is all tingly. Like my blood cells just chugged a Pepsi.”
Something different crosses Ocean. “Is that bad? Is it—nervous, um, Pepsi?”
Constance can't help but laugh some more at that, how suddenly concerned she looks, possibly about soda-related health complications. “Well, sure, a little," she's quick to tell her. "But, that's just kind of the name of the game, with weddings. It's mostly excited tingles."
Ocean nods. The different lingers in the corners of her face, but the wrinkles in her forehead iron themselves out, and she smiles. "Me, too."
She looks so pretty right now.
Maybe it's the buzz from the complementary champagne. Maybe it’s the fact they’re getting married today. Or maybe it’s just Ocean, and it’s always been Ocean; the bright on her face, the lines all drawn themselves along her eyes like they do when she smiles—like, really, for real smiles—and the quiet panic about anything and everything because she cares so much and it’s perfect. Constance hesitates to use the P word, but well and truly, she might be perfect.
Ocean’s looking back at her like she composed Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. Can she read minds? Maybe just Constance’s. She always could, a little bit.
She has to, because just as the urge strikes Constance, Ocean leans across the limousine to kiss her.
Bump.
And Constance promptly has her lips smashed against her fiancée’s.
She jerks backwards, teeth knocked, not the graceful expression of romantic affection she was hoping for, as Ocean yelps. The car rocks.
“What was that?” she shrieks, hands squeezing the upholstery of her seat for all it’s worth.
Constance tries to push up to get a good peer out the window, but then there’s another lurch. “I don’t kno— whoaa!”
Ocean lets loose another primal squawk, one hand darting from the leather to find hers, and if this weren’t a disaster it might’ve made Constance melt a little, except this is a disaster, and so she grips it right back until her knuckles are pale.
And then they judder to a stop.
“Are-you-okay?” Ocean blurts the words in rapid succession.
“Yeah,” breathes Constance. “Fine. Um…”
From what’s visible, they’re in the middle of a residential street, thank God. But they should still preferably be moving.
“Why aren’t we moving?” shrills Ocean, accordingly.
Constance finally gets that good look out the window. If the fact the street is tilted at a crisp forty-five degree angle is indication enough: “I think we’ve got a flat tire.”
Ocean blanches. “How?” she screeches. “Are limos not supposed to be puncture-proof?”
“I…don’t think that’s how that works, honey.”
There’s a rapid tap-tapping—Ocean’s flat, thumping against the floor at the speed of sound, and Constance’s Fiancée Instincts kick into overdrive; the first telltale sign of a bout of Ocean Anxiety. “We’re going to be late to our own wedding!” she mourns, and omen number two, starts chewing at a fingernail. “Who does that? People who have their weddings in barns, Connie!”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Constance sidles up close, just as the sound of the driver’s-side door shutting comes. “It’s not like they can start without us,” she points out, and Ocean looks up at her with big eyes, doubtful. “We’re, like, the main event. That’d be like, going to a concert without the headliner.”
This time, she just looks confused.
“Going to church and God doesn’t show up.”
Now she gets it. Ocean nods, slowly, relenting. “That wouldn’t make sense,” she admits. The tap-tapping slows to a mile a minute.
“It wouldn’t.” Constance gives the hands she’s still holding a good, long squeeze, and the ghost of a smile twitches the corners of Ocean’s lips. “So, let’s hail a cab, hop on over there, and have ourselves a wedding.” Another clutch of her fingers. “Capisce?”
Ocean nods, and her heart’s in her eyes, sparkling with gratitude.
This time, they both lean in for a kiss, and nobody has their teeth knocked or their lips bruised or anything. They’re getting married.
Limo or no limo.
“Capisce,” whispers Ocean.
And they step out into the street.
The cab is hailed without much issue, traffic is no worse than it usually is by Toronto standards, and seventeen minutes later, there’s the venue.
After touring about a hundred-and-one options, the knot-tying spot was agreed to be the University Club smack dab in the heart of the city; associated with the place where Ocean did all seven years of her schooling, and Constance went to grab a Culinary Arts certificate a couple years into the Café’s opening. It’s a rustic kind of place with historical architecture (fancy without being too stuffy), a picturesque courtyard for the ceremony (with the assurance of no bugs, for Ocean’s peace of mind), and—most importantly—a fully decked-out kitchen.
Even if Constance isn’t doing the cooking, it’s still essential stuff.
It was the only place that felt right. And now, here in front of its ornate double-doors, the point still stands.
“Come on, Con,” urges Ocean, already scurrying up the steps with several bags containing what appears to be cement bricks in hand. “We’re twenty-two minutes behind! If we don’t get ready now, by the time the ceremony comes around the sun’ll be at an angle—”
“Hold on, hold on!”
She holds on, twisting over one shoulder, still bouncing in her shoes. Constance scrambles to make it to her side, reaching to hold her still. “What did we say? Church, God no-showing? We’ve got time.”
Ocean’s shoulders fall, marginally. She drops the bags. “Okay,” she says, slowly. “For what?”
“For enjoying this!” Constance takes both of Ocean’s palms in hers and the thought hits that she’ll have the privilege of feeling the weight of her for the rest of her life. She savors it. “Just, can you believe it? By the end of today, we’re going to be married. Like, right here. Like, forever. Isn’t that rad?”
Another one of those careful, bright smiles spreads across Ocean’s face. “We are,” she giggles. She slides her cold bony fingers closer into hers and it’s just as it should be. “And I swear, Connie.” She leans in close, lets go of one hand only to cradle her face with it. “I’ll make sure today goes perfect.”
Constance, despite it all, frowns.
She’s going to say something. She’s not sure what, but then, Ocean snaps up straight, and presses her with a kiss so tender, so sweet and honest, the words all fizzle out into nothing but the dial-up Internet tone.
All too soon, Ocean jumps apart from her, raises a fist in the air, and instantly, there’s the fire in her eye that sent Constance tumbling down the slippery, slippery slope of in love with her best friend. “And, Operation: Wedding—”
“Wait!” yelps Constance. “Turn around!”
Ocean’s eyes go wide with realization. “Right, right! No looking!”
Immediately, she spins an even hundred-and-eighty degrees, and Constance whirls to do the same. Her hands grope around, blindly, for hers, and collide with her spindly fingers several times.
“Buttercream?” comes Ocean’s voice, hands still scrabbling for her.
“Red Velvet?” echoes Constance back.
She finds them, if the pleasantly cool sizzle against her own warmish skin is any indication. “Okay,” says Ocean, giving her a squeeze. “Operation: Wedding is a go in three…”
“Two…”
“One…”
“Hey!”
Constance pirouettes around in tandem with Ocean.
“You two! Ginger Grant and Professor over here!”
The heckler in question is Noel, followed closely by an entourage of chamber choir. “There you are,” says Penny, hair already twisted in french-braided pigtails and tasteful satin bows.
“We think you run away!” booms Mischa, waving his arms around.
“Or you were abducted by aliens,” supplies Ricky’s AAC.
“Neither of those things,” deadpans Constance.
“The limo got a flat,” says Ocean, “which, like—they aren’t supposed to do that—but, there’s no time!” she squawks. “Everyone, to their stations! We have four hours until the ceremony! Like we rehearsed!”
“Yeah, over the phone,” scoffs Noel.
Ocean pretends not to hear him. “And, break! Go, go, go!”
Everyone scatters like a pack of rats, but just before Ocean, still fastened to her back-to-back, can move to her own predetermined station with Noel and Ricky, Constance clasps two hands around her wrists.
“What? What’s up?” Ocean trills, from behind her.
She can feel her, even without looking, about to up and float away with the amount of sheer energy in every limb. Like—a nervous bottle of Pepsi someone shook around like crazy, ready to pop.
She’s so fast. Wound so tight. Always go-go-going, never not busy, always caring, always trying.
Constance runs a slow, gentle thumb along the back of her hand.
She’d like her head to stay on, for today.
“Nothing,” Constance says. “Just, I love you, Ocean. It’s gonna go great. Capisce?”
Ocean stops jittering, for one small second. “I love you, too, Connie,” she says, slow and intentional. But then, speeds back up for, “Capisce. I have to go! I’ll see you down the aisle.”
Just hearing that sends the samba all through Constance’s limbs. “See you in t-minus four hours.” She can already hear her flats pattering up the stairs. “Send Noel if there’s an emergency!” she hollers.
“There won’t be!” Ocean’s voice calls back.
The door slams shut.
Constance waits one, three, five Mississippis, and in she hurries.
It’s something of a maze inside, but after a few twists and turns, she stumbles upon the second bridal suite and steps in.
Penny and Mischa spin around at the sound of her shoes scuffing over hardwood.
Ocean specifically engineered their tiny groups to be “as efficient and productive as possible,” which means one person competent at beauty and one person great at everything else. Constance’s hair and makeup-qualified Choir member is Penny, with Mischa as hype-man, and Ocean has temporary custody of Noel and Ricky, though Noel proclaimed he couldn’t be behind a closed door with Ocean for that long, and therefore he would be flitting around performing Best Man duties.
He’s joking, about the closed door. Noel is Best Man. Of course he is; there was simply no disputing it. When you’re both brides, both sides of the wedding party are joint decisions, and that one was not tough to make.
He cares. Like, a lot. Like, more than he’d ever admit, which hasn’t changed an inch since high school. Constance could even, to a degree, credit him for Ocean’s I-like-girls revelation entirely, which, needless to say: had he not eased her through the acceptance process, there would be no wedding to freak out about.
Noel is the big brother Ocean never asked for, and still refuses to admit she wants, but needs and loves, always.
“Get in, get in!” urges Mischa, practically jumping up and down. “You need, pretty hair! Big sparkle! Around”—he gestures passionately to his facial region—”here!”
“I got it, I got it,” giggles Constance, Penny rushing in to take her by the arm and park her on a fancy ottoman dusted with flowers.
“By the time I’m finished with you,” announces Penny, arming herself with an arsenal of hair ties, combs, and about six different brand of gel, “you’ll look so good Ocean will be drowning in a river of her own tears.”
Constance isn’t so sure about that, but her expertise is to be trusted either way.
An hour of girl-talk and primping later, she kind of wasn’t lying.
“You look good,” marvels Penny, swiveling her head around in the mirror, just for a few varying angles.
Constance wanted to keep her curls down, mostly, because Ocean would always make offhanded comments about how nice it looked like that, how free and big and fun, and Ocean’s words always make her feel pretty. The top part, however, is pulled up into a half-up-half-down situation, fastened tight with a pearly floral hair clip that shimmers in the LEDs.
She wanted to keep her glasses, too—even if there were contacts that fit her ridiculous prescription. It’s just, Constance, she always thought; all of the stuff that makes her look like her, big rectangle frames and all.
Behind them, Penny did some makeup, with silvery and purple accents that make her feel like she stepped straight out of Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, the one Constance watched with Ocean about a thousand times growing up.
It’s nothing short of the P word: perfect.
“I look…like me,” breathes Constance.
She can catch Mischa shifting from foot to foot in the mirror. “You like you?” he asks, a little careful.
Constance doesn’t have to think about it for very long. “Yeah,” she says. “I love me.”
“Good.” Penny gives her a kiss on the cheek. “That was the goal.”
Of course it was.
“Okay, but, I want my handiwork to be documented forever,” Penny says, spinning around to look. “Where’s the photographer? Weren’t they coming to take getting-ready pictures?”
Mischa jumps up. “I go look,” he declares, and bursts out of the room.
It’s at that moment that Noel bursts into the room, looking, in kind terms, disheveled. Mischa backtracks.
“Hey,” pants Noel, one hand in hair, “fun update.”
Penny’s lips thin in a line. “Am I gonna want to hear it?”
”Photographer’s out with the flu. Too late to grab a new one.”
There’s a collective groan.
“What the hell, man!” says Mischa, arms waving furiously. “What else we pay them for?”
Constance frowns. They picked that guy together, because he took pictures of their graduations.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Penny’s face dawns with an idea. “Ricky’s been getting into photography. He can totally do it.”
Noel looks tentatively hopeful. “Okay, great, cool, Spaceman’s our photographer. Got a camera?”
“Umm. How about a Polaroid and one of those disposable Canons?”
“Constance?”
All eyes flip to her. She considers it; maybe it’s more meaningful done by a friend anyway. “I’m down,” Constance says. “Just, check with Ocean. Please?”
Noel ceases massaging his temples. “Fine. He’ll be here in a second—hopefully by the time I find a lead on a halfway decent camera. You look like an angel, by the way.”
And he disappears around the corner.
“We can work with this,” murmurs Constance, a little to herself. “Yeah, yeah, no big deal. Ricky’s great at the artsy stuff.”
“He is— Oh, shit,” Penny suddenly blurts. Everyone whips around. “Your dress!”
“Oh, shit,” agrees Constance. “That’s probably a good idea!”
She was never the picky type, when it came to clothes, but finding the perfect dress was a hassle and a half. Constance might’ve ransacked about six different bridal boutiques before The One slipped over her skin like it was made for her: something Noel called an “a-line,” with a skirt that puffed without being puffy, sleeves brushing over the shoulders, and a tasteful amount of sparkles that wink like stars. It made her feel like a Disney princess incarnate, from the DVDs they watched in the Blackwood living room as kids, and that was when it clicked.
Stepping into it now, with Penny’s assistance, is like reuniting with an old friend. She’s zipped shut, laced up, cinched in, and with the hair and makeup…
“I’m a pretty pretty princess,” Constance starts blubbering in the mirror, and Mischa runs to fan her eyes. “Who’s marrying a pretty pretty princess.” And she lived past seventeen years old to do it, and the St. Cassian Chamber Choir lived past seventeen years old to see it.
“Don’t cry your shadow off,” sniffs Penny, whilst streams of watery gray are actively pouring down her own cheeks. Constance guesses her thought-train is going down the same station. “Go, go— no, wait”—she dabs at her shadow with a tissue—”okay, get the hell out of here, we gotta get pictures!”
They all get the hell out of there.
Ricky comes by with the Polaroid and the Canon, and snaps some good-looking—if a little retro—shots in the suite and among the flowers of the courtyard. There might’ve been a hiccup, sure, the tiniest of bumps in the road, maybe, but it’s going just dandy now. Everyone looks beautiful, the sun’s out, and Constance is getting married to her best friend in t-minus two hours.
And then in hurtles Penny.
“Hello,” she says, vaguely sweaty after what can only be described as a sprint across the grass. It’s probably a good thing they got her portrait first; she took off for Maid of Honor duties not long after, but here she is now. “Okay, so, small issue.”
Constance drops the pose, and Ricky drops the camera. She tries not to let the inside of her stomach sink through her corset a little. “No problem,” she says, “I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t—”
“We can’t find the rings.”
Her mouth zips shut, for a second. “You can’t,” it musters, eventually, “find them?”
“I was guarding with my life!” proclaims Mischa, passionately. “Then I come here and take picture!”
“And then we went back to double-check,” Penny says, between a bitten lip, “and…”
“No dice?” finishes Ricky, dismayed.
“No dice,” she confirms, with great regret. “But I’m going on a hunt,” Penny insists, quickly.
“We turn this joint upside-down,” concurs Mischa, already taking off in the opposite direction.
“Wait!” At Constance’s voice, everybody freezes. “I’m coming, too, but, just, please don’t let Ocean hear about this.”
Penny’s face sags further, if it were possible. “She’s the one who was double-checking.”
“Man.” Constance shakes her head; visions of nerves, and Pepsi, and fiancées whose brains are about to explode start dancing around up there—but she furiously waves them away. “Never mind,” she sighs, then when it sounds too low even to her own ears, injects some pep in her tone. It’ll all be cool. “Just, let’s get looking! And, um, don’t let us see each other!”
A crowd of affirmatives, and everyone splits.
Constance does, indeed, plunder this damned place, to the point where it wouldn’t be a surprise if the University Club of Toronto happily revoked their Club-privileges after today, but nothing. No shining gold bands—the ones they picked together—in any wine cellar, ballroom, kitchen, bird fountain (they were getting desperate). Nowhere.
As Constance ducks into the nearest labyrinthine room holding nothing but a grand piano—still no rings—her eyes find the analog clock on the wall, tick-ticking. One o’clock.
One hour until the ceremony.
She bites back a string of expletives that would give Ocean a stroke before sweeping back outside.
Rings or no rings, she thinks, we’re getting married today.
Constance makes the mad dash back to the suite, met with the sight of Ricky and Noel. There’s one hour to put together a wedding ceremony, and by God, if Ocean’s on the case with her, they’ll get it done.
“How are we on rings?” she starts asking in rapid-fire, mildly breathless.
“Still no leads,” updates Noel, “but we’re on it.”
“Guests?”
“Welcomed and arriving,” supplies Ricky. “I let them know you’d be out before the start of the ceremony, but I can entertain in the meantime.”
“Oh, God, you save my life, Rickster.”
He grins, like Yeah, I know I do, then wheels back out to the courtyard.
Constance hesitates, just a smidge, before springing for the next question. “How’s Ocean?”
Noel hesitates what might be equally. He gets an odd look on his face that doesn’t inspire confidence, and Constance’s insides twist. “She’s, well—”
The door flings open.
Mischa stands in the threshold, arms wide, panting vaguely. His once gelled-back hair sticks up in odd angles, and his dress shirt is untucked, which makes Noel audibly groan, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Constance,” he gets straight to the point, “you tell this—cook, people—they put cake on table, yes?”
She blinks. “Um, no,” says Constance, slowly. “I made it myself. It’s ganache, so I told them when we reserved the place it has to be refrigerated until the reception.” Her face screws up. “Why?”
“Oh.” Mischa looks desperately like he wishes he wasn’t telling her this. “Cake has been out in room for half hour.”
Constance wishes, in equal measure, she wasn’t hearing it.
“It’s what?”
“Is…out in ballroom, where party will—”
“No!”
Heels, wedding dress, coiffed curls, shadowed eyes be damned, Constance grabs two great big bunchfuls of skirt in two fists and moves to book it to the ballroom.
Something yanks her backwards.
Rrrrrip.
And then there’s an inhuman scream.
Constance stops dead. “Oh, Jesus!” she cries, hands over her ears. “What? What the hell happened? Is everyone—”
Noel drops to his knees and wails. “The dress!”
She spins around, eyes darting like pinballs, until they land on—
Her train.
Which is now split in two.
“Constance!”
It’s not Noel’s screech. She’d know that voice anywhere; high-pitched and high-strung. Instinctively, she whirls again, remembering at the last possible second to slap a hand over her eyes.
“Ocean!”
Constance hears her blind pittering footsteps, followed closely by Mischa’s thumping ones, supposedly to orient her as she sticks faithfully to the no-looking rule.
“Are-you-okay?” Ocean shrieks, positively rattled. “I heard screaming, I came running, I, I—”
“I’m fine,” Constance assures, as quickly as humanly possible, “everyone’s fine!”
“But— your dress!” laments Noel, possibly stuck in stasis.
She can hear the shift in Ocean’s voice. “What about it?”
“Doesn’t matter! No time!” Constance shouts back. “They took the cake out!”
“They what?”
“That’s what I said!” Unthinkingly, she grapples, blind, for Ocean’s hand, and by some gift of fate, miraculously, finds it, and grips it tighter than she might’ve ever done.
“Let’s go!” shrills Ocean, on the same page. Now, always.
And Constance and her fiancée tear down the hall.
Constance strategically finagles her way to the front to remove the blindfold of her fingers and just endeavors to have the strength not to look back at Ocean, who, conversely, if her hair in Constance’s face is any indication, has twisted her head to the side.
That was supposed to prevent bad luck, it strikes her, a little too ironically.
They rush through the grand, towering double-doors to the ballroom, where everything’s already set for the impending reception. Everything including, unfortunately—
“Oh, dear God,” mourns Constance. “The cake.”
Ocean shuffles around, back-to-back, hands still locked. Constance feels her head creak to look.
It’s a massacre. The ganache cement keeping the meticulously-shaped layers of chocolate-strawberry together has melted spectacularly, everything folding in on itself to look like a big heaping glob of Leaning Tower of Pisa which has recently suffered a dinosaur foot to the face.
And at the very top of this car crash she can’t look away from: the two bride figurines Constance made from fondant, sunken like quicksand, both tiny little heads faceplanted into what is now nothing but a cocktail of room-temperature Hershey’s and heavy cream.
“This was a mistake,” whispers Ocean.
Constance nearly reels around right then and there. “What?”
The grip on her hands clenches like a vice. “Everything,” says Ocean, and her voice breaks, “there were signs—everywhere, and I didn’t look.”
Constance grips back. “What signs? Ocean, what’s—”
“The tire!” she cries. “The, the late. The photographer, the rings, the dress, the cake, everything, what if”—Ocean swallows, rising, rising—“what if it’s all because it’s not meant to be?”
This slowly, slowly saturates Constance’s brain. Everything goes cold. “You don’t want to marry me?”
“No!” says Ocean, an instantaneous reaction. Her fingers start trembling, scrabbling erratically against the inside of her palm. “I, I want to. I want to marry you, but what if this is Fate saying we”—she crumbles, softer—”you shouldn’t?”
It dawns on Constance then, that Fate is the excuse.
You shouldn’t marry me, because I hurt you once.
Screw bad luck, screw superstition, screw surprises, Constance turns around to look her best friend straight in the eye, and all the breath leaves her.
She’s beautiful.
The dress, perfectly off-white, winds around her like silk and flows straight down. The sleeves are one big ribbon of fabric, ending behind her in one sweet bow whose satin ends sail to the floor. Her veil is skewed on her head, hair a little wavy and wild with that trademark Ocean Anxiety, wonderfully red and uniquely her.
Screw Fate.
“Are you crazy?” asks Constance, plainly.
Ocean blinks out of a similar sort of stupefaction, from where she’d been entranced by Constance’s ensemble. “Wh–what?”
“Of course we’re meant to be,” Constance tells Ocean, a little breathless, holding both her hands and thinking how can it not be when they fit so perfectly in her own? “We’ve been meant to be since—since Pre-K. Since we made BFF bracelets in grade three. Since we lived and died together.”
She feels her slide her freckled fingers in a little closer, and they click like puzzle pieces.
“One day’s not gonna ruin—two and a half decades, Ocean. Besides”—Constance steps in close, closer, to tip her forehead against Ocean’s and she does it right back, careful and slow—”marriage isn’t what Fate or anyone else says it is. It’s what you work to make it into.” Now she reaches up, to cradle her face in her palms. “And Ocean,” says Constance, deadly serious, meaning every syllable, “you’ve worked hard to make yourself into the person I knew you were. So, yes. I should marry you. Because I want to.”
Ocean’s shoulders shake once, and in an instant four arms are twined around two bodies, to the point where it’s hard to tell where one bride ends and the other one begins, but that’s just fine, Constance thinks. That’s always been just the way they like it. Ocean probably gets mascara and salty tears in the white of Constance’s shoulder, and Constance in Ocean’s, but who cares?
If everything else is wrong, at least they’re right.
When Ocean pulls away, her face is still wrinkled with weeping, but there’s the wobbliest of smiles on her lips. She reaches out to touch her face, like she might not be real, and the coldness of her fingertips tingles like sparklers across Constance’s cheek.
“You look so perfect, Connie,” she blubbers. “I do want to marry you. I do. I do, I really, really do.”
“Hey,” snivels Constance, just a little, sweeping the tears from her with a thumb, “hold on, there. We’re not to that part yet.”
Then, Ocean’s eyes go wide. “Futher-mucker,” she blurts, and it’s a little comical, with a running nose and red eyes, but not so much when Constance realizes, too, gaze darting for the grandfather clock on the wall.
One fifty-two.
“The ceremony!” they yelp in tandem.
And, not for the first time today, fiancée in hand, Constance takes off running.
At the suite, everybody is not very pleased.
“Where,” says Noel, in the same millisecond they cross the threshold, “the everloving fuck were you two?”
And this is really serious business, because Ocean doesn’t even call him out regarding the f-word on the sanctity of this holy day. “Doesn’t matter!” she caws. “Everyone, to your ceremony positions! Go, go, go!”
“But your hair!” cries Penny.
“Your dress,” sobs Noel.
“Your cake?” reminds Mischa.
“It’s—” Ocean catches herself. She softens, and gives Constance a good, long look that she thinks she’ll remember for the rest of her life. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.
Everyone looks at her like they’re about to collectively check her into the psych ward, but then: “You heard the bride,” declares Ricky. “Go, go, go!”
And they all scramble outside.
Ocean would be the one waiting at the altar, she told her, during the planning process. Constance tried to dispute it, but there was no arguing to be done; it was one of the only things she held fast on.
Right before she ducks out of the room to take her place, Ocean gives her one of those looks again, fraught to the brim with gratitude, with affection, with—awe, maybe? That might make her cry again.
She shakes her head, like she has to drag herself to leave, but Constance stops her just before she can. Ocean spins around.
“Go for Operation: Ceremony, Red Velvet,” says Constance, with a solemn salute.
Ocean laughs. It’s a pitched, trilling, vaguely robin-esque sort of thing, where she snorts a little and her eyes crinkle at the edges and lines paint themselves all over her face and it’s more artful than the Mona Lisa.
“It’s a go, Buttercream,” she manages to say, nothing but love in her eyes, and then she’s gone.
Mom ducks in to give Constance what might be the most bone-crushing hug Constance has ever had the pleasure of receiving from her, and then she, too, takes her leave.
The processional starts. Behind the towering double doors to the courtyard, Constance watches the St. Cassian Chamber Choir step out to start down the aisle, pair by pair, arm in arm. The thumping begins to settle in her chest.
The muffled music—piano, to remind them of choir rehearsal way back when—changes.
Dad comes, sniffling and shamelessly misty-eyed, to lay a quiet hand on her arm. Constance kisses the stubble of his cheek.
And the doors swing open.
Everyone’s heads turn to look. It’s all like a movie, in slow motion. Constance savors every second, every frame, impresses every minute detail into her memory so she can watch it back when the sun comes up every morning and when it sinks down every night for the rest of her life. She dares to bring her eyes up, to the altar.
And if Ocean were beautiful before, she can’t be real now.
Constance tries to think of a way to describe it—describe her. Really, she does, but she fails, spectacularly. After a couple of tries and coming up with nothing, she gives up on it. She just takes a deep breath in and sees it, feels it, revels in it.
Lives in it.
Dad lifts her veil, kisses her forehead, and Constance walks down the aisle towards what has been her forever since Pre-K and what will continue to be her forever until who-cares-when.
Ocean’s fingers tremble where they sit, clasped at her front. Her eyes look nowhere but Constance’s as she steps, like she might up and disappear if she doesn’t keep her in her sight. She doesn’t look at the dress, or the hair, or the makeup. Ocean just looks at her.
We’re getting married.
Nothing else matters. Everything is right.
Then steps from the altar, something crackles.
Constance blinks. Something cold and dripping plips onto the tip of her nose, and it wrinkles, reflexively. Slowly, she cranes her head up.
And the heavens open.
That always seemed like a bit much, for just a little drizzle, Constance thought. What a big old saying for such a mundane kind of thing.
But right now, it works.
The heavens do, indeed, open. In record-breaking seconds, un-forecasted rain sleets down from the skies overhead, and everyone is immediately soaked. Constance’s curls plaster themselves to her face, bouquet drowning, droplets pearling on the tulle of her skirt, heels squelching unattractively. Guests shriek in surprise. In the chaos, she manages to catch Ocean’s eye.
And they laugh.
Constance crosses the distance to the altar. Everybody drapes their shrugs and shawls and suit jackets over their heads, and they read their vows. She’d try to describe those, too, if she could, but it just wouldn’t be the same.
The rings turned out to be in Mischa’s pocket the whole time, so he sheepishly hands them back, and they slip them on each other’s dribbling fingers. Penny reads—to have and to hold, in sickness and in health—and they say I do, because of course they do, and then Constance is married to her best friend.
She kisses her, there in the rain, with dewy lips and drenched skin, and it couldn’t be any better.
Because, as predicted, even if the rest of the world is wrong, Constance and Ocean are right.