It doesn’t look like her fifteen-year-old self had imagined it. 

At fifteen, the aisle would have been lined with pink roses and white peonies.  Her wedding dress, stark white, with a lace bodice, a tulle skirt that hug her body as she twirled on the dance floor.  Soft, neat curled, pulled into a half-up do.  She thinks she would have even liked a flower, tucked into her mass of curls.

When she was fifteen, that was what she pictured.  Peonies and roses and tulle dresses and lilac bridesmaids and Canon D and champagne.

When she was seventeen, she decided Roy fit into her equation.  Into her dreams of lavish weddings and bathroom stall sex.  Into her vision of forever.

When she was twenty-three, and she met Jim, she was surprised at how short forever could be.

Her bridesmaids would have been clad in chiffon lilac dresses.  The decision was hard at the time, deciding between Penny and Lauren as her maid of honour.  They had been inseparable.  Teachers and students alike mixed them up.  They had their own secret language.  She was pretty sure their hearts even beat in unison.  She still had the friendship bracelet Lauren made her, it’s orange and pink yarn threads hidden, tucked away in her jewellery box.

She blamed Lauren at the end.  Felt like it was her fault that they’d grown apart.  In high school, they’d always talked about these moments.  Lavish weddings.  Impromptu sex in bathroom stalls (it made Lauren laugh when Pam blushed).  They’d live three doors apart, so they could go for walks at night together, strollers in hand, husbands at home.  They’d be able to sit on terraces bordered with flowerbeds, gossip about their jobs, warm mugs of tea in their hands.  Pam would have sold a few paintings by then, they decided.  One of them would even be in a showcase, at The Met.  Sometimes, they’d go for drives up to the Scranton Lake.  There was a trail, lined with willow trees and shrubbery.  Lauren would take pictures.  Pam would paint them. 

She didn’t talk to Lauren anymore though.  Not after the fight.

“You’re really gonna marry him?”

She sighed. “Yes, Lauren.  I just don’t understand—“ 

“My problem?  Seriously, Pam.  It’s just—you’re settling!  You’re settling for somebody who never wants to leave Scranton.  Somebody who is okay with the staleness of this stupid city.”

“Speaking of stale, this bagel—“

Lauren flicked the bagel out of her hand.  “God, can you just look at me?  Like, really look at me?”

She couldn’t.

“You were always the one who said we’d make it out of this town, Pam.”

“I know.”

“So?  What happened?”

“Life.”

“For god sakes, Pam.  You’re twenty-four.  Your life has barely started!  Stop acting like you’re stuck with that oaf.  Don’t you remember our dreams, Pam?”

“This is my life, Lauren.  Why can’t you just get past that?  This is reality.  And those dreams—God, those were just dreams!  You really thought we’d ever get out of this town?  And like—I mean, have you ever even seen a house with a terrace in Scranton?  I was never going to be an artist, I was never going travel the world and paint or draw or—I don’t know what you thought, Lauren!  Those were dreams, and just that.  And I chose this life and—“ 

Lauren looked at her, her blue eyes filled with pity.  She felt pathetic and small under her gaze.

“And what, Pam?  You chose Roy?”

“Yes.” 

“And how about Jim?”

Her heart squeezed at the mere mention of his name.

“What about him?”

Lauren rolled her eyes.  The knot in Pam’s stomach tightened. 

“Seriously, Pam.  I know you say you guys are like, work friends or whatever.  But I have work friends too, you know.” 

“So?”

“I’m not in love with my work friends.”

Lauren moved 3000 away only two weeks later.  California.  She still saw Lauren’s mom at the grocery store, sometimes.  Apparently she was doing well.  Apparently business was booming.  Apparently she never received Pam’s wedding invitation. 

Pam wondered why out of the two of them, Lauren was the one with the bravery.  The one to make dreams a reality. 

The aisles were naked of peonies or roses.  She wore a structured white dress, the heavy silk damp with sweat.  It was the cheapest dress they could find on short notice.  Meant for a winter wedding.  She felt like she was suffocating underneath the layers of draping fabric.

She thought that maybe, when she was actually standing on the altar, in Roy’s arms, she’d feel different.  She’d feel lighter, she’d feel loved.  She’d feel the burden of Jim’s absence lifted off her shoulders.  She’d see a future, filled with warm tea and flowerbeds and terraces and children and impromptu sexual escapades and messy buns held together with thin paintbrushes.

Standing here, she thought maybe she’d collapse under the impending ordinariness of her existence.  She knew it was a horrible time to start having an existential crisis, right before her vows, the vows that would unite their souls.  The vows that would promise her love for Roy, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.

She wanted to scream.  To rip the satin off her sweat-soaked body.  To throw paint at a canvas.  To jump into a taxi, screaming at the driver to just go.

Roy’s heavy breathing, the feel of his callused hands, it all brought her back to the present. 

Lauren’s face was missing from the crowded pews, but she imagined that if she were here, she’d be squeezed between Dwight and Oscar.  She tried imagining Jim in the pews.  He’d be easy to spot, his head towering over the other guests.  Michael clinging to his side, shivering with chocolate-induced energy.

When she gave Jim the wedding invitation, she’d written his name on the front, in loopy cursive, followed by her signature smiley face.  She remembered thinking it was special, the way she didn’t have to write his address on the soft envelope. They were past postal codes and postage stamps.

She had sealed the cream-coloured envelope with a kiss. 

Pamela Morgan Beesly

&

Royson Allan Anderson

Request the honour of your presence

At their marriage

On Friday, the tenth of June
Two thousand and five

At two o’clock in the afternoon 

Covenant Presbyterian Church

Madison Ave, Scranton PA 

Reception to follow

She found the card on her desk the next day.  Unopened.  The thick, cream enveloped marred with pencil scratches.

Sorry, Pam.  I can’t make it.  – Jim.

No excuses.  No professions of love. 

He’d taken the next week off.  Used all of his vacation days.

He didn't even say goodbye. 

Everything between then and now had been a blur.  She hadn’t admitted it out loud. Not to her sister, not to her Mom.  Life moved around her.  Everything was static noise. 

She was pretty sure-- no.  No, she was absolutely sure that she was pathetic.  She was pathetic, thinking about another man.  Thinking about his warm hands, and his big smile, and his shaggy hair, and his rolled up sleeves, and--.  She wondered how she got to this point, thinking about another man, while she was on the altar, sweating in an awful, winter wedding dress on a hot summer day.

Yet here she was.

Holding hands she’d never studied.  A life line and heart line that would go forever unread. 

When the heavy doors of the church creak open and Jim is staring at her, she literally can’t believe her eyes. 

She tries remembering if her life line paused in the middle of her palm.