Finding My Way (19 page)

“
Em
,
I’m getting married!” Kat gushes at me.

“And you look
absolutely stunning!”  I gleam at her.

“Doesn’t she
just?” squeals April.  Kat and I both flinch and give each other a
knowing glance.  April is a pleasant enough girl and all, but she is
extremely excitable and incredibly loud.  She is twenty years old but half
the time she acts as excited as a thirteen year old and she can be impossible
to reign in.

“Hello
Em
,” Erin says coming up beside Kat and puts her arm around
her.

“Oh Erin, doesn’t she
look wonderful?” I say.  We smile at each other in the mirror before our
eyes return to Kat’s radiant reflection. 

All three of us stand
there like for a moment taking in the realisation - Kat is actually getting
married!

“My baby girl,” Erin
gushes and starts crying.  Kat gives her a hug.

“
Oi
Em
, go get your dress on!”  Kat says with her
back to me through more tears.  “I want to see what we all look like
together.”

I see that my dress
is already hanging an empty change room, so I do as I’m told.

Moments later Kat is
in tears again as April and I stand either side of her in the mirror, all three
of us ready for a wedding, well except for hair and make-up.  The
bridesmaid’s dresses are aubergine with spaghetti straps.  Gathering
tightly along our busts, the soft chiffon flows from there in a similar style
to Kat’s dress.

“No, no Ethan, you go
through the other door.”  We all look over to the door just as my Mum
enters the room.  “Hey girls, I hope you don’t mind, I just had to come
see.”  She says walking over to us.  “I hitched a ride with
Ethan.  He’s gone next door, I finally convinced him to buy a suit…” 
She stops suddenly, looking in the mirror too, “Wow!”

“Of course we don’t
mind Anna!  Glad you could make it!”  Erin replies.

“Hey Mum!”  I go
to her and give her a peck on the cheek.

“Oh
Emma, what a beautiful dress!”
  She says looking me up and
down.  “You chose well Kat!  And well look at
you
! 
Stunning Kat, just stunning! 
A beautiful bride!”
 
Then her eyes start to water too. 

“Thank you
Anna!”  Kat says giving my mum a quick squeeze.

Then mum gives Erin a
hug.  “Congratulations mother-of-the-bride!”

Kat turns to me and
says, “
Em
you have to go spy on the guys for me,
please.  I need to know that Luke has the right shade of cravat and that
Jake and Josh have the right bow ties.”

“Kat you’ve got
nothing to worry about,” I reply.

“I need you to be my
eyes and make sure that your dresses are the same shade.”  Kat says
pleading.

“Kat I know that you
handpicked the ties yourself so I’m sure that they’re perfect.”  I add in
a whisper so dragon lady who has returned to the register doesn’t hear. 
“And I know that dragon lady doesn’t make mistakes.”

“
It’s
maid-of-honour duty,” she says pouting at me but doesn’t look me directly in
the eyes as she says it.  Her request seems rather odd as I’m sure dragon
lady wouldn’t possibly get any bride’s orders wrong.  “
Please.
”

“Oh who am I to argue
with the bride!” I say getting flustered.

I head back out
through the foyer and in through the other door.  I immediately see Jake
talking to Ethan.

“Hey
Em
!
  Wow you look fit for a wedding!”
 Jake gushes at me as he eyes me appreciatively.

“Thanks Jake! 
So do you! 
Hey Ethan.”

“Hey
Em
!
  Mum’s making me buy a monkey
suit!”  Ethan says pouting as he turns towards the racks of suits.  I
laugh.

“How’s it all going
in here Jake?” I ask.

“All
good, just waiting for
Lukey
-boy to strut his stuff!”

I look to the back of
the store and spot Luke standing in front of a mirror.  His back is to
me.  I rush up behind him and poke him in the ribs.

“So you ready to get
married yet or what?”  I ask.

But when he turns
around I realise that it is not Luke,
it’s
Josh. 
He looks just as shocked to see me as I am to see him.  Of course I knew
he was here, but-

“Yep ready as I will
ever be!”

Stunned, I look at
Josh with confusion and then I realise his lips didn’t move, he hasn’t said
anything.  The voice I just heard came from behind me.  I turn around
to see Luke standing there.  “What
ya
think?”  He asks, with a beaming smile and his arms stretched wide.

“Wow!  You look
handsome!”  I stammer at Luke trying to hide the embarrassment of what I
just did.

“You scrub up alright
yourself!”  Luke says admiring my dress.  “But what are you doing
here?  Is there a problem with Kat’s dress?  What’s wrong?”  He
asks suddenly concerned as he moves towards me.

“Oh no, nothing’s
wrong.  Kat just sent me in to check up on you, that’s all.”  He
looks relieved.  I glance at my dress and back to Josh’s cravat.  “We
match… that’s all I needed to know.”

Luke glances over my
shoulder uneasily at Josh then back at me.  I can see Jake and Ethan
behind Luke as they also exchange uneasy glances.  It takes me a second,
but I realise they’re all nervous about having Josh and I in the same
room.  After what happened at the barbeque, and the awkward silence at the
engagement party, I don’t blame them.

It suddenly dawns on
me that I have been making things hard on everybody.  When I think back to
how things used to be before Josh and I broke up, all the times that Josh,
Luke, Jake, Kat, Ethan and I would hang out together…  My god, Kat and
Luke are getting
married
in a week and everyone is worrying about
me
and my reactions.  Now I know why Kat
really
sent me in here. 
Why she didn’t look me in the eye and she made me check on something she knew
didn’t need checking.  This is a test!

I turn around to
Josh.

“Josh.”  I say
uneasily.

“Hi
Em
.”
  He smiles and I relax a
little. 
I must get through this
.

“Sorry about that
before, I thought you were Luke,” I say.  Then looking at him I realise
why I thought he was Luke in the first place.  “You’ve had a haircut.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Now
we
match!”  Luke laughs from behind me.

I watch as Josh
self-consciously touches his new short hair style.  I always liked his
hair long, just reaching his eyes.  He used to tell me that he kept it
like that
for
me.  I guess he doesn’t need to keep it long for
me
anymore.  I prepare myself for the hurt that thought brings but when
it doesn’t come it surprises me.

“You look… well,” he
says looking me up and down.

“You too,” I
say.  “Well I better get back.”

I
hightail
it out of there and back to brides’ side of the store.  Kat immediately
sees the look on my face and looks wary.

“I passed your
test!”  I hiss at her and I immediately regret sounding so nasty.

“Oh
Em
I’m sorry-”

“No Kat,” I interrupt
her, “I’m sorry.”  I give her an apologetic smile and then I give her a
hug.  I whisper in her ear, with all the sincerity I can muster, “I
promise to behave at the wedding.  I won’t do anything to ruin your big
day!”

***

Heading back to our
various cars, after the fitting, Kat and I lag behind everybody else.

“
Em
,
you’re not mad at me are you?” Kat whispers.  “About before, with Josh-”

“No not at all,” I
assure her.  “I can see now what it must have been like for all of
you.  I just wish you had said something, if I had of known you were
worried, or realised how bad it must have been… There’s no need to tip-toe
around me anymore.  I’m okay.  I feel ready to move on.”

“
Finally
,” she
says dramatically with a smile as she nudges me with her shoulder.

“I think your little
test
may have helped clear that up for me.”

“So you’re really not
mad?  And you’re ready to move on?”  She looks at me and I nod. 
“Why is that?  Is it because of your big date tonight?”

“No.  He
cancelled… 
Twice!”

“What do you mean
twice
?” she asks.

“C’mon
you two!”
 Luke calls over to us from the other side of the car
park.

Ethan toots his horn
as he drives out in his
ute
with Mum and I give them a
quick wave.  I reach my car and see that Erin, Jake and April are already
seated in Erin’s car, with Luke and Josh standing by.

“
Em
we’re all going down the pub for a bite if you want to come?” Luke says. 
I look to Josh and see that he’s indifferent and then to Kat, who gives me a
reassuring smile.

“Sure.”  I
figure that if I really
am
ready to move on, now is the time to prove
it.

“I’m
gonna
ride with Josh,” Luke says as he gives Kat a quick
peck on the lips.

“See you there
Em
!”  Kat smiles at me as she hopes in her mum’s car.

After hanging my new
dress on a hook inside the rear door of my car, I take a deep breath.  I
hop in the driver’s seat and start the car. 
I can do this
.  I
follow the others to O’Malley’s Pub.  As I park my car next to Josh’s in
the familiar car park, I look over to him and memories of so many happy times
at this place start flooding back.  I cannot count the number of times
that I have been here.  It’s only a couple of blocks from my parents’
house and we have been regulars here since I was just a little kid.  It
was originally set up as an Irish Pub but nowadays the only thing Irish about
it is its name and the green Celtic logo.

“I’m glad you came,”
Josh says to me with a genuine smile as he holds the pub door open for
me.  I give him a small self-conscious smile back and walk past.  He
comes up beside me and we walk together towards the table where our friends are
getting settled.

“So I hear you have
started seeing someone,” I blurt out, feeling the need to just say something
and unable to think of anything else.

“Ah, yeah, we went on
a couple of dates…” he mumbles awkwardly, running his hands through his now
short hair.
 
“It didn’t work out.”

“Sorry.”
 
I say because I have no idea what I am
supposed to say to that.
 
Truth is I
don’t feel sorry, or much of anything really.
 
It takes me by surprise, the not feeling part.
 
I don’t feel jealous, or bad for him, just
the absence of any emotion whatsoever.
 
I
take my seat next to
Kat,
Josh continues past and sits
down the opposite end of the table.
 
We
give each other weak smiles as we sit.
 
Erin and Luke head over to the bar to buy a couple of jugs of beer.

As the conversation
flows around the table, I soon find that Josh and I are joining in with
ease.  Kind of like old times, better times.  As I’m driving I only
have one beer, yet somehow I find myself feeling totally relaxed.
 
I look at him and remember how it was that
last month or so that we were together.  We fought, a lot, over petty
things, but deep down we knew we both were fighting for our relationship. 
We still made love but looking back now I can see it was out of desperation, we
were trying to hold onto what we both knew was slipping away.  We were
faithful to each other, even though we both wanted other things.  We knew
that after so long growing up together we just started growing apart.

I was just the first
to finally acknowledge it.  I was the one that started the conversation
that ended with me telling him he should move out.  It was me.  And
looking at Josh now, I think I can finally forgive myself.  Maybe that has
been my problem all
along, not just that
I needed to
move one, but that I needed to forgive.  It’s true what they say about
your first being special.  Josh will always have a place in my heart, but
here, now, I can see that we
are
better apart.  Maybe it’s also
possible we can be friends too, well for our friends’ sake anyway, in social
situations like this at least. 

“Thank you,” Kat
whispers in my ear interrupting my thoughts.  She looks to Josh and back
to me and I realise her meaning.  I smile back at her.  Kat is always
so in tune with my thoughts.  Looking to Kat I remember my trip to the florist
earlier this morning.

“Oh I forgot,” I say
fishing an envelope out of my bag.  “I have a gift for you.”

“Ooh
gimme
gimme
,” Kat says
excitedly.  This gets Luke’s attention and he turns toward me.

“It’s actually an
early wedding gift, for both of you,” I say, looking at them both before
handing the envelope to Kat.

Kat opens it and
reads the card, looks at the paperwork and back at me.

“You didn’t!” she
admonishes looking to the paperwork again.

“What?  What
didn’t she do?” Luke says trying to get a look at what is in Kat’s hand. 
All eyes are on the three of us now.

“You paid for our
flowers!” Kat stares wide-eyed at me.

“What?” says Luke
equally
shocked.

“Well I didn’t know
what else to get you guys,” I explain to them.  “I thought that if I did
this, it would be one less thing for you to worry about and now you can spend
more on your honeymoon.”

“But it’s over six
hundred dollars
Em
!  It’s too much!” Kat says
stunned.