FERVOR: a wedding debacle.(Complete✔️)

CHAPTER 2: Overdue

GIVEON

You never know the day you are going to meet the love of your life, it disguises itself as any other day. The clouds filled the sky with a promise of rain like every other spring day, the sidewalk was littered with people going in and out of restaurants, enjoying the last day of the weekend before they had to go to their boring jobs the next day, and I was walking behind my band-mates arguing about which songs to play tonight like any other day we had to perform at a new place and whether or not to take the record deal offered to us. How was I supposed to know that fate was brewing its own storm for me specifically, how was I to know that that was the last time I would perform with my band mates or that I would stumble drunk into the club bathroom with tears in my eyes from the worst betrayal of my life and walk into a pair of brown eyes that reminded me of sunshine and home at the same time?. maybe if I was fore warned then I would have been prepared, I would have known to be more gentle and kind, but no...

"Move!" the word leaves my mouth a few shoves too late, she is already trying to stop her fall by holding on to the rusty sink but I don't stop to see if she succeeds or not, I am already in the stall and puking out the fish tacos we had for dinner two hours ago. The words ricochet in my mind in tune with the muted music playing in the club, "its nothing personal, mate! They are providing a lead singer and its part of the contract. We couldn't say no. We couldn't say no, we.. I was already out of the loop , outvoted out of my own band.

I was dusting my pants of stray toilet paper and other things that live in a public bathroom floor that I did not want to think about, when I made eye contact with her again, her hand was bleeding into the sink but I did not have it in me to care about her hurt hand or the scathing scowl on her face. I was already burning.

I had hoped that fate was satisfied with the storm she had cast in my life but I was wrong, five years later I was still wrong. The strings of the piano were evidence to that, the ethereal glow that basked the room from the fading embers of the sun as it dipped into the horizon were my proof, and the scar on her pinky finger that clutched the soft pink roses in her hand as she moved slowly down the isle was my sign that fate was not done with me and although for a few years I had enjoyed the sunshine that was her, the ominous clouds would follow me everywhere I go. Every step she took towards the alter was mirrored by bursts of pain shooting through my heart. I pulled my eyes back to the window, I could not look at her face and see the happiness radiating from her, sunshine incarnate.

"... does anyone have a reason as to why these two should not be united in holy matrimony? Speak now or forever hold your peace"

the priest said the words in a monotone, like he had said the words a thousand time, a song he has sang and performed for a while and he was now immune to its weight and meaning. A tension filled the room, and even though heads did not turn I could feel eyes on me, peripheral and direct, most of them with anticipation but few like my brothers were with warning. I did not dare move a muscle or change my expression, I continued to stare at the Virgin Mary and Joseph, feeling the storm rage in my mind and a thunder of visceral pain flash through my body..

or forever hold your peace...

forever was a long time to carry this pain in my heart, forever was a long time to atone for my sins, forever was a long time to carry the burden of unrequited and rejected love, forever was a long time to carry the memory of her sunshine in my heart, but it did not seem long enough to piece my heart together. Only she could put me back together and my time to save myself was running out, the seconds ticked by and forever loomed close, like a hurricane that was here to overtake my storm and lead me to doom.

Its the promise of never ending pain that leads me to the affirmation, that makes me realize that I might not be strong enough to endure forever without her. I want her back.

A collective gasp follows my epiphany and shit! Did I say it out loud? My silent question is answered when all the heads turn to me. Shit on a stick!