A Part of My Memory

Elliot

Zara was gone.

She took a taxi back to the house and by the time we got home she was nowhere to be found. She had said goodbye to my parents and left a letter for Harley, who kept on telling me that maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe she was still in the city. Maybe I could go and win her back as they did in the movies. But this wasn't a movie. This was real life, and I had already made my decision. And it was only now that she was gone that I feared I had made the wrong decision.

I couldn't sleep the whole night. Wondering where she was now. Wondering how she was doing and whether she was right about my feelings. I started questioning myself and my decisions. Was I really being a coward by not acknowledging my true feelings for Zara? But I didn't know if I had feelings for her, or maybe I was just afraid to admit that I did.

Because I did.

****

It was the wedding day.

I was dressed in a suit and tie, all made up in the men's room with Reed and my other groomsmen.

"You ready?" Reed asked me.

"Oh... yeah," I answered, but I was only halfway present. No matter how hard I tried to tell myself that I had made the right decision both my heart and my head told me otherwise.

When the ceremony was about to begin, I made my way to the large hall, walking down the aisle to stand and wait for my bride. The venue was magnificent, but I barely noticed. There were so many people, but I barely noticed that either. I barely noticed the dry tears marks on Harley's face or the solemn expressions on my parent's faces. Barely registered the disappointment on Reed's face and the way Bridget kept glancing around in the crowd as if waiting for someone to appear.

I barely noticed Jess emerge from the double doors and walk down the aisle as the classic 'here comes the bride' song played in the background. I was barely present when Mr Green handed me his daughter to take as my wife. I wasn't present for any of it. And even as the priest started speaking, all I could think about was Zara. Zara this, Zara that, and the way I wished that Zara was the one dressed in this white gown. I wished Zara was—

"Elliot?" Jess said, knocking me out of my thoughts.

"Huh?"

Jess looked at the priest, signalling for him to repeat what he had said, so he did.

"Elliot Fraid, do you take this woman to be your wife, to live together in holy matrimony, to love her, to honour her, to..."

The priests' words faded to nothing as my mind wandered to the first time I met Zara. The first time our eyes met, separated by the distance between our two vehicles, her hair whipping around in the wind. The first time we interacted and she started awkwardly rambling, saying weird yet amusing facts about herself. The time she had to hold on to me on the jet ski and the way I tried to ignore the way her proximity made me feel. It was like everything about her—her competitiveness, her awkwardness, her love for her friends—drew me closer to her. And once I was hooked she kept reeling me in, and now I realised that she had been the centre of my attention and my thoughts since the beginning.

Zara was fun to be around. She was smart and weird and funny. She was cute and different and crazy. She had the best laugh and she was perfect in the most imperfect way. She was herself, and I liked her like that... I loved her like that.

Before I met Zara, I didn't know what it was like to look at someone and smile for no reason. Even the dumb things she said and did made me smile. I was never in love with Jess, and I wouldn't have realised what true love felt like if I hadn't met Zara.