Not Now (Sequel to Man Overboard) *On Hold*

1. The Past Is Only the Future with the Lights On

They were a beautiful couple. They made their grand entrance, their first time appearing together as husband and wife. All eyes were on them as they had their first dance, the jazz band playing their song. It was obvious to everyone else in the room that they were in love. She looked at him like he was the only other person on the entire planet, and he looked at her as if she was the only thing that mattered in the whole universe.

I missed having someone look at me like that.

"I can't believe he's married," Anne whispered. I couldn't tell if she was addressing me, or just talking to herself. Both of us were too focused on the newlyweds to pay attention to anything else.

"I know," I murmured back. It seemed like just yesterday Mark and I were sitting on his bedroom floor, me whining about Tom and Mark telling me how lonely it was on tour to be the only single guy in the band. And now he had a wife.

A wife that was probably out of his league, if I was being honest. It wasn't that Mark wasn't attractive, because he was, but Skye was breathtakingly gorgeous. And yet, someone so beautiful and smart was now married to a twenty-eight-year-old man who found dick jokes amusing.

But then again, it wasn't exactly a mystery as to what Skye saw in Mark. Any girl would be lucky to have his comfort, his warm embraces, and his dumb jokes to make her smile. I was just lucky that I didn't need to marry him to get those things.

"Thank you all for coming today," Mark announced when the first dance had ended. "There's no one else that Skye and I would like to celebrate the happiest day of our lives with." He kissed his wife's cheek before leading her to their dinner table where the rest of the bridal party was already seated.

There was a small "aw" from Anne sitting next to me and I smiled. I was happy Mark had finally found someone who loved him back as much as he loved her.

The band played soft music while the food was brought out. It was my first time attending a wedding, but it was as nice as I had always imagined them to be, maybe even nicer since Mark was now a famous rockstar and all.

There was just one aspect of it that I wasn't too thrilled about.

After the first course, Mark's best man stood up and tapped his spoon against his champagne glass. It hurt to look at him, to see him throughout the night with his girlfriend, the girl he had chosen over me.

I was trying to get over Tom, I really was. I had realized that Mark was right, that I shouldn't keep holding on for something, for someone, that wasn't going to happen. And I had realized that Tom had been right, that I had been too dependent on him. Because even though I had lived without him for five years, I had still been living for him. I had still been trying to get better because I thought that if I did, he would come back. And I had wasted so much of my life because of that.

Obviously my feelings for Tom didn't just disappear, even if I had wanted them to. But I was getting better at suppressing them.

It still hurt to see him with Jen, but I was more embarrassed than anything else. After I had kissed him, after he had rejected me, after I had tried to kill myself (which, granted, Tom didn't know about since Mark had found my letter instead), Tom hadn't contacted me at all. No phone call, no text, no email. Nothing. And that hurt even more. To me, that meant that everything he had told me: how sorry he had been for hurting me, how he would always care about me, how he wanted to be friends again; it had all just been lies.