Charlotte slunk into the house when she could not find Jason outside it. She would have lingered outside longer, having the owner explain the generator to her as a reason to avoid the rest of the day, but Alex knew her procrastination and its cause. Though she had spent this long weekend with them, the idea of witnessing Jason's wedding unnerved something in her that she did not wish to articulate.
Both as a messenger of electrical tidings -- in that she power remained off, but she now felt confident that she could correct this using the proper application of muscle and gasoline -- and someone sweating through her clothes, she had more rights than most people to be inside. In the relative dimness, the home seemed more forbidding, as though she had broken in, intent to steal from the happy couple or commit vandalism against their wedding.
She first tried the living room, where Toni sat, holding her shiny blue nail away from her body as though they were claws. Her mother tenderly applied too much blush, but Charlotte knew it was far from her place to make this observation aloud and indeed not hers to offer to correct it. Charlotte maintained a small pride that she had not as much as used tinted lip gloss since her junior prom, though a not insignificant number of women had applied their makeup to other parts of her body.
Toni looked up when she heard footsteps in the room. Her eyes brightened when they fell upon Charlotte's face, which Charlotte was surprised warmed her already sun flushed cheeks.
"You look pretty," Charlotte offered, not only because this is what one said to brides, but that Toni wore even this excessive makeup well. If one were inclined toward the traditionally female-presenting people -- and Charlotte counted herself out there -- one could do far worse than Toni.
"I am pretty; therefore, I meet your approval as a person?" Toni said, teasing. In this playfulness, Charlotte felt she might genuinely call Toni a friend, though she wouldn't out loud.
"I approved of you hours ago," Charlotte joked back. "Possibly as much as a solid day."
Toni's mother gave a more than polite smile and said that her daughter needed to keep her eyes and mouth shut long enough for the rest of the makeup to be applied. Toni waved Charlotte away, saying that her quarry was a floor up.
Charlotte tiptoes on the steps as though her unnecessary sneaking would be interfered with should they creak, which they inevitably did. A mouse would cause them to whine.
Already, the top floor felt humid, as though the air conditioning had been out for days instead of hours. Charlotte ran her hand over the wall, the lacquer tacky as though it too were sweating.
Jason and Nathaniel were speaking in the latter's room, their tone immune to the strangeness of the unlit house. Charlotte did not feel that she had any reason not to enter and, more familiar with the men than Toni, shoved open the door and planted herself on the edge of the bed.
Jason wore a crisp suit that seemed bespoke. Even in the circumstance of his wedding, she did not know that he would have anything tailored. He was distinctly an off-the-rack or thrift store shopper.
If Toni were pretty, Jason was so much more to Charlotte. It could have been the years as his bedmate, but she felt a distant flickering of her sexuality. She had seen him in everything but this level of formal dress.
"I see you are stepping up your game," she said.
Jason looked down as though he did not remember having put this suit on. "There did not seem to be a better occasion." He nodded to Nathaniel, for whom this ensemble might have been a step up but not so great of one. "He gave me pointers."
Nathaniel motioned to the sloppy tangle around his neck. "But he still can't figure out how to tie a tie."
Jason's eyes widened in affront he did not mean. "I know how to tie a tie! I simply don't know how to do it well," he said. "Life has given me few occasions to learn, and they are useless articles. What is the point of them? Am I hiding my buttons?"
"Stand up straight," Nathaniel said.
Jason smiled softly. Charlotte could not be sure that he had not intentionally done a poor job so that Nathaniel would have to fix it for him. The love those two shared had always been on the list of what she adored about Jason. He was skittish around other men, having never quite been party to their reindeer games, but he all but doted on Nathaniel, and goading him into reciprocating always pleased him.
Nathaniel took this duty seriously, though he noted that it was difficult to tie it on someone else's body. Instead, he loosened it from around Jason's neck and put it on his own neck, tying a trinity knot so quickly it was as though it were second nature.
Jason accepted its return, studying the triune knot with fascination. "I haven't the slightest idea how you did that."
He slipped it over his head and tightened it, admiring the handiwork in the mirror. Charlotte stood in front of him, brushing none existent lint from his shoulder and fixing his tie, though this meant only that she touched the pristine knot. It was the gesture and not the effect that she wanted.
"I'm so fucking proud of you."
He raised one eyebrow. "What have I done that is worthy of pride, beyond almost but not quite putting on a proper suit?"
"You made it to the altar. You are getting married," Charlotte said, swallowing back an undisguised emotion that tried to push its way through. "It wasn't an easy road."
He smiled down at her. "You weren't a bump in the road," he said. "It was easy, I promise you. You were a part of that, and I wouldn't have had a smooth journey with Toni if I hadn't loved you. And now you are with me when I get married. Having you here today makes this day complete."
She hugged him tightly. "You idiot," she said into his shoulder. "You are going to make me cry off all my mascara." She grabbed his tie, pretending to blow her nose on it and wipe her eyes, a little surprised at the tiny wet spots she left.
Toni found Jason in the living room, elbows on knees and hands on chin. She had yet to put on her dress. It hung in one of the bathrooms. On the door, Amy had helpfully attached a piece of paper ordering Jason to stay away. Even in so close of quarters and relaxed of ceremony, some traditions needed to be preserved. Instead, Toni wore sweatpants and a hoodie, though only her underwear on underneath. At Amy's insistence, the back of her panties spelled out "Bride" in white rhinestones. Toni was unsure if this was also a hallowed tradition, but Amy treated it as such.
"How are you doing?"
"I have no idea how to answer that question. I don't have enough vocabulary for this emotion. I will default to 'good,' though, in the interest of time."
She cuddled against him. It was so easy to lose one another in this wedding. Alone in the house, he was hers for the first time in days, but she knew that they had only minutes. She did not waste any of them with further talking. She could not risk her makeup with kisses, much as she might want to, and so they held one another, the light from the windows warming their faces.
Then his countdown ended. He needed to go to the bottom of the hill to await his bride.
As he left, she heard him muttering his vows under his breath as if to burn them into his memory. If his vows were not there already, she wasn't sure a few more iterations would do the trick.
As though it were a holy relic best glimpsed out of the corner of one's eyes, Toni walked into the bathroom containing the dress. Hung on the shower rod, it looked like a specter made of lace. One of her friends, an artist of minor esteem, had made it but was too busy with a show across the country to bother coming herself. A dress was a suitable replacement for a guest. The friend's absence was for the best, as the dress then had to be taken in and let out. Her friend had not bothered with measurements and instead assumed that Toni resembled her, tall and flat-chested. Dropping her hoodie and sweats, Toni reverently (and nervously, scared that, half an hour after its application, she still might smudge her nail polish and ruin the dress) slipped it over her head, taking pains to keep the cloth away from her face. (The makeup was excessive, but her mother had assured her that it would look better on camera.) The difference between how she entered the bathroom and now was startling. Toni looked like a fairy might after falling into spider webs. She completed the ensemble in which she would be married, crowning herself with a headband of leather blue and purple roses.
With this final flourish, she could barely recognize herself. Instead, she saw a version of herself that only appeared in dreams, magical and beyond reality. A celestial creature whom no one would question helming a myth. Her eyebrows had been plucked into perfect curves, her skin smooth and, in the light streaming through the bathroom window, the makeup subtler than she had thought. Her nails were each like a cabochon. This is the person she could be if, instead of farming and ceramics, she spent an hour each day dressing and painting herself. She had never been this way for Jason, but he never looked at her with anything less than adoration. Maybe there was never a point in dressing up. He would have married her in muddy jeans and a hoodie, which was probably the best reason to want to marry him. He didn't require her to be anything other than who she was.
As she watched the guests and wedding party descend the hill, the power flicked back on without preamble.
From the porch, she could see all gathered, barely hidden by a thicket. The quiet turned palpable. There had not been a moment since they arrived that the house had the opportunity to be still. She relished it. The quiet settled over her like a fog. Before she walked down the hill, she needed time to appreciate what it was to be alone and nevertheless awash with love.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.