by Caitlin Peartree

I hadn’t expected the wedding of my best friend to be so difficult to get to. “Come on baby,” I coaxed the car. “Just one more switchback and we’re there.” But the car wanted to be here even less than I did. Cesie had chosen to get married on an estate nestled in the hills of West Virginia. “I can’t wait for you to see it, Bri!” she’d gushed to me a few months back. “It’s perfect — just like a fairy tale!”

She was right about it feeling like a fairy tale. I had already passed streams that turned into gentle waterfalls, and a decidedly fairy-tale like mist had descended on the hillside. It was also early autumn, warm enough for me to still have the windows rolled down, and the earthy smell of leaves that have turned and only just started to fall filled the car. It was an explosion of red and orange and yellow every way I turned my head.

It was beautiful, but it was treacherous. The road was barely wide enough for one car, and there were hairpin turns and switchbacks every few feet, or at least that’s what it felt like. My rental was doing its best to keep up, but I was afraid it wouldn’t be able to handle another turn like the one we’d just taken. Fortunately, that was the last one, according to Cesie. “There’s a really nasty turn right up at the top, but once you’ve cleared that it’s an easy drive.” I didn’t want to contemplate what the ride down would be like. At least, once I was up to the house, I’d be there for the whole weekend. All the festivities were taking place on the property.

Rounding the curve that hugged the big house, I saw Cesie’s slim figure on the front step, dressed smartly in a black jacket and jeans. She was animatedly chatting with a woman I assumed was her wedding planner. Catching sight of my car, she started to wave vigorously. “Briony!” she called, striding to the car. “You’re here! I’m glad to see you made it up in one piece. There’s parking around back of the house.” She gestured the way. “I’ll let the guys know you’re here and they can help with your luggage.”

I guided my car in the direction she’d indicated, glancing at my frizzy, unkempt hair and the mascara flaking under my eyes from napping on the flight earlier today. I wouldn’t need much help with the luggage. I’d squeezed everything I needed — makeup, pjs, extra travel clothes, bridesmaid’s dress and shoes — into a compact pilot’s case and oversize purse. I am a notorious over-packer, but this time was clearly different. Maybe I was hoping for a quick escape. Get in, get out. Clean. All I knew was, the sooner this wedding weekend started, the sooner it would be over.

Dinner that night (they had chosen to forego a rehearsal dinner) for all of us was pizza. We were too numerous to eat at the house’s dining room table. Some of us spilled out to the couches and chairs in the living room, others ate standing in the kitchen. “Don’t they make a wonderful couple?” Faith, another bridesmaid who had arrived early, asked me as I snagged a chair in the living room. She cocked her head in the direction of Cesie and her fiancé Graham. Cesie was jokingly feeding him a slice. I looked away and took a bite to avoid answering right away. The only thing I could really taste was salt. “Yes,” I said finally, feeling the pizza make its slow descent to my stomach. “Yes, they do.”

*********

Cesie and I were one of those rare occurrences: roommates who meet on Craigslist who actually become friends. As roommates we were a study in contrasts, she tall, lean and with a personal style my grandmother would have called “classic” — tailored jeans, slim-fitting pencil skirts and sheath dresses, and blazers for days. Her hair was always blowdried straight, and she never left the apartment without a full face of natural makeup. Meanwhile I was petite and curvy, with a sense of style that could be described as “eclectic” at best, and on my most made-up days never swiped on more than a little concealer under my eyes and over my acne scars. After about a year of living together, Cesie convinced me of the wonders of mascara, which I also took to wearing every day, although I drew the line at eye shadow beyond special occasions.

I didn’t mind our differences. Sometimes I’d joke that one night I would steal her hair, which was long and sleek, and the kind of red I’d dreamed of after watching The Little Mermaid as a kid. I used to complain to my mom, who as a blonde didn’t have to suffer the same indignities I did, that my hair was just brown. Mouse, potato-brown.

But what I really envied Cesie for was the easy grace with which she moved through the world. She seemed at home in any social situation, from the parties we and our friends threw to dinner with my parents when they came to visit. A family connection had landed her in her dream job doing graphic design just a few years out of college. Meanwhile, I was still chasing down typos and misplaced commas at my copy editor’s desk.

We had been roommates for about six years when Cesie met Graham at a happy hour. “Briony,” she said breezing through the door that night. “I just met the coolest guy tonight.”

“Ooohh, do tell,” I said from the couch as she eased out of her heels and sank down next to me.

“Well, his name is Graham, and he works for…” she rolled her eyes upward, trying to remember. “Some big law firm, I can’t remember which. But he gave me his number!”

“Yay, Cesie! That’s so exciting.”

“He’s so cool. We really hit it off. Honestly, we could’ve kept talking much longer we had so much in common. He’s also from Boston and loves black and white movies. He even knew who Cary Grant was!”

“Well, be sure and invite me to the wedding,” I said. “Also, I DVR’d 90 Day Fiancé if you still have the energy to watch it tonight.”

I was pleased for Cesie, if a little skeptical. Her Kate Middleton-like appearance belied a tendency to go for a much lower pedigree of man, and I worried Graham would be just another link in a growing chain of “starving artists” looking for a meal ticket or self-involved consulting bros.

After several weeks of Cesie and Graham dating consistently, the three of us went out for dinner at the Mediterranean tapas place near us so he and I could get to know each other over souvlaki and seared halloumi. “I can’t wait for you to meet him!” Cesie turned to say as she strode ahead of me through the after-work pedestrian traffic. Her black slip dress and blazer marked her out from the crowd of harried looking men and women in rumpled, end-of-day office wear, wilting in the summer heat that was just starting to bear down on the city. Graham was waiting for us in the cool relief of the restaurant vestibule.

Admittedly, the first thing I noticed about him was his looks. Tall like Cesie, he was good-looking in a clean-cut, all-star lacrosse player kind of way. But what drew me in was the way he had of immediately putting me at ease. From our first conversation, he made me feel like the most important person in the room.

Occasionally when Cesie would hang out with Graham she would invite me to tag along. This was the summer my dad was sick, battling stomach cancer, and I was happy to have something to fill the hours of daylight that otherwise would have been devoted to worrying. We hung out at his pool, or, in the evenings, at parties he or his friends threw. Everyone gravitated toward him, yet he seemed expert at throwing the spotlight back on someone else. I found myself seeking him out more and more, just to talk to him and listen to what he had to say. When the parties broke up and I was in the Uber back (Cesie invariably spent the night), I would play our conversations over and over again in my head, each time giving myself a little thrill that I knew it was better not to investigate. He’s a friend, I had to repeat to myself. The boyfriend of my best friend who also happens to be my friend — nothing more.

Summer stretched lazily into fall, but by the end of September the pools had closed and the parties dried up, and Cesie and Graham started hanging out more just the two of them, always at his apartment. I spent most of my free time now on the phone with my parents, checking in to see how my dad was doing. The prognosis wasn’t good, but we were hopeful. “How’s our Briony?” my dad would ask each time my mom handed him the phone. “I’m great, Dad,” I’d always say. “How are you?”

I was rarely actually great. I hated my job and the often empty apartment I came home to each night. But I’d lie and focus on what was going well, a good book I was reading or tv show I was watching. I wanted him to believe things were perpetually bright and cheerful for me, so that, if the worst did happen, he’d know I’d be ok. But at the end of those calls I’d find myself thinking back more and more on the summer parties with Graham, whose company I missed most acutely in those quiet moments after I’d hung up the phone.

Dad died a few weeks after Christmas, on January 12 at 6:24 PM. I flew home the next day and flew back after the service with the scent of fresh flowers indelibly linked with death. One of our responsibilities in that odd liminal period between the death of a loved one and the finality of the funeral service was finding pictures from throughout Dad’s life to display during the calling hours. My favorite was one my mom found from when I was about three or four, sitting on my dad’s lap, “reading” him a story out of my picture book. I brought it back with me to display on my dresser.

Graham came over one day a few weeks after I’d flown back, when Cesie wasn’t around. She’d been traveling for work, and bad weather had canceled her flight back at the last minute. But since Graham had already made his way across town, he figured he would stay for at least a little while. We ordered Chinese — Peking duck and shrimp fried rice — and opened a bottle of cheap cabernet sauvignon as I talked about my dad.

“I’m so sorry, Briony,” he said.  We were seated next to each other on the old couch. “Cancer’s a bitch.”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said, inhaling deeply. “It is.”

“I lost my dad, too,” Graham said, topping off his glass. “When I was in high school. Pancreatic cancer, so it was over pretty quick.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “I had no idea, Graham.”

“It was hardest on my mom, I think,” he said, staring at the contents of his wineglass. The soft glow of the lamp turned the wine an even deeper red. “As the oldest, I think I felt like I had to put on a brave face for everyone else’s sake, especially her. I don’t think I was really able to grieve properly until I left for college.”

It was hard to imagine Graham as anything but his ever-charismatic self. “I’m so sorry,” I said. I wanted to hug him.

We sat in silence for a minute or two, both draining our glasses. “My dad was my biggest cheerleader” I said finally as my eyes started to prick and burn. “He was always in my corner. Even if I didn’t tell him I was having a bad day, he could make me feel better. Now,” here I really started to cry again, “who am I going to call if I have a bad day? Who’s going to pick me up?” I put my face in my hands and sobbed.

“Ssh, ssh, it’s ok,” Graham said. I let him wrap me in a hug. “It’s ok.”

He let me cry into his shoulder. It came in waves, periods of quiet calm interspersed with choking, gulping sobs that wracked my body until it convulsed. All that time he kept rubbing my back and making little shushing sounds to let me know I wasn’t alone. Gradually, I relaxed into him. The last thing I remember, before the precise moments started to bleed into one another and reality took on a dream-like quality, was him kissing me. First my forehead, then my nose, and finally, my mouth. All of this I let him do.

I woke around 1 in the morning. Where was I? I could make out the familiar shapes of the furniture in my room: my desk, buried under stacks of receipts and other paperwork; the chair that served as a coat rack; the low, wide dresser. But I was looking at them from a new angle. Why had I slept on the opposite side of the bed?

“Graham!” I hissed. I have no idea why I was whispering. I knew Cesie wasn’t home. “Graham, Graham! Oh my God, oh my God.” I sprang up from the bed, wrapped the duvet around myself, and flipped on the light. “Wake up!” I shook him. “Please wake up!”

I started pacing the floor at the foot of the bed. I wanted to run, but hadn’t gotten as far as where when I felt Graham’s hands on my shoulders, wrenching me to face him. “Briony,” he said. I struggled to get away. He held tighter. I couldn’t inhale fast enough. “Listen to me Briony.” He spoke forcefully but calmly, like he was used to dealing with people in extreme emotional distress. “Look at me. This never happened. I came here thinking Cesie was back, but then I went home. Ok? I went home.”

He went home. It was like a breathing exercise. He went home. But it wasn’t true.

“What happened tonight was a mistake,” he said. “Maybe you had too much to drink, maybe I did. But we can’t ever tell Cesie about this.”

Can’t ever tell. No, of course we couldn’t. Can’t ever tell. There was no way to justify us, no way we could come back from this level of betrayal.

“No,” I said, actually looking him in the eyes now. “I… I promise. To the grave.”

I watched his face relax from panic to relief. “Good girl,” giving me a little squeeze. “It will be ok.”

I dead-bolted the door behind him once he’d left, and climbed back into bed. But I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep again that night. The urge to start running and not look back hadn’t fully gone away, but I had nowhere to go. Instead, I stripped the bed and started a load of laundry. As if Tide and warm water would be able to wash away what I’d done.

I felt sick to my stomach the whole next day when Cesie got back, and confined myself to my room. “Are you ok in there?” she asked. “I can get you some saltines if you want. Ginger ale might help, too.” 

“Just fine, thanks!” I called back. I sounded maniacal. I had never been a good actress. After a while, I started spending more time outside of the apartment when I wasn’t working, and didn’t mind anymore the time Cesie spent over at Graham’s. It helped that spring had finally come and the days were inching their way to their summer glory.

I explored all over the city that spring. I walked everywhere I could, invested in a decent pair of sneakers after the miles in my Converse had started to take their toll and the arches of my feet had started to ache. There were neighborhoods of row houses on row houses I had never seen before, with porches and little kids playing in the front yards and couples pushing baby strollers with their golden doodles. I felt like a pariah, a jezebel skulking at the edges of their manicured lawns and tended gardens. I would think about Cesie, and the massive way I had betrayed her, playing that night over and over in my mind. I had let him kiss me and come to my bed. It was my fault.

I would also think about my dad. In some ways, I felt like I had betrayed him, too. Graham shared some of the blame, too, no doubt. But I should have had the presence of mind, or perhaps the strength, to stop things sooner. Why hadn’t I said something? I should have been better than I was. I hoped that, wherever he was now, my dad didn’t know about what had happened that night.

I told Cesie that the exercise was helping me with my grief. “Of course!” she said, her voice full of sympathy. She was starting to work longer hours that spring anyway, and as usual spent most of her weekends over at Graham’s. During the week we resumed our normal schedule of alternating kitchen use and watching 90 Day Fiancé together. I had to remind myself the “off” feeling I was getting had to be just me. Graham and I had promised each other: to the grave. Still, living with the secret was starting to take its toll. My pants grew too big for me and the circles under my eyes deepened.

Midway through the summer, Cesie announced that she’d been offered a new job in Atlanta, and was going to be moving there when our lease was up in October. Graham would be moving with her. A group of our friends threw them a going-away party in September. I did my best to avoid him without being obvious that night. I hoped that any emotion anyone else picked up on would be chalked up to my best friend of eight years moving ten hours away. When the last of Cesie’s boxes had been packed and carted out, when the last hug and order to text every day and call every week had been given, I could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

A few months later I opened my phone to a flurry of messages and photos, all from Cesie. First was a picture of her and Graham, beaming at each other over wine glasses, and her hand displayed to the camera. A diamond glinted on her ring finger. “He proposed!!!!” the caption underneath read. “And I said yes!!!”

I set my phone down and stared at my countertop. I wanted to be so happy for Cesie. But it didn’t take too long to remember the feeling of Graham’s lips on my forehead, traveling down to meet my own.

I had to call him. Well, first I had to call her to offer my congratulations. Would calling him set off any red flags? We were friendly enough as far as Cesie knew, but not good friends. I went back and forth about whether to call. Finally, I decided I would. He owed me some kind of explanation, at least in my capacity as her friend.

I finally called him a few days later, during the workday so I knew he wouldn’t be home with Cesie when he picked up. “Hello?” he said. Was I imagining it, or was there some wariness in his voice?

“Graham, it’s Briony.” Here my entire pre-planned speech went out of my head. “How are you?” I finally managed.

 “Oh, you know. I proposed to my girlfriend, and she said yes.”

“Right, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

 “What is there to talk about?”

“I think you know what,” I said.

“Give me a minute,” he said after a pause. I could hear him striding through his office, then the sounds of traffic and birds.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m happy for you and Cesie, I really am. But what happened between us, it’s just not sitting right with me. I’m her best friend for god’s sake, and I don’t know how I can act happy for her in good conscience knowing what I know.”

“Briony, we talked about this. That night was a mistake. Blame it on whatever you want, the wine, whatever, but it was a mistake. Nothing more.”

I had expected him to say something like that but I hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. I’m calling for Cesie, I had to remind myself. “But don’t you think she deserves to know? She’s agreed to marry you.”

“What good would it do? We’ve already admitted it was a mistake. It would just hurt her unnecessarily. I love her and I don’t want to do that.”

“But don’t you think she deserves honesty? How can you say you love her when you won’t even be honest with her about what happened?”

“You haven’t said anything either. Aren’t you supposed to be her best friend?” I was too stunned to speak. It was that supposed to be that hurt the most.

“If you’re so concerned about honesty,” he continued, his tone suddenly cold, “why don’t you say something? Because you’re in the same boat I am. You don’t want to lose what you’ve got. Listen, I’ve got to go. Please don’t call me again.” The line beeped three times before I could say anything else. I continued to sit there, phone in my hand, for how long I’m not sure. He was right, and I hated myself even more for it.        

A week or so later I began to have the same dream, which plagued me up until the wedding. I dreamed that I was the one getting married, and I floated down the aisle in white organza, carrying a single white orchid in place of a bouquet. My dad sat in front with my mom. I dreamed of that moment that’s become a cliché, when the minister asks if anyone has any objections to this union to speak now or forever hold their peace. But when he asked, all of a sudden I was one of the guests, my dad was gone, and when I tried to open my mouth to object, I found I couldn’t make a sound.

Several more months went by, and I came home after one of my long walks to find a large box waiting for me in my building’s package room. Taking it upstairs and opening it, I found it contained a slightly smaller white box tied with twine, and with my name written in fancy, scrolling calligraphy across the top: Briony… I snipped the twine and opened it. On the underside of the lid, the text continued: …will you be my bridesmaid? In the box was a small bottle of Prosecco, a gold bracelet, and a couple of large sugar cookies decorated in pinks and reds and things like “Love” and Cesie and Graham’s initials and wedding date written on them. My stomach clenched. At the bottom of the box, in a pretty gold frame, was a picture of Cesie and me from a party we threw at our first apartment, a claustrophobic basement unit with peeling paint, and that always smelled vaguely of cilantro. We had just done a tequila shot and were laughing to each other about how bad it had tasted. Whoever had snapped the picture caught us, limes in hand, mid-laugh.

I considered politely declining, saying thanks but no thanks, pleading my work schedule or the expense of flying to the wedding and buying a new dress and shoes. But none of those was really true, and later that evening I texted Cesie a picture of the box, open and partially unpacked, with the caption, Yes!!! Of course! followed by two emojis of the clinking champagne glasses and a bride. I was an adult, and it was one night, one mistake. I could, I told myself, keep myself together for one wedding weekend.

I hadn’t bargained on us all living on top of each other for the whole wedding weekend. The house was big — Cesie said it could accommodate up to thirty people if you took into account the trundle beds up on the second floor and the extra space in the basement, where I’d be sleeping. And they filled that house. Aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews running around underfoot. Members of the wedding party and their significant others. I lost count of the number of strangers I nearly smacked into rounding a corner. “Oh hi! I’m Cesie’s aunt!” or “Hello! I’m Graham’s mom.” Always, they followed up with the same question: “Are you the bride’s side or the groom’s side?” And every time I had to swallow hard and say with a brightness I hoped wasn’t brittle, “I’m the bride’s first roommate out of college!”                            

The day of the wedding dawned clear and chilly. We bridesmaids got ready with Cesie in the main suite, which took up almost the entirety of the third floor. Several still-life paintings adorned the apricot-colored walls of the bedroom; one in particular featured a bunch of luscious purple grapes and a dead hare, its eyes closed to slits. Happily, the artist had chosen to forego the use of any red paint.

The hair and makeup artists set up in the bathroom, which was almost as big as the bedroom and featured an old-fashioned claw-foot tub and Tuscan style tiling. When we weren’t in either chair we sat on the chaise in the bedroom or draped ourselves over the bed, drinking mimosas and eating pieces of croissants and mini-quiches Cesie’s mom bought. None of which had much taste.

Graham came to check on Cesie a lot while she was getting, but each time one of us was deputized to shoo him away. “She’s still getting ready!” “You’re not supposed to see her before anyway.” “You have your whole life to look at her, just give her this morning!” There were six of us bridesmaids total. Fortunately, he only checked on her five times.

The wedding went off without a hitch. We processed in to Pachelbel’s Canon, posed for picture after picture with Cesie and Graham, sipped negronis (Cesie’s cocktail of choice) and ate meatballs off of skewers during the cocktail hour. Dinner spilled into a private after-party back at the house, which lasted long into the night and long after I’d gone to bed.

The whole house was still the next morning. I packed quickly as I could, tossing dresses and shoes and my makeup and toiletry bags haphazardly into my pilot’s case. Hopefully my car wasn’t boxed in. I was surprised to find Cesie and Graham, who hadn’t left her side once since the ceremony, together in the kitchen, splitting a bagel. Cesie was still in her pajamas, but Graham was already dressed.

“I’m going to head out,” I said, purse slung over my shoulder. “I need to return the rental car before I can go through security, and you know how those lines can be.”

“Oh my gosh, of course!” Cesie said, bright and bubbly. She pulled me into a tight hug. “Thank you so much for everything this weekend. It was all so special, and I’m just so happy. Text me when you get to the airport, ok? And we should plan to have you come and visit us now that all the wedding craziness is done! We can plan something once Graham and I get back from Croatia.”

I promised I would text her as soon as I returned the car, and gave her a little hug back. I gave Graham a perfunctory hug, and told them both to have fun on the honeymoon. I hoped I sounded natural.

The ride down the mountain was just as treacherous as it was on the way up, albeit in a different way. I didn’t take my foot off the brake once the whole way down. A storm must have blown through the previous night, bringing the cold damp of late fall with it. The pavement was still wet, and many of the leaves had fallen overnight, leaving branches that reached up like skeletal fingers to scrape the sky. I kept the windows rolled up.

All the ride down, I thought back through the years of friendship with Cesie: the late-night chats, the takeout and tv when neither of us had anything to do on a Friday night, those first overwhelming years out of college where at least we’d been able to lean on each other. Graham wasn’t who I thought he was — was he who Cesie thought he was? — but I had stood aside and let her marry him anyway.

I also thought of my dad. Do the dead watch over the living, observing us and wincing as we blunder into mistake after mistake, commit transgression after transgression? I wondered what he would think of me now. Would he think I’d done right? “I’m so sorry,” I said over and over, trying not to let the tears fill my eyes and blur my vision. “I’m so sorry.” I wasn’t sure whether I was addressing Cesie, my dad, or both.

Caitlin is a native Rochesterian living and writing in the Washington, DC area. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.