The stage.
The microphone.
My sister wore confidence the way other women wore perfume: heavy, sweet, impossible to ignore. She didn’t ask for attention. She took it, the way she’d taken so many things in our lives and called it fate.
My chest tightened. It wasn’t surprise. Surprise had burned out of me months ago. This was something else: the small, familiar tension of watching someone reach for the match you already knew they’d strike.
I lifted my hand and touched James’s arm, just above the cuff of his tailored suit. The fabric was cool where his body wasn’t. His skin beneath it felt tight, like a wire pulled too hard.
“She’s going for the mic,” I said.
James’s posture stiffened instantly. His jaw clenched so hard I saw the muscle jump near his cheek. For a second, he didn’t look like a groom basking in celebration. He looked like a man bracing for impact.
“Should I stop her?” he asked.
His voice sounded like it was trying to be casual, like he was asking whether we should order another round. But I could hear the strain under it, the calculation.
I could also hear something else: a hope that I’d tell him to fix it. That I’d rush to smooth things over. That I’d do what I had always done.
Make everything easier for everyone else.
“No,” I said.
My voice came out steady. It didn’t match the tremor behind my ribs, the little shiver running through me like an underground current. But I’d been practicing steady for four months. I’d practiced it in mirrors and meetings, in bridal fittings, in quiet drives home, in the bathroom when I washed my face and stared at my own eyes to make sure I could keep them clear.
I adjusted my veil with hands that didn’t shake.
“Let her.”
James turned his head toward me as if he didn’t recognize the woman standing beside him. A few minutes earlier, he’d whispered into my hair, I can’t believe you’re mine, like it was a romantic line. Now his gaze searched my face for something familiar. Tears. Anger. Panic.
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