"Thank you," I say and walk back into the room. I look over at her as she lies on the bed with her head back on the pillow. Making my way to her, I see that her lips are already starting to go down. Her one eye opens, and she sees me. "Hi," I say softly, sitting on the bed beside her. "How are you doing?"
"Awful," she says, and I see a tear escape from the eye that is still sealed shut. "I can’t get married."
I reach out and touch her hand. "We don’t have to get married today." I smile at her, and she pulls her hand away from me.
"I don’t mean today," she says and then looks down and then up at me. "I don’t want to marry you."
I stare at her in shock. "I’m sorry, what?"
"I almost died today." She sits up in the middle of the bed. "Do you know what went through my head the whole time?"
"I have no idea," I say, looking at her, and it dawns on me that this news is not destroying me.
"The thought that we would be together for the rest of my life." I look at her, and if this wasn’t happening to me, I might just burst out laughing. "Like, don’t get me wrong, you are amazing."
"I don’t know if that is supposed to make me feel better or not," I say, and my collar feels like it’s going to strangle me, so I loosen the knot on the tie and then undo the top button of the shirt.
"You are amazing," she says, reaching out to put her hand on mine. "But I don’t know if I love you like that." I just look at her, not sure what to say. "The last two weeks, I’ve been going over this in my head." She blinks as the swollen eye starts to open a little bit. "I’ve been wondering, is this really what I want."
I get up, taking off my jacket. "You think maybe we could have discussed this before we had a whole venue full of people?”
"Oh, come on, Travis," she says. "You can’t honestly say that you really wanted to get married in the first place."
"Well, I showed up," I retort because I’m not really sure I wanted to get married in the first place. Especially after today. "Why didn’t you say anything before today?"
"I didn’t really know," she says softly. "And then today when I was getting my makeup done and then my throat started to get all scratchy, and I was thinking about what we were going to do. It just…" I shake my head. "I think I’m in love with Jackie." She wrings her hands together.
"Jackie?" I ask, shocked, like a bomb just went off. "Jackie, like your roommate Jackie?"
With tears in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, she nods her head. "I know that it’s wrong." She wipes a tear away. "And my uber religious parents are going to condemn me to hell but..."
I hold up a hand. "So you're telling me that you're gay?"
"I don’t know," she admits. "I’ve never done anything about it. I know that the thought of not being with her makes my heart hurt."
"Is this why you never wanted to move in with me?" I ask her, thinking of all the times she made excuses. It wasn’t the right time. Things were too busy. Heck, she slept over at my house a max of four times.
"I don’t even know if she feels the same way about me," she says. "But I can’t marry you if I feel this way."
"I don’t know what to say," I answer her.
"Do you love me?" she asks.
"Yes," I answer her honestly, and she tilts her head to the side.
"Like full-on completely love me?" She points at herself. "Give your life away for my love?" I know the answer, my head knows the answer, my heart definitely knows the answer. But I can’t say it out loud. Seeing Harlow walk into the church today just made everything so crystal clear. I thought I was in love with Jennifer. But I was fooling myself. There was no one I could have loved as much as I did Harlow. No one even came close to completing me like she did. For the last four years, I have fooled myself into thinking that she didn’t exist. Yet one fucking look at her, and I was right back there. Instead, I take a deep inhale and then exhale. "Exactly. I mean, think about it; you didn’t even propose. It came up one day when we were having lunch with your family, and your mother asked if we were going to get married, and we just said yeah. It was more along the lines of well, we are dating, so we might as well take the next step. Neither of us dared to back out, but now, after almost dying, I can’t marry you."