Listening to her, it was like my stomach was filling with curdled milk. “You expected him to marry you, and he led you on and then found a better option?” It sounded familiar. At least Matt hadn’t left Stella pregnant and then made her homeless.
“I’m not sure he led me on.” She turned and lay flat on her back facing the ceiling. “I thought we were heading toward marriage and spending the rest of our lives together. Even when he ended things, I thought he was just having a bit of a freak out before making such a big commitment. I’d never really considered us split up and then . . . the invitation.”
“Jesus, that’s closure.”
“It was a shock.”
“What did you say to him. To Karen? How did they excuse what they’d done?”
More silence.
“Nothing,” she said. “I mean, I never asked him. Or her.”
I sat up. “You’ve never spoken to him about it? Not even when you got the invitation?”
“What was there to say? It wasn’t like I was going to talk him out of it or negotiate a wedding for myself instead. What would have been the point?”
“You could have done a lot of shouting, gotten it off your chest, let them know how you feel.” I wanted to do it for her.
She shrugged. “I’m already the kind of woman they think they can lie to and cheat on. I’m already the girl they invite to the wedding because they think I’ll be happy for them or something. Or they don’t care. I suppose I didn’t want to give them reason to respect me even less.”
“Who cares what they think? Either of them. They’re clearly people you don’t want anywhere near you. You should have confronted them for you, to make yourself feel better. Stand up to them. Don’t be the woman who takes everything they dish out with a smile.”
Tears welled in her eyes. I’d gone too far. I didn’t mean to call her weak. She was here—at her former best friend’s and ex-boyfriend’s wedding. With a smile. That took courage and strength. But it was okay to feel wronged. To be angry. I was angry for her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just . . . people like them . . . they act as if it’s their world and we just live in it. Like we don’t matter. They’re so entitled or so they think. They don’t care who they mow down on the way to getting what they want.”
My mother was a victim of that entitled attitude—it still made me so angry. “You deserve more, Stella.”
“I’ve rehearsed it,” she said in a small voice almost as if she didn’t want me to hear it. “What I’d say. To him and her. I didn’t sleep much in that first week after I got the invitation. I had plenty of time to prepare a speech. Probably spent more time on it than the father of the bride has on his.”
“So, say it to them.”
She took a deep breath. “I’d end up getting tongue-tied and Matt would try to talk over me . . . and would I feel better?”
“You won’t know if you don’t try.”
“I think I’d prefer to just avoid him. He hasn’t come near me at this wedding. And as long as he doesn’t, I’ll be fine. I don’t want to be made to feel like the entire situation is my fault. And that’s what would happen.”
“You’ve not spoken to him at all while you’ve been here?”
She shook her head. “If I know him at all, he’s angry that I’ve come—despite the invitation.”
“Karen can’t keep away from you. I’ve seen her come up to you a few times.”
“Yeah, I’ve come close to saying something to her, but then I think I only have myself to blame. Our entire lives, Karen has taken what she’s wanted, and I’ve never spoken out, never criticized her or told her what I really thought. At school she made us swap beds because she didn’t want to be near the loo. When we ate out in restaurants, she’d make me order a pudding and then she’d eat it herself. She would borrow my clothes and not return them. I’ve let that happen. For years. And I’ve done the same thing with Matt—I’ve wanted him to be happy more than I wanted me to be happy.”
“You don’t know how to put yourself first,” I added.
“It sounds like a cliché.”
“It sounds true.”
“I think they just have such forceful personalities, and I genuinely want people I love to be happy.”
“But they’ve got to want you to be happy too, otherwise people will ride roughshod over you.” It had happened to my mother—used when there wasn’t anything better to do and then dropped when life moved on. It made me sick. “Promise me you’ll start pleasing yourself before you start pleasing other people.”
“I can’t make promises that I don’t know I’m capable of keeping.”