A stylist appeared for one of them, but before she could speak, she spotted Heather’s teary-eyed state, and Jane held up a finger, silently asking for a few more minutes. The stylist nodded and left.
“Michael deserves a lot better than the way you’ve treated him.”
“I know. I’ve ruined everything!” Heather expelled a bitter laugh. “He broke up with me once in college, and he slept with three other people. I never did.”
“That’s not an excuse for betraying him.”
“No, it isn’t. I’ve been a fool, Janie. I was terrified of only making love to one man in my whole life, so I thought I needed to go out and get some experience before I got married.”
“And Bradley was such a good friend, he couldn’t help but oblige you.”
She sighed. “I actually thought I loved him, for a short time. Then I realized last night, after the way he reacted when I told him I was going through with the wedding, he was only using me.”
Jane crossed her arms over her chest, unwilling to feel sorry for Heather’s soap-opera romance problems.
“He laughed. He said he’d never expected me to do otherwise, that he thought we were just having a little prewedding fling.”
“Weren’t you?”
“I guess so, yeah. But I was such a fool I couldn’t keep my heart out of it. Now I realize how stupid I was for wanting to sleep with another man. I could have had something pure and sweet with Michael….”
She looked so miserable then, Jane couldn’t help but throw her a rope. “You still can. You can have a devoted marriage, starting right now on your wedding day. That’s more than a lot of people can say.”
Heather looked up at her then and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “If Michael forgives me, that is. Janie, can you forgive me?”
Could she? Jane sat silent, her gaze focused on a framed poster of a woman with a really bizarre hairdo on the wall.
Heather continued. “I guess I knew about your crush on Bradley, but I thought it was nothing serious, since you’d never pursued him. Or maybe I just told myself I didn’t know, but if I’d been honest, I could have figured out, from the way you looked at him…”
“Stop.” Jane fought to keep her voice even. “I was just as big an idiot as you when it came to Bradley. I was naive enough to believe that pining after a guy for my entire adult life was the same thing as having a relationship with him. I was a coward, and I wasted a lot of energy wanting a guy who wasn’t even worth my attention.”
“You can do so much better than him.”
“I know that now.”
“I’m sorry, Janie. I’m really, really sorry.” Heather scooted over on the couch until she’d closed the distance between them. She encircled Jane in her arms and held her close until Jane finally gave in and hugged her back.
“I forgive you,” Jane whispered. “And I hope today is your wedding day.”
14
How do you know if it’s love and not just lust? Does your soul wake up when she comes into the room? Do you look into her eyes and see the future? Does being in her presence make you want to be a better man?
—Jane Langston, in the May issue of Excess magazine
JANE REMINDED HERSELF to suck in her gut. It was her turn to walk down the aisle. In spite of Heather’s betrayal, Michael had demonstrated a stunning amount of forgiveness in deciding to go forward with the wedding. There was one groomsman conspicuously missing from the wedding party, and rumor had it he’d paid a visit to the emergency room late last night after Michael had knocked out a couple of his teeth.
As she walked slowly down the aisle to Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” Jane forced herself to smile and look straight ahead, as if she weren’t painfully aware of one particular set of eyes that were watching her from the altar. She met the gazes of family members in the pews, but it wasn’t until she’d made it to the altar and taken her place that she allowed herself to look at Luke.
Just as she’d suspected, his gaze was locked on her. Her palms began to sweat on the bouquet of spring flowers she was clutching, and she forced herself to look away from Luke again. She turned to the back of the church as the bridal march began and Heather started walking down the aisle.
Jane had never paid much attention to weddings. Sure, she’d heard the vows a hundred times, and she knew all the conventions, but all those times she’d played “wedding” with her sisters when they were kids, she’d never really tried to imagine herself getting married. She realized now that even as an adult, she’d never visualized herself walking down the aisle, standing before a minister with a man, exchanging vows.