Slightly Married. Wendy Markham

me, no one wants that for them more than I do.

      Okay, well maybe Sonja wants it more than I do. And I’m sure her family, who adore Buckley, want it more than I do. I’m way down on the list of people rooting for their happily-ever-after, I’m sure.

      What about Buckley, though?

      Does he want happily-ever-after with Sonja?

      I honestly thought he did.

      I think he honestly thought he did, too.

      But maybe he doesn’t anymore. Maybe he needs to talk about this with a good friend.

      A good platonic friend who has no personal agenda where he’s concerned.

      That would be me, I tell myself…except that it wouldn’t be me. Because after hearing that Buckley may not be gung ho about marrying Sonja after all, I can’t help but be…well…not all that disappointed.

      Wait a minute.

      Did I really hear that Buckley may not be gung ho about marrying Sonja?

      I mean, I know that’s what I heard…but did he really say it?

      No. He didn’t. What he said was that he wasn’t sure “about anything,” including getting married.

      What else is there?

      There’s being in love with the person you’re marrying.

      Forgive me if I’m jumping to conclusions here, but…

      Well, hasn’t it seemed all along as though Buckley wasn’t a hundred percent on board the Sonja train? It’s like he jumped on when he realized it was about to leave the station without him, and he’s enjoying the ride, more or less…but now he might not want to take it all the way to its final destination. And he wishes he could jump off.

      Okay, I really am very clever with my analogies lately.

      Too bad I can’t channel all this creativity into a Creative job at the agency.

      Too bad I can’t even tell Buckley what I’m thinking….

      But I can’t, because that would open the door to trouble. Exactly what kind of trouble, I don’t know. I just sense that I should keep my verbal speculation on the apparent state of his relationship to a minimum.

      What I can do, however, is ask him how things are going with Sonja and the wedding plans.

      So I do.

      “Not great,” he replies.

      “Uh-oh.” I swear to God I’m psychic. “What’s wrong?”

      “Remember how we were going to get married a year from this summer so that Sonja would have time to plan the wedding?”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, now she wants to expedite things.”

      “How much?”

      “A year. She wants us to get married in July.”

      “This July? But that’s only a few months away.”

      “I know.” He shakes his head, looking at me.

      I shake my head, looking back at him.

      Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but remember that old movie Dead Man Walking? The one where Sean Penn is on death row and Susan Sarandon is the nun who tries to save him?

      The vibe between us is exactly like that right now.

      Then again…

      Buckley didn’t kill anyone, and he isn’t sentenced to death. And I’m not a nun. Far from it.

      So maybe this vibe isn’t exactly like that.

      “Well,” I say, “I guess since you’re getting married anyway, it doesn’t matter when.”

      Yes, that came from the girl who had her heart set on an October wedding before she ever had a fiancé.

      “Yeah, but this July is just so soon…”

      “You’re right,” I tell him. “If Sonja has her heart set on her dream wedding, it will probably take much longer than that to plan it anyway. Trust me, she’ll figure that out when she starts trying to pull something together.”

      I sure as hell did.

      “That’s the thing. She says she doesn’t care about the wedding anymore. She just wants us to be married. The sooner the better, she says.”

      Aha!

      Does my pimply nose smell a desperate bride?

      “Did you tell her you’d rather wait until next summer, like you planned?” I ask him, reaching out and putting a hand on his lower arm, all Sister Prejean again.

      Or maybe it’s more My Best Friend’s Wedding than Dead Man Walking.

      “Yeah, I told her. Well, I tried. But she wanted to know why we should wait. Then she accused me of not wanting to marry her.”

      “At all?”

      He nods.

      See? What’d I tell you? Desperate bride.

      But I refuse to play Julia Roberts to Sonja’s Cameron Diaz. Truly, I don’t want to disrupt Buckley’s wedding plans so that I can steal him away for myself. I’m just his friend, looking out for his best interests. I have a fiancé and a wedding-in-progress of my own.

      Buckley sighs and shakes his head, pushing his soup bowl away. I think he’s so upset that he’s lost his appetite until I look down and see that the bowl is empty.

      I dip my spoon into my own bowl and fish around half-heartedly for a floating ribbon of seaweed.

      Maybe I’m the one who’s lost my appetite.

      This just isn’t going the way I imagined it would.

      I push away my own soup, which I was supposedly craving so desperately, and do my best not to ask the million-dollar question that I’m sure is on both of our minds.

      Unfortunately, my best isn’t good enough, and I hear myself ask, “So is Sonja right about you not wanting to marry her at all?”

      I wait for Buckley to tell me of course she’s not right.

      But some small part of me hopes he’ll tell me that she is right, and he doesn’t want to marry her after all.

      Why am I hoping that? Good question. I have no business hoping that.

      “Forget I said anything.” Buckley heaves a two-ton sigh as the too-damn-efficient waiter pops up to whisk our soup bowls away.

      He simultaneously replaces them with two sashimi deluxe lunches.