I think that's because it never once crossed my mind that anyone could look at me that way. When you've been told for four years that you're a man who isn't really there, you stop checking whether anyone is looking for you. Then came Wes's wedding. Wes Pritchard served with me in Second Recon. He was the kind of man who could carry 100 pounds of gear up a mountain and still crack a joke at the top.
After the Corps, he became a firefighter here in Greenville and he fell in love with a nurse named Amanda. When he called to tell me they were getting married, he didn't ask. Mitchell, you're my brother in arms. You're coming. I don't care if you have to wear a tie.
It would be the only social event I attended in 2 years. I almost didn't go. I stood in front of my closet that morning for a long time. But this was Wes, and there are some people you can't say no to. It was a small wedding, maybe 80 guests, outdoors on a family farm outside of Greenville.
String lights hung between old oak trees, long wooden tables, a band set up beside a barn, and an open bar, which was a mistake I didn't know we were about to make. What I didn't know was that the bride's family had hired Walsh Florals to do the flowers. Janet had spent the whole day on the arrangements, centerpieces, the arch, little bundles on every table. When she finished, the bride found her and took both her hands. You made everything so beautiful.
Please at least stay for dinner. Janet tried to decline, but the bride wouldn't hear it. I sat with Wes's old friends at the groomsman's table. Janet sat with the vendors on the other side of the tent. I saw her the moment she walked in, and I'm certain she saw me, too.
Neither of us waved. For most of dinner, we kept a safe distance, the way two people do when they both know something is complicated, and neither of them has decided how to hold it. Wes gave a toast, his voice catching on the word brother, and I looked down at my hands. When I looked up again, Janet was watching me from across the tent. She looked away first.
Then the music started, the tables emptied. People drifted toward the dance floor, toward the bar, and somehow, without either of us planning it, Janet and I ended up standing side by side at the end of a long wooden counter, each of us with a glass in hand. I hadn't touched alcohol since my discharge. Janet barely drank at all, only a glass of wine at Christmas. I don't think either of us understood how quickly it would work, but that isn't what I remember most.
What I remember is that for the first time in 2 years, we talked without an excuse. There was no soup. There was no shelf that needed fixing. There was no shop, paint, or display wood. It was just two people standing next to each other talking about the song the band was playing and how the string lights looked strung through the branches of that huge oak and how strange it was to be at a wedding when you've spent so long alone.
She told me she had never learned to dance. And I told her I never had either. And we stood there like two people at the edge of a cold pool. Neither one brave enough to jump. Weddings do something to lonely people.
All that love in one place. Everyone dancing. Everyone paired off, laughing, holding on to each other. It makes the empty spaces in your own life echo. I think we both felt it.