You, Again(101)

There’s this mindfulness exercise she’s been listening to on an app. You close your eyes and imagine yourself lying on your back, looking up at the sky, watching clouds gently float overhead. You name each cloud with an emotion you’re feeling and just let it float past, and that’s apparently supposed to help you sit with the discomfort instead of avoiding it.

Now, the flaw in this visualization is that you’re still feeling the shitty emotion. That’s the problem with the Josh memories. They’re not puffy clouds—more like unpredictable lightning bolts that crash through her brain at inopportune times.

Maybe she hasn’t quite bridged that final gap to acceptance, but this shit takes time. At some point, without Ari consciously realizing it, her hurt over Cass had morphed into something less potent. A dusting of ash rather than a burning ember.

It’ll happen with Josh, too.

She has to believe that.

Radhya stares at her with what’s probably intended as a look of concern, but in her squinty prosecco haze, she’s giving the impression that she’s confused by Ari’s nose.

Suddenly the karaoke mic goes silent over the chorus of “Return of the Mack.” Ari looks up. There’s still over a minute until the song ends. But Cameron is pointing at someone in the crowd.

“Kyle, I just realized that it’s eleven forty-five,” he shouts into the microphone. “This year, I don’t want to kiss my soulmate at midnight.” He drops down onto one knee. Ari feels her mouth hanging open. The crowd falls silent. “I want to kiss my fiancé.”

The off-brand backup vocals repeat “You liiied to me” as a man in a shiny suit slowly rises to his feet, nodding. The entire bar explodes in cheers as they embrace and the microphone clatters to the floor.

How many of these scenes does she have to witness? Is it some weird karmic penance for failing at marriage? Ari could probably name ten reasons for this couple’s eventual demise, the first of which is proposing with a karaoke backing track to “Return of the Mack” nearly drowning out the declaration of love.

So why the stubborn ache in her chest? Why is she thinking about how she’ll never get to tell Josh the story of this couple’s engagement? Is it really just a matter of waiting for the hurt to subside, like a slowly atrophying muscle?

“Get up there and say something!” Gabe pushes Ari off Radhya’s lap, snapping her out of the thought spiral.

“Why?”

“Sentimental crap makes people more willing to spend money. Get up there and say something fucking moving!”

Radhya holds out a plastic champagne flute in Ari’s direction. “You have like two dozen wedding-related speeches on your phone, dude.” When Ari doesn’t take the drink, she gives a tiny shrug, pulls her hand back, and downs the prosecco herself. “Just please God, not that paragraph from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin or the Apache Prayer.”

Nodding absently, Ari makes her way around the merch table, nearly tripping on her way to the stage as the DJ fades the song out. An unsettling hush falls over the bar. She picks the microphone up off the floor, triggering a surge of feedback.

“How about that, everyone? Beautiful, right?” She takes a breath. “Gabe’s been running this fundraiser for ten years and I think this is our first engagement. Congratulations to Kyle and Cameron!” There’s a smattering of applause and whistles.

She swallows and scrolls her Notes app, pausing on a speech labeled “Toast from a Cynical Father of the Bride Who Doesn’t Want to Mess Around with the Creep Factor of ‘Giving His Little Girl Away.’?” That’s literally the title. It’ll have to do.

“Here’s the thing, Rach—er, Cameron.” She clears her throat and reads off the screen. “When you fall in love with someone, you’re all optimism. You have no sense of the hardships you’ll face in a few years. You’re thinking ‘This is it!’ because, uh, Kyle makes you happy. But the truth is…”

Ari barely remembers writing this. Maybe it happened in a fugue state. A sativa haze. A NyQuil-and-tequila fog.

“The truth is…happiness is really complicated. It’s fickle.” Radhya’s face resembles the Chrissy Teigen awkward cry face meme. “People are too worried about being happy. If you want to be happy all the time, just watch cat videos. They’re fucking great.” There’s a very light smattering of chuckles. Gabe makes a smile gesture with his index fingers. “No one should marry the person who makes them happy. Marry the person you want by your side at your lowest p-point. Marry the person you…you never get sick of. Who you always want more from. Who makes you proud to be theirs.”

There’s an unmistakable constriction in Ari’s throat now, remembering where these words came from. Kyle and Cameron nod. She blinks rapidly, staving off the threat of tears. Because, if she’s being honest with herself, the Josh-shaped hole doesn’t actually feel like it’s closing.

“But if you…” She looks down but the phone is useless; the words are illegible now. “If you do happen to find your person, it’s an act of courage to tell them that. To say, ‘please love me back.’ To let someone else hold your heart in their hands, knowing it could—actually, it probably will—end badly. Knowing that they’re going to fuck up. Knowing you’ll both hurt each other. But if that’s your person, it’s worth the risk. Because your person will see the best version of you. They’ll have a whole list of reasons why they think you’re irreplaceable. And they’ll tell you.” Ari feels hot tears slipping down her cheeks. “If you want to watch someone you love grow into the person you know they can be, that’s when you get married.”