“Do you remember, in high school, there was a talent show called Lip Synch Battle?” Cyrus said.
Until that point, we had both resisted starting too many sentences with “Do you remember, in high school?”
“Yes, of course I remember.” I’d sneaked out of the house because I didn’t have the words to explain the importance of Lip Synch Battle to my parents.
“Well, one year I signed up.”
I was so surprised I slapped his knee. “Serious?”
“Yup. I think it was before your time.”
“All by yourself?”
“I didn’t have any friends.”
This I knew. “That’s because you never bothered talking to anyone.”
“I was going to do ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’？”
“No.”
“I bought the outfit, practiced the hell out of it. I think I was pretty good. But then, at the last minute, I choked. I had to beg Mrs. Stanley not to announce my name, and I went home and cried myself to sleep.”
“I would have really liked to see that. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ I mean, not the crying. What did you do with the outfit?”
“I went home and put it in the trash.”
“I am super turned on by the thought of you in sequins.”
“You should be. I was so hot.”
We kissed again. He circled his arms around my waist and I leaned toward him. Suddenly I couldn’t wait for the wedding to be over.
A man in a gray suit came and waved to us. “It’s time,” he said.
The hall was full and I took a seat at the very back. I was struggling to recall the names of the bride and groom—Cyrus had told me, but right now all I could remember was the way he had run his finger along the rim of my collar.
The groom was standing at the front of the room, and the light from the window made a halo around him. There was no music, only the soft roar of the water being turned by the mill. Cyrus stood beside him and gestured to the audience, and together we all sat down. I heard a rustling sound behind me, and when I turned around, I saw a woman in a puffy dress and a thick veil. As she walked past me, I noticed that the dress and the veil were made entirely from long strips of paper. “It’s The Iliad,” an older man beside me whispered. “Charlie and Bethan are classicists.”
Bethan joined Charlie and they turned to face each other.
“Penelope,” Cyrus began in a voice that was both soft and loud, “waited for Odysseus for twenty-two years. She knitted, and she waited.
“Some of us search for a lifetime to find our soulmate. We scour the earth and journey to distant shores. Charlie and Bethan, born in the same hospital on exactly the same day, appear to have been soulmates from the start—the way Plato imagined soulmates, as two bodies that were once joined together. This marriage is not just a union but a reunion of mates who have been known to each other in another realm.”
Charlie and Bethan, holding hands, leaned toward each other. Cyrus was looking at them, but he was speaking to me.
“We will now conduct the Anakalupteria, the ancient Greek ritual of the removal of the veil.”
Charlie stepped toward Bethan. With great tenderness, he tore the first strip of paper from her veil. He held it up and read: “？‘Bethan, I pledge my love, my body, my life to you.’？”
Bethan reached up and tore another strip of paper from the veil. “？‘Charlie, I pledge my love, my body, my life to you.’？”
Another strip: “？‘… like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.’？”
Charlie pulled a ring from his pocket and placed it on her outstretched hand. “Wishing to marry you, I honor you with this.”
“Wishing to marry you, I honor you with this,” she echoed, doing the same.
“In the tradition of Ancient Greece, and sanctioned by the state of Massachusetts, and in remembrance of your mothers, who could not be here today, and surrounded by these beloved texts, I pronounce you bound together by the love you share and the promise you have made.”
To the sounds of laughter and clapping, Charlie and Bethan kissed.
After the party, the dinner, the toasts, dancing, champagne, the bride pulling away pieces of her dress until she was left in shorts and a T-shirt that had I HEART HOMER written across the front, Cyrus and I drove to the B&B he had booked. We greeted the owners, a sunburned couple called Sam and Sam, and their orange cat, then we took our things to the top floor and closed the door behind us.