Living on Perfectly Remembered Memories

Franchesa

I took a gander around the room. Absolutely all of the men wore white dress shirts and black slacks. Their dates wore dresses that were a very light shade of pink. The technical term was pale pink, but my longer description sounded better.

The dining hall wasn't very large, nor was it too small. It was big enough to fit roughly 100 people, and that was exactly the amount of people invited. But I kept it strictly close friends and family. If there were too many people, it would stir too much attention. Too much attention would attract the paparazzi. There wasn't a chance in hell I was going to allow the paparazzi to bombard into the reception and kill the day.

I was sitting comfortably in my chair while leaning against Rafael. He was always so warm. It was one of many things I loved about him. His internal temperature was always warm no matter the weather in the room or outdoors. Then again, we were in California and it's always warm.

Even though the room was well ventilated with air conditioning, I still felt uncomfortable, but in a weird good way. I had the feeling of butterflies fluttering around in my stomach with the intense flaps of their wings. At the same time, my heart was beating so fast, I was afraid it would stop working, but it didn't. And of course, I couldn't stop smiling regardless of how much I tried to. The intense butterflies, the tranquility of the heart, and the permanent smile made me wonder how I ever got so lucky to find a person in the universe that cared so much about me and loved me so much more than I could ever explain.

Have you ever felt this ridiculous? If you haven't, I sure hope you do someday because the feeling is amazing. It'll feel like something's wrong with your body and maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to take a visit to the doctor to get it checked out, but you just didn't care.

Unable to help myself, my eyes roamed up to Rafael's face, and even further to his eyes. He looked down at me, smiling that big smile of his. God was he wonderful. For once, his dark brown, almost black, shoulder length hair wasn't clinging to the back of his neck. Its wavy structure flowed effortlessly like in a Garnier Fructis commercial. It wouldn't dare to cover any part of his handsome and tanned face.

As his thumb massaged my cheek, I slipped my eyes to a close. His firm lips grazed mine ever so gently for a second before I heard the clearing of someone's throat through the microphone. I opened my eyes.

He stood there; one hand was on the stand and the other had a durable grip on a glass of white wine. The microphone sat on its lonely perch in front of him. The only other people on the stage with him was the wedding band. I found that ironic in some weird way since Matt earned a living with his band too. The only difference was that Matt's band played a different type of music.

Although I was far away from the stage, I still caught Matt's quivering bottom lip. His lip ring glistened and beamed under the white lights centered to him for the time being. It's sad that he could in front of thousands of fans without a care in the world, but when he had to face people he knew, he started to shake.

Matt cleared his throat again to catch everyone's undivided attention. "Good evening Franchesa and Rafael's loved ones. I know we're all happy the two lovebirds finally got the guts to make it official and tie the knot!"

People around us cheered and clinked their glasses. I rolled my eyes. Already his speech sounded like he used the hell out of Microsoft Word's thesaurus to make himself sound smarter.

He waited for the laughter to subside so he could begin again. "I'm sure all of you know I'm Franchesa's best friend since we were eight. I probably would've done something stupid back in the day to make sure our friendship bombed." He turned his attention solely to me. His bottom lip was still and confident. "But aren't you glad I stuck around? If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have met that guy over there that could kill me with a tennis racket."

Sounds of sympathy filled the room. I felt myself blush so I hid my face against Rafael's shoulder. He patted my back lightly. I groaned at the embarrassment even though I knew I could always count on Matt to make some type of epic speech that everyone would enjoy. When my face returned to its normal color, I looked back at Matt with a lot of love. He was always there when I needed someone. He's my maid of honor. He's my best friend. He means the absolute world to me.

"...We know that Fran and Rafa met in high school, but what happened before that? What happened after? What made it so Fran is the woman she is now? Thus, my epic consists of memories Franchesa and I have shared with a touch of my own..."