Here I Am, There You Are

I felt bad that the first time Anna got to ‘meet’ my boyfriend was on one of the most special days of her life. It would have been quite a normal thing if my boyfriend was anybody other than the guy she had a secret casual relationship with back in high school. However, I was never able to arrange for them to meet each other again before the wedding. Anna was busy planning, and Jack was on tour often. So, I was completely prepared for anything to happen. There were so many different scenarios going through my head, that I barely got any sleep the night before.

The first was the way it should have gone if they didn’t know each other. I would introduce them, Anna as my little sister, and Jack as my boyfriend. They would shake hands and exchange polite greetings. After some small talk, things would move on. Anna would need to move on to other guests, and Jack would eventually mingle with a group such as my cousins.

Another good scenario was more applicable. Jack and Anna already knew each other, so the previous one didn’t make much sense. I would be sitting at the table with Jack, Jack talking to the other person sitting next to him, and Anna would come over to say hi. After congratulating her myself, I’d tap Jack’s shoulder to get his attention. He’d turn around and also congratulate Anna to which she would ask how he was doing. There’d be a joke about him doing great because I was with him. Once again, there would be some small talk, nothing too deep, and Anna would move on yet again.

Then, there were also a few bad ways this could go. Jack and I would be there, and Anna would just snap. Although telling me many times that she really didn’t care, it would turn out that she was actually very mad. It would cause a scene, and she would be yelling at us. Of course, I’d leave with Jack. We’d both feel horrible, and I’d feel bad for Anna. However, it wouldn’t stop me from seeing Jack. I couldn’t do anything about her rage, and I probably wouldn’t have a great relationship with Anna anymore.

And, the worst scenario. Anna would be upset. She wouldn’t get mad, but she would quietly disappear into the bathroom to cry. Maybe it was because she had feelings for him, maybe that wasn’t it at all. Jack said that whatever happened back in high school didn’t mean anything to Anna, but maybe seeing me with him made her realize something. For example, she’d feel used, like she was just second best. I’d try to console her, and also this time I would leave just so her whole day wouldn’t be ruined. The only thing different to the other’s ending would be that I couldn’t stay together with Jack after that. I would have lost both my sister and Jack.

But nothing could prepare me for what actually happened.

First of all, a minor difference was the fact that we were at a rehearsal dinner, not the actual wedding reception itself.

The only people invited were the parents and the wedding party and their partners. It wasn’t a small wedding, but it also wasn’t overwhelmingly huge. Anna and Chris only had three bridesmaids and three groomsmen. I wasn’t the maid of honor, but I was second in line. Anna’s best friend got the maid of honor title. Honestly, I was a little glad about it. I was too busy to be a good sister and throw her an amazing bachelorette party, and I just didn’t live all that close. Christopher’s sister was third in line. Ethan somehow managed to be a groomsman despite being underage. That must have been quite a calm bachelor’s party.

Jack and I had arrived the evening before the rehearsal dinner and were sharing a hotel room in the hotel everybody else was staying at as well. We got ready together and took Nathan with us to the venue we were having the dinner at since my parents had gone earlier for a drink with just the couple and Chris’ parents.

I was holding Jack’s hand tightly as we started walking towards the room the party was at. Honestly, I was getting so nervous. It was worse than when I brought Jack home to meet my parents again. There was no way to hide that.

“Hey,” Jack whispered while we got closer and closer, hoping he could calm me down a little bit, “you look very pretty. I’m pretty sure you’ll outshine your sister.”

“No, I’m not,” I looked up at him with wide eyes. I wasn’t saying that I didn’t look good because I wasn’t confident. No, I was super afraid that I was going to hurt my sister if I accidentally did wear a dress that outshined hers.

I was wearing a baby yellow dress with a deep v-neck. The skirt came about two-thirds down my lower legs and was very flowy and wide--basically just cut as a circle. While the top was made of a sleek fabric, the skirt had a layer of yellow lace on it. To finish it all off, I was wearing a pair of black heels along with a black purse. My hair was up in a low bun and the front pieces were framing my face. It was never my intention to look too good. I just wanted to wear a nice dress I chose myself because I had been allocated a bridesmaids dress from the actual wedding.

“Umm, yes, you are,” Jack scoffed, taking my comment as me being insecure, “there’s a reason why you’re the model, not your sister.”

“I’m not a model!” I defended.

“Oh, yeah? Then what are all those pictures for that I need to take of you for your Instagram.”

“Fuck off, that’s different,” I grumbled, slowing down my pace before coming to a halt and experiencing a slight panic. “Should I change? I need to change. We should go back to the hotel so I can put on something else.”

“You look fine!” Jack argued taking a careful appreciating look at me.

“What’s going on?” Ethan butted in, walking back towards us since he was ahead of us.

I directed my problem more towards Jack, knowing that Ethan wouldn’t really understand where I was coming from. “I don’t know what Anna’s wearing. I’m practically asking for all the attention to shit to me with this dress. I’m fucking wearing yellow, Jack, yellow! I do not want her to feel like I’m trying to direct it all towards me!”

“That doesn’t sound like the Anna I know,” Jack dismissed and took hold of my hands again before walking and forcing me to come along.

But he didn’t understand how severe this actually could be. Sure, Anna was quite easy going. Not as cool with everything as me, but still easy going. But this was her weekend. She was the one getting married. It was a stressful time, many brides could blow up if things went wrong. Outshining the bride was the worst thing to do. I didn’t want to make it seem like I was trying to make it all about me. Everybody was already assuming I was jealous because my younger sister was marrying before me, this would just make that seem even worse.

I took a deep breath in as we finally reached the room and immediately heard my sister’s voice call out.

She rushed up to us, leaving behind her previous conversation. “Oh my god! Jack Barakat! How are you?!”

Before even acknowledging me, she enveloped Jack into a hug, squeezing him tightly. It wasn’t even just a hug to quickly greet him. No, this was like best friends after not seeing each other for a while. Like all the girls back in high school who acted like they hadn’t seen their friends for years after the summer vacation, but actually had seen each other a week before. And Jack returned it.

“Well, I’m good, but you! You’re getting married!” he exclaimed as they broke apart, his hands still on her upper arms.

“I know, right!” She grinned excitedly and did a little jump before grabbing one of Jack’s hands and on his upper arm. “We really need to catch up.”

She started to drag him away, and Jack didn’t think twice about following her. Just before they went to their own corner, close to the windows looking out over the city, Anna stopped briefly. She grabbed a glass of red wine from a tray and turned around to me.

“Here, drink,” she gave the glass to me and smiled, not uttering another word to me as she continued talking to Jack.

“Umm… okay?” I frowned as I stood there by myself.

Whatever had just happened confused me. It was nothing like the scenes that ran through my mind the entire night. They really did seem like besties, which already was puzzling. Back in high school, they were friends, but they weren’t particularly close. Jack was closer to me. But then again, I also didn’t know about their whole affair. Then, the second thing that took me seriously by surprise, was the fact that Anna just practically ignored me. The only thing she did was give me a glass of wine. She knew I didn’t drink, that I just couldn’t.

Ethan came back to my side, taking a gulp of his own glass of water. My eyes flickered between my glass of wine, Anna and Jack laughing, and Ethan looking so innocent.

“Wanna trade?” I asked out of the blue.

“Are you serious?” Ethan’s eyes lit up.

“Yeah.” I nodded, feeling a little lost. I knew quite a few people here, but I also didn’t know them very well. I was kind of hoping that Jack and I were going to be in that predicament together. It seemed like it was going to be me and Ethan, though.

“Uhm, duh!” he quickly took the wine from my hands and forced the water glass in my hands instead.

A short while later, I was sitting at the table with Ethan, looking out into the distance, occasionally talking glimpses in Jack and Anna’s direction. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad they were getting along, but somehow this actually wasn’t an outcome I was hoping for. My own sister practically ignored me and I was abandoned by Jack. I had been so worried that I was going to ruin everything for Anna, that I completely forgot it could also backfire.

“Seems like they are hitting it off,” Chris said as he said next to me, also briefly looking in his wife-to-be’s direction.

“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to seem as positive about it all as possible, “I didn’t know they were that close.”

“He’s a nice guy,” he offered as an explanation, “you should know.”

“Let’s hope not too nice,” I joked while chuckling. “We don’t want Anna changing her mind now, do we?”

“Nah, she won’t. We’ve been together for ages, she said yes to marrying me. I trust her completely. She just tends to get a little over excited when she meets people she used to know. You, however, you seem a little jealous.”

“I seem jealous?” I raised my eyebrows in shock, unsure where that came from. “How am I jealous?”

“I mean, they have a history together,” Chris started explaining, at least confirming he did know about what happened between them back in high school, “your relationship with Jack is still quite new, and you’re not exactly sure about him having been with your sister and now being with you.”

“Okay, you’re making a lot of assumptions--wrong assumptions as that,” I defended. I was fully prepared that people thought I was jealous of Anna for marrying first, but this was going a little too far. “I’m not afraid anything will happen between them again, just like you. Anna’s my sister. First of all, she loves you, like you said. She would never betray you. And although we would fight about a lot silly things back when we were kids, I know she would never hurt me like that now.”

“Great, okay,” he nodded and sucked in a breath, “but you just gave me reasons why you trust Anna, not why you trust Jack. That’s not any good either.”

“You’re telling me I don’t trust Jack. Are you a fucking idiot?!” I seethed quietly, really hoping that Ethan wasn’t following everything and trying not to make a scene. I really did like Chris for my sister, but he had a tendency of thinking he knew people better than they did themselves. “Why would you say that?”

“Well, first of all, he’s surrounded by girls twenty-four-seven when away without you around, and that makes you uncomfortable. Second of all, you’ve seen what Jack’s capable of. You’ve seen him sleep with many girls. You don’t want to forget the fact that he never told you about him and Anna until you found out yourself. All these reasons make you secretly not trust him.”

“You’re just giving me reasons why I do trust him. Why don’t you just try to ruin somebody else’s relationship and leave mine alone?”

“Look, okay,” he started off again, making me lose my patience, “you’ve just got to be honest with yourself. You sound like somebody in denial. It will be better for you, and better for Jack. It’s just the right thing to do.”

“You’re not some therapist, don’t try to read me, you’re obviously not very good at it,” I told him while throwing back my drink and getting up. Just because he was getting married, did not mean that I had to take his shit.

Maybe it didn’t look that great, but I had to get away before I said something I was definitely going to regret. So, I tried to walk out of the room as calmly as I possibly could, to give the illusion that I was just going to go to the bathroom. Which was exactly what my targeted destination was.

I was glad to find the bathroom completely empty when I found it. It wasn’t like anything I was going to do anything that required nobody to be around, but it sure as hell was nice that there was nothing else that could set me off. I just needed some space to calm down. I wasn’t one to get mad and vocal about it, but Chris could just really get on my nerves sometimes. Before I tried to interact with any other people, I needed to get that out of my system.

Still, despite the fact that the entire bathroom was empty, I decided to go into one of the stalls and lock myself in it. I wasn’t going to risk anybody I knew or any stranger to walk in and see me trying to get over what the fuck happened. My mind was going insane, going over everything that was said. Although repeating it over and over could make me rage further, I felt like I would let me manipulate the way I thought about it.

Chris really was a nice guy, but he always decided to assume things about me. I didn’t know where he got the assumptions from and why he believed he could just say everything he wanted, but he was so wrong. I wasn’t jealous. I trusted Jack completely. He had had so many chances to cheat on me, and he never did. So why the fuck would I not trust him around my sister or some random people around the world? It wasn’t like he was dumb enough to do so. Sure, he liked sleeping around, but I knew him for so long. If he was in a relationship, he was serious about it. Whenever it ended, he would be so heartbroken. He had never betrayed anybody like that, and I sure as hell didn’t think he was going to do it to me.

I was glad I decided to go into one of the stalls, because somebody entered the bathroom. I would have looked insane just staring at myself in the mirror.

“Rache, you in here?” Jack’s voice echoed throughout the bathroom.

I looked up in shock, and not just because he was in the women’s bathroom. “Yeah, just give me a second.”

A short burst of panic ran through me. How the fuck was I going to play this off? The only thing I could think about was rip off some toilet paper and throw in in the toilet before flushing it. I knew it was a waste of water, but I couldn’t just walk out either.

I unlocked the stall door and walked over to the sink. “What’s up?”

Jack let the door, which had kept open to seem a little less creepy, fall closed and watched me until I turned off the tap. “How about I ask you what’s up?”

“I just went to the bathroom…?” I frowned, wondering what he was doing here in the first place.

“That’s not true.” He shook his head and stepped aside so I could dry my hands. “I know you, there’s no way you just finished using the bathroom that quickly in that dress. You would be struggling.”

I glared at him and splashed the water that was still on my hand in his face. “Fuck off.”

“I will, but only after you tell me what you’re really doing here,” he compromised.

I squinted my eyes at him a wiggles my eyebrows. “I’m meeting my secret lover here to have sex.”

“Rache, I’m serious. I saw you storming out.”

“I didn’t storm out!” I defended and crossed my arms, no longer giving a fuck that we were talking in the bathroom.

“Well, it didn’t seem that way to anybody else, but I know you. You do this slight shuffle with your feet when you’re trying to hide your anger and trying not to stomp,” he pointed out, looking down at my feet.

“At least you know me,” I sighed and leaned against the counter with all the sinks. “I’m happy for Anna, and Chris is nice, but he just knows how to push my buttons.”

“Seems like you’re just not that great with weddings,” Jack joked.

I softly slapped his elbow and bit my lip in disappointment. “No, that’s not it. He just tends to try to dissect these supposed insecurities I should have.” I saw Jack furrow his eyebrows, confused with what I was implying, so I decided to elaborate. “Like, one time, I was wearing this sweater just because it was fucking comfortable and it made my boobs look great--”

“Blue one with the yellow stripe?” Jack asked.

“No, the red one, but that one’s a good one too.” I nodded, smirking at the thought of what I looked like wearing it. “Anyway, he decided I was wearing it because I was insecure and felt the need to hide my body.”

“Well, that’s not true, because your boobs look amazing.”

“Right!” I exclaimed. “He just always seems to twist something, like he understands deep meanings and shit. It just pisses me off because it always ends with him saying I’m in denial when I keep telling him he’s wrong. It’s like he’s trying to put me down.”

“Let me guess, he thought you hated your hair because you put it up instead of down,” he guessed, coming up to me and twirling one of the loose pieces framing my face around his finger.

“Actually, I would have much preferred that.” I rolled my eyes. I was holding back on telling Jack because it included him, but then again I didn’t want to hold it back. I told Jack everything. “But, no, he concluded that I was jealous and don’t trust you because I happened to look at you and Anna since you were in my line of sight.”

“Huh.” Jack’s hands dropped back down to his side. His eyes flickered around the bathroom for a few seconds before he carefully asked, “well, are you?”

“Nope.” I shrugged. “You and Anna have history, but that’s that. And you wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“Exactly, I would never hurt you.” He nodded, glad that I had no doubts. “Now I feel like I need to kick his ass, but I’m sure he would win.”

“Nope, we’re going to silently forgive and forget because it’s his wedding, and there’s no need for unnecessary drama. I will, however, refuse to have a conversation with him for the rest of the night.”

“Sounds like a game plan.” Jack pulled me close and kissed the top of my head before letting his hand slip into mine and pulling me out back to the party.