Harrison Avenue // H.S.

A White Dress

[Ellison] 

"I like the flowers," Harry's fingers feel like feathers over my hair, gently brushing the colorful petals that have been pinned into loose curls. My stomach does a flip and I return a nearly identical soft smile to the one on his face, wondering how I can feel so content while my heart is beating as fast as it is.

It wasn't the flowers that changed everything. The flowers didn't make me look at Harry any differently or make me realize how much he meant to me. The flowers didn't make me kiss him that night. It was just him. He said I looked nice though and he liked the flowers.

That was all. He was it.

"Elle, Elle," I hear my name twice but from the sound of Mo's voice on the second call I can tell these weren't her first attempts to get my attention. My eyes move up as my hands smooth over my dress and I look at Mo in the mirror, watching her as a bright smile pulls across her face. "You nervous, girl? Been stuck up in that head of yours."

"Not nervous," I shake my head even though there are a little bit of nerves mixed in as well. My voice catches in my throat as I try to respond to Mo and I have to pause for a moment to collect my thoughts. "I've just turned into a fucking cliché," I almost start laughing now.

"Why?" Mo's expression almost burns through the mirror in the reflection I'm looking at her in. She doesn't take my shit, which is probably how we can be as good of friends as we are, and she certainly isn't letting me get away with it now even if it is my big day. "Because you love someone? Elle, you've loved that boy for years now... nothing's changing."

"Except now in a few hours we'll have a stupid piece of paper that somehow legitimizes that."

"You are nervous!" she grabs my arm, turning me around so I'm facing her instead.

I want to shake my head again, to deny that my stomach is in knots and my heart keeps fluttering so much that I'm afraid it will find its way out of my chest, but I can't. It's less that I'm nervous and more that this day feels like a culmination of laughs, tears, more laughing, a little bit of yelling, and a whole lot of love. And that's why it feels like a cliché. I told Harry a story that included this day, but at the time it really just felt like some silly dream, and now that it's here and Harry's face is the one I'm thinking about while I'm staring at mine in the mirror... it all just feels so surreal.

I've known Mo almost as long as I've known Harry and she is one of the best friends I have but I still don't think I could explain to her what this, what today, means to me. I'm not sure anyone is capable of that... except for maybe Harry.

There are so many people who have been an integral part of my relationship with Harry, so many people rooting for us, so many friends who made the days with him even better. And I know they've all seen the love between us, how we've slowly mended ourselves together, but they still don't know what it feels like for Harry to love like he loves me and it's indescribable to say how lucky I am for that.

So yeah, I'm nervous... but not because I'm not certain about this. I am a hundred percent, entirely, all the fucking way, sure about this. It's just Harry still gets my heart going and we've been together for close to seven years.

It feels special.

"Are you going to cry?" Mo starts to snicker, shaking my shoulder with her squeezing on tight. Her eyes are bright and happy, her smile so big that it makes everything else on her face squish together. I roll my eyes immediately and her boisterous laugh that I love comes spilling out of her mouth.