Honeymoon

01 | the speech

01 | the speech

Shaking hands. Fleeting feet. Feeling as though he was floating, high above ground, flying through a night sky the same shade as her damn hair. Chopped, now. Not the same dark, endless river that he once knew, but instead, a shortened, messy bird's nest atop her head, only just reaching the top of her broad shoulders. Frank realised that although the river that was her hair no longer flowed, her banks - her body - remained unaffected. It still encapsulated her, swallowed her whole, made it look like her head was too big for her body.

Just like it used to. Especially when she wore that fucking jacket.

Frank cleared his throat. What felt like granules of sand began to choke him, slowly at first, but increased rapidly as the hall was shushed in preparation for his speech. The red-rimmed eyes of relatives, friends, couples - most importantly, her - were beginning to take a toll on him as he stood there, anxiously tapping his ring (less) finger around the cue card - now, moist cue card, due to the sweat embedded in his fingertips - as everyone impatiently waited with judgement in their eyes but with no sound emitting from their lips.

"Hi, everyone. Firstly I just want to say a massive congratulations to the happy couple," Frank began, the lump nestled in his throat making it hard to breathe, never mind speak.

"I'm Frank Novak, for anyone who doesn't know me. Which, I can imagine, is quite a few of you," brief chuckles were heard throughout the room, which was good for Frank - he hoped it would take their beady, watchful eyes off of his perspiring forehead and his lanky, towering body - once good for football, now a heavily carried burden as a single dad with an eight year old son.

"I was friends with," he coughed, psyching himself up to say her name, the name that had haunted him for ten years, stuck with him throughout teenagehood, college, and now adulthood - "Lolita, throughout high school."

He caught a glimpse of her eyes for the first time in ten years as he looked up to face his congregation. Same, sunken, swollen eyes, not the colour of coffee anymore, but instead a dark, dark brown, so brown you couldn't tell if her pupils had dilated enough to become a completely black iris.

"We were friends -" Frank cleared his throat, anxiously tapping his foot against the hard wooded floor, "close friends, actually, throughout our time at school. She went off to her dream college, of course, and left -" he stopped.

He didn't want to accuse her. Not again. He couldn't go on to convey his true feelings, the self-centered thoughts he'd had for ten fucking years on end, the one thought that kept him from forgetting about her completely.

'Why'd you leave me, Lolita?'

Frank Novak, renowned CEO of a major company now, didn't remember who he was. He didn't know who or what he was without being under the gaze of another person - that person being Lolita, of course. He was Frank under her eyes, her mouth, her never ending bridge of a nose. Without her there, he was nothing but a sack of skin, something unrecognisable, a face in a mirror, a body in a shell of a man.

A stranger.

But now, despite the audience, despite the looming glares of people from near and far, he only saw her. Once again, his gaze was transfixed on the girl that tore his world open yet somehow had the ability to close it, too, whenever suited. Frank remembered who he was. He was not Lolita's, but he was himself; a high schooler, a goddamn great football player, Frank fucking Novak. She made him who he was, and all she did was look at him.

The clank of a bottle alerted him to begin talking again. 'Take it to the end, Frank,' he thought, and took a deep breath, bracing.

"Lolita, I just want to say - you're one of the best people I've ever known, if not the best. Ali, you're so lucky to have her. I would know," Frank murmured the last part, not wanting to give away anything to Lolita's conniving guests. "I don't know if I've said this before, but I want to thank you for everything - you truly changed my life. I owe you so much more than you realise, and I wish you a great life. You deserve it."

And with that, the room collapsed into a mixture of tears (courtesy of Lolita herself), claps, and cheers. Frank thought he should be elated, consumed with the amount of enthusiasm everyone had for him, but instead he felt empty. He felt as though his soul hadn't bared itself enough to Lolita. He had so much more to say to her, but nothing would come out of his mouth.

And with that, Frank did as he always did when everything became too much to handle. He ran.