The Story of us

Chapter 27: Alcohol is good at taking the pain away

Boston, Massachusetts

I had barely been able to sleep these past few nights, memories that were beginning to vividly resemble nightmares continuously circling around my mind with no plans to quit anytime soon. Memories that, of course, all included Harry. 

It had been almost two weeks ever since we had reached Boston, and along with finding out the truth about him, I had also realized something else about Harry. I didn't want to only know him in the summer when his arms were tanned a light brown color and the sunlight would reflect off of his long, dark curls. I wanted to know him in the winter when he had flushed cheeks and a penchant for warm hot chocolate over the fireplace. And I wanted to know him in the spring when the sun was beginning to return and he would most probably be telling not funny jokes about how April showers brought May flowers. And if that wasn't love, well, I had no idea what was then. 

Unfortunately, love had never looked quite this insignificant before. I was beginning to mean if I had ever meant anything to Harry, even before this whole Brielle mess, but it was clear that I certainly didn't know. Not when the wedding was a week and a half away, and his bride to be looked like she was on the verge of a mental breakdown. 

Something was up with Brielle though, that much I could tell. Ever since we were little girls, she had always been obsessed with getting married and having a fairytale love story of her own. She should have been over the moon now that everything she had ever wanted was finally becoming a reality (well, I wouldn't say that it was still a fairytale, but what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her, right?), but to my surprise, she didn't look all that excited. My mom kept on blaming it on pre-wedding jitters, but deep down, an incredibly selfish, horrible part of me was wishing that it was because of something else. That maybe, just maybe, Brielle was having doubts. 

I had no idea why she would be, though. Brielle was many things, but indecisive had never been one of them. She was nothing like me in the sense that she always had a plan for everything. Having doubts about her wedding that was eleven days away should have been something alien to her because it was almost like this was what her entire life had been building up to. There was nothing my half-sister craved more than being loved, but now that she had it (I think), she didn't seem as ecstatic as she should have. Take this morning, for example. 

"Get up off the couch, Brielle, and come over here to help me go over the guest list," my mom said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She was sitting at the island with a long sheet of paper spread out in front of her; she had already tried to recruit me multiple times, but once she had finally come to the conclusion that I wanted nothing to do with this wedding, she had settled for my younger sister, Ella. Now the only person that was left was Brielle. 

"Give me a minute," Brielle mumbled, which, once again, was nothing like her. Usually, whenever she heard a sentence with the word 'wedding' included in it, she was up and ready before anyone else was. "I need to finish my episode of The Bachelor." 

That was another strange thing that had started to become a common occurrence around the house these days: her new obsession with The Bachelor. For as long as I could remember, she had always been firmly against all and any kind of reality TV, claiming that it was fake and a load of crap. Maybe she was right, but that hasn't stopped me from harboring an America's Next Top Model addiction. 

"Brielle, you're getting married in eleven days!" Mom reminded her, the exasperation evident in her voice. "You can't just be lying down on the couch all day, and expect it to organize itself. It's your wedding, remember?" 

All of a sudden, the remote control went flying across the room and bounced directly off the wall. Mom, Ella, and I all craned our heads towards the couch to see what had caused it, only to see Brielle sitting up for the first time all day, her face crumpled up with emotion. "Do you think that I don't know that?" she shrieked. "I mean, it's kind of hard to forget with this huge fucking diamond on my middle finger!" Was she really complaining about the size of her engagement ring? "God, Mom!"