When Did We Last See Each Other?

Pulling into a space alongside the pavement, I kill the engine and slump in my seat. I was told about this less than a fortnight ago. I put everything on hold to be here, to support my family, and I find myself sincerely regretting that decision. What did they ever do for me? What do I owe them? The last time I’d seen any of them was at the last wedding and I don’t like to talk about that.

We don’t talk about that day.

We don’t talk about what happened there.

As I stroll closer to the venue, I start to spot people I recognise. I doubt anyone of these people would actually be invited to said event. My two close friends stroll along the pavement across the road, hand in hand. I wonder when that happened. My old maths teacher from school is climbing stiffly into his car. I liked these people. They were nice. That’s why I don’t think they would be invited. None of them had anything to do with my family. They were far too nice.

I’m dressed, very appropriately ironic for the occasion, in my usual all-black. My black ripped jeans and band t-shirt underneath my tattered denim jacket screams “I have no intention of making an effort” which is exactly what I was going for. I don’t want to be here. I never did want to be here. I’m not about to make an effort.

The only reason I made the two-hour trip was for my mother. The marriage of the person who may as well be her only daughter means everything to her. I’m never going to be married. I’m never going to have a grand ceremony and wear a big, puffed up dress with the enormous train. I’m never going to have a loving husband. This is never going to happen to me.

In her eyes, this makes me a failure.

My darling sister, however, is having all of this and more. It wouldn’t surprise me whatsoever if they’d doubled the original budget so she can have whatever I may have had. She’ll be in the most beautiful and flattering of dresses, hugging her feminine curves and voluptuous chest. She has always been gorgeous. No man or woman will be able to keep their eyes off her today.

She’ll have the most elaborate of table decorations and the most extravagant of venues. She’ll have floral bouquets and expensive musicians. She has a husband to die for. She’ll have everything.

And I want nothing to do with it.

And of course, she does have all of this, and more! This church is huge. Every pillar is decorated with ribbons and aesthetic fairy lights. All the ladies are dressed in formal party gowns and ridiculous hats. The gents are wearing their nicest suits. Everything is posh. It screams wealth, success, beauty…

Oh how this isn’t the case.

I wonder how many people in this enormous church hall actually know what’s going on within my family. I wonder if they know about the battle for recognition and validation. I wonder if they’re aware that love in this family has never been unconditional, it has to be earned.

Ever since my mother married her vile husband when I was sixteen, I’ve been a disappointment. I stopped speaking to both of them on my eighteenth birthday. I moved straight out and started commissioning artwork and working three jobs to pay the rent. After a massive and unexpected commission from an old man who I haven’t heard from since, I bought the house I had been living in and dropped out of school. I’m now twenty-six. I haven’t spoken to them still.

To my mother's new husband, if you bring no worth to the family, you’re not part of the family. He calls it his family even though it isn’t a family anymore. It's a business and my siblings and cousins and I are employees. We have to work for our place there. We have to compete with each other. I wasn’t about to do that. I left before he could even try and disown me.

I know my sister resents him greatly but she made it into Cambridge University and got a degree in biochemistry. She now works at one of the most reputable research centres in the country and, throughout it all, kept the same boyfriend she’s had since we were fourteen. I glance at him now, stood at the altar. I used to know him very well. We’d been friends for years and years. Then he got closer to her at some stupid camp they both went to. Now he’s hers. He wouldn’t even recognise me today. Once upon a time, I was fair like my sister. But while her blond locks bounced and shined in effortless curls around her pretty face, mine hung lank and lifeless and not doing anything to soften my hard and masculine jaw. That’s why I dyed them black. Black suits the lifelessness in them. I’ve never been exactly ugly, I was just never quite beautiful like she is. And he noticed her. He never noticed me.

No one ever did.

Except…

I could feel a pair of eyes burning into the side of my head. I’d just slipped into the back row of the church, not particularly keen on being spotted by anyone. But I had been spotted. I turned to look into a dark grey pair of eyes I knew very well. They were the only eyes I could ever dream of hoping to see here. They were my favourite pair of eyes in the world. They were the only pair of eyes that would ever recognise me now my hair is thick and dark and my eyes are rimmed with black.

He would always recognise me. Just as I would always recognise him.

I smile at my stepbrother and slide down the pew until our thighs were pressed together. I clasp his right hand in my right hand and my left hand reaches across his lap to hold his boyfriend’s. These two people were the only two people on the planet I could ever love, I had ever loved.

And they were just as uncomfortable as I was.

I rest my head on my brother’s shoulder so I could talk with him without being overheard. I whisper in his ear.

“I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you more than you’ll ever truly know.”

I felt his jaw shift as he smiled. I felt his lips brush my hair as he told me with no words that he missed me too.

Then the doors opened and my sister walked through.

The air left my lungs in a great whoosh and I choked back a painful sob.

My chest throbbed.

She was breathtaking.

Her hair was half up in a delicate knot which supported the longest and most intricate veil I had ever seen, flowing and trailing across her shoulders and down her bare back in bohemian beach waves which accentuated her delicate jaw. It was longer than the last time I’d seen her. Her skin was dewy and tanned, glowing with health and happiness. Her eyes, always so big and blue, were framed with long, luxurious lashes and her lips were full and pink. Lace crawled up her skirt and clung to her hourglass figure stopping at a neat heart-shaped neckline. She was so slim, so elegant and so so stunning.

I was lost for words.

And though I held back the sobs, my own eyes, so tight and dull compared to hers, brimming with tears. I mustn’t cry. I’m wearing too much eyeliner. I'd be even more of a joke than I already am.

My brother must have noticed my despair because he put his arm around me and held me close to him. His partner gave my hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze. I had never told them how I compare myself to my sister but they could both read me like a book. They knew exactly how I was feeling. They were feeling a similar way, only for different reasons.

The ceremony commenced. Neither she nor her soon-to-be husband noticed my attendance. Neither would be expecting me. Neither would be looking. The few people who had greeted me, who had avoided my eye, would let them both know I was here. But now, they only had eyes for each other. And I only had eyes for crying.

I had always been a thorn in my sister's side. She was two years younger than me and she had spent her entire life proving people wrong. People always expected her to be like me. She always had to fight to exceed those expectations. She always managed it. Things that took me months or even years to master would come naturally to her. She was blessed with beauty, inside and out, and I was entirely average. Her mere existence would lower the self-esteem of every other person in the room with her. Without even knowing it, she walked a little higher than the rest of us.

And, though I loved her very much, I hated her for it.

Oh, how I hate her now.

Oh, how that makes me guilty.

My brother was the only good thing that came out of my mother’s marriage. He was older than me, a gentle giant in his 6ft7” frame. He looked after me just like a brother should. He was the only one who ever loved me unconditionally, loved me on my bad days as well as my good. He took me for midnight carpools and blasted my music through his speakers with the windows down. He let me crawl into his bed and would hold me until I slept on the nights my antidepressants had little effect. He played the guitar while I sang. He read me books while I painted. He replaced the best friend who I lost to my sister. He became a better friend to me than the man I now barely recognise, stood at the altar, had ever been.

I hadn’t truly known love until he appeared.

And he was the only one who was decent enough to be a reject like me. He was the only one with a good enough heart to realise that we shouldn’t have to compete for love. He was ashamed to be his father's son. He was proud to be my brother.

I am proud to be his sister.

And I need him now. I need his holding me just like those nights when I was 17. I’m glad I have him. I’m ashamed I somehow lost touch. I turn my face to take him in. Age did him a favour. His square jaw and dark eyes made him one of the most handsome men I’d ever laid eyes on. He had beautiful olive skin and thick black hair parted down the middle of his head and framing his sharp brow and cheekbones.

I didn’t blame his boyfriend at all for falling as hard as he did!

And his boyfriend was also one of the most important people to me. He was second only to my brother. He and my brother had been together just as long as my sister and her fiancé. Of course, you meant very little to our family when you were gay. They’re not actively discriminative or homophobic but they don’t like it either. Homosexuality decreased his value in their eyes. It increased his value in mine.

Because he brought one of the most brilliant people who could possibly exist into my life. I have never laughed so much with anyone else. No one else could get me dancing at a party like I was wasted without even handing me a drink. No one else could have me leaning out the car window, him gripping my hips to stop me from falling out while I screamed lyrics by Queen and Bon Jovi and David Bowie into the evening sky. He was so much fun. He was so relentlessly happy. There was no rest to his serotonin. To simply be with him was to be happy. To love him was to love forevermore.

The vicar droned on. “Will all of you, together in this congregation witnessing these vows, do all in your power to support this man and wife in their marriage?”

A chorus of “We will” thunders from the pews; a chorus which none of me, my brother or his partner join in on. We just glance at each other, none disrespectful enough to make a promise we know we won’t keep. My brother nods to the door and all three of us quietly slip out, cheers ringing out behind us for the newly-wed lovers.

And yet, as we catch up between quiet, private giggles over the chatter from behind us, I find out that they had never left my mother's house. Student debt and the absence of any sort of support from our parents had meant they could never get out of the house. They were sharing the single bed that my brother had slept in when he first moved in with that man. I was the lucky one. I had left. I had made it.

“But I have a bedroom,” I say. “Granted, it's too small for a double but I can sleep in there. You can have the master. You can finally sleep in a double bed. Come and live with me. Oh, brother please!”

His face lights up and he kisses me on the cheek. They’ll move tomorrow! Lord, they’ll move in today if they can. I want them to.

And as the three of us leave the church, hand in hand, I realise I’m not walking away from my family. I’m walking away from my blood. I’m walking away from an institution that would never put itself through the indignity of counting me or the two people beside me amongst their numbers. We’d never get a wedding like this and reception like that. No one would applaud as we kiss and drone on about love and union and other bullshit. That wouldn’t happen for us. Not with them anyway.

Because we weren’t walking away from our family. We were walking away from a business, a hierarchy.

Our true family was in our hands, walking beside us and moving in together that afternoon. We were a family. We were our own little family of three.

We were our own chosen family. And we were happy.