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Everything is split into befores and afters.
Before he knew, when a whole world of fantasies were still with him or still waiting to be made. When those dreams and hopes and soft murmurs behind heartbeats were still tenable, a possibility for any of the paths that radiated out in front of their feet. After she told him, when his past follies and present ambitions started laughing at him, and he had to clench his eyes shut to get rid of the half-imagined wishes that still tried to be born.
Every memory in the past week has been stained sour.
And even now, when he is stepping out into the crowd that included his family and seeing their expectant, joyful faces, he can still feel the tempestuous noise reverberating in his heart. He manages a smile, if only to reassure them that he still wants this. In the depths of his soul, he knows he does. He had tried imagining a life without Penelope, without her warmth, her softness, her love that made the skies above him infinitely brighter. He could not lie and say he had not thought about breaking off their engagement as his rage swelled and circled and peaked inside him, but always this rage melted into chills breaking over him slowly, cresting on each other. He would shiver and shiver until his body went cold, an effect leading to a cause, a reversal of what seems right.
There is no life without Penelope, and though he does not know when, this persistent, nameless ill feeling cannot last forever. Forever. He cannot see forever now. Beyond this momentary horizon, where calm and tempest meet, the world sprawls for thousands of miles more. Already he has moved forward enough to expose more of that vast distance between them. Old horizons are being swallowed over the curved edge of his world, tumbling down to wherever the past goes when there is no one to remember it. But he swears to remember everything and to feel everything and to go through everything.
Who the hell can see forever? He wouldn't ask for it. That kind of blindness is a mercy.
Last night when he stumbled upon her in the dark, when she returned his ire with her own, a glimpse of her in deep emerald, eyes brimming with both fight and surrender, when she answered all the charges he laid out against her door.
"I was protecting Eloise."
"I was protecting you."
"I just wanted the Colin I knew back, not the pretentious flirt you returned as."
"I meant everything I said about your journals."
Though he felt the faint crumbling of walls inside him, knew she was telling him the truth, could feel the pain of her remorse and the sincerity of her unspoken promise to rise above her follies all the better for it, he scrambled to build them up again. He just can't bring himself forgive her yet. The wound from her betrayal still festers loudly under his skin, and though hearing her motivations quieted the sting somewhat, something is still gnawing at and thrashing in his chest, a lingering spite he cannot name, one he desperately cannot connect to Penelope's offenses against Marina and Eloise and himself.
And then there was the ringing silence after her impassioned declaration of love, the soft desperation in her voice as she repeated it, imploring him to meet her where she was, to stay with her, to keep loving her. It was her strange, startling answer to a question that spilled out of him like hot angry tears, a muted scream he had wielded inside him all his life. "What good am I to you!" He pointed this sword at her, aiming to wound her or at least chastise her, but he was somehow the one who received its sharp end; it was his heart that bore the fury, suffered the intensity of its force.
It was moments like these where one is suspended to absorb what has happened, to finally understand it all now that everything has unfolded. In his grand display of ire, she held out her heart to him as only Penelope, his sweet Penelope, could. And what else could he have done, what else was there to do, except to crumple at her words, to allow the light of his love for her break through the storm, and to reach for her against the mottled shadows of trees and shops, to bring her mouth to his and feel the whole of her again.
He had underestimated how much he had longed for her, how much he wanted to run his hands all over her body again, how alive he felt when she was this close, how many worlds died and were born again in her absence and in her proximity. How could he feel so much anger and frustration and love and tenderness for one person at the same time?
His conversation with Kate and Anthony following his encounter with Penelope on the street confirmed that such a troubling amalgamation of emotions is indeed possible and is not uncommon in marriage, or in any relationship for that matter. Did he not once or twice quarrel with one or two of his siblings, only to reconcile with them the following day? Did he not, in fact, find grace to forgive Marina even after she refused to bestow him any kind of apology for her indiscretions? Why, then, was it so difficult to give Penelope the same courtesy when her offenses were rooted in her love for him and his sister? Was he just being unnecessarily stubborn?
When his brother and sister both bade him good night and left him to the silence, he could hear it talking. Or whispering or humming—the quiet depends on the sound, but this one was not like the terrible silence after a slammed door or a shouted word. It was the quiet from a calm sea at dawn, the hushed beating of wings of birds taking flight at dusk, the soul-stirring reverence after a loving kiss. Then he felt it taking form in his soul, still disembodied and dismissively small but so steady and resolute in its growth, in its place in his heart. Forgiveness.
Colin holds on tightly to this sliver of sunlight amidst the gray clouds that still will not leave him as the music emerges from the string ensemble. The crowd melts into soft gasps as two girls the hair of autumn spread flowers on the path where Penelope will be walking to meet him, and for a moment he imagines the children they will have, can hear the sweet ring of their laughter as they run around the house, can almost feel their little arms reaching out to him so they can sway around in a merry song. This vision blurs his eyes with tears, and it almost takes everything in him to bite them down. Already he can feel the clouds parting in his heart to allow more light to shine through, and he welcomes the insurmountable relief that at the very least he is now able to meet Penelope not as a slighted lover still licking his wounds but the kindhearted, affectionate friend she needs.
He stares intently, nervously at the curtain still separating them. When they part to reveal Penelope, he finds his lungs caught in the nothingness before breath, and his heart is overcome with a surge of warmth and love he is afraid his knees will give out under him. She is so very beautiful and radiant. He knows what she looks like—he can see her when he blinks, her outline in white against dark wood, a silhouette or a smudged painting. Red hair loose over bare shoulders, a thin dress stitched with flowers, his ring on her finger, dying stars in her eyes. She looks frightened, unsure, a short distance from turning on her heels and running away. Away from him. Away from the kind of marriage he had offered her: cold, distant, perfunctory. His temple throbs from the memory of his stinging comment: "Perhaps that was part of your planned entrapment." He had regretted it the moment the words left his lips but could not find it himself to take them back. He had wanted to hurt her as much as she had hurt him. And he has. He very clearly has.
She looks at everywhere else besides him, at strangers who will have performative smiles, at the flower arches that punctuate her path towards him, at the pews and swarms of nameless faces spread out before her, before she finally, tentatively settles her gaze on him. She takes in a sharp breath, her eyes scrunched together so tightly for a mere second, as if trying to convince herself to keep walking, as if she is expecting him to vanish, trembling until all that's left behind is the haze of a heat. She is afraid to only find his ghost, to discover that he has, after all, abandoned her, as she believes is his right.
This is his doing. For all his talk of protecting her and standing up for her, all he has managed to do is to make her curl against herself, blanketed once again by all her insecurities and fears. He freezes in place, dry lips opening and closing as if he were speaking without sound, but he fights against the wash of regret and shame building up in his stomach and instead straightens his body and looks at her. He wants to appear whole and complete to her. He wants her to know that he is fully here, fully hers, body and soul and heart, ready to take her as she is. There will be another time to put their armors back, another time to wade through the muck and storm between them. But for now, there is only Colin and Penelope, carrying all the versions of themselves throughout the years, meeting each other again in front of their families, in front of God.
Colin smiles, a genuine one because he can feel it climbing to his eyes, and nods.
I still want this, Pen. I still want you. I still love you.
Penelope, angel that she is, returns his gesture, and her eyes visibly come alive with the reassurance of his tender gaze. Her lips are no longer taut with uncertainty, and her walk is now steadier, lighter. Colin watches her close the distance between them. He has learned to read the lines of her body. The parentheses of her hips, the ellipsis of her knuckles, a freckle on her thigh like a period at the end of a poem. When she finally reaches him, her eyes are glistening with the kind of gratefulness you see in children when you tell them you love them, and there is the whisper of a smile on her lips.
Thank you. I love you. I love you.
Her unspoken words pulse at him, little waves that grow stronger and stronger until he is drowning in them. The morning sun falls dusty through the church windows and puts a fuzzy outline around her, and her face is divided into spaces of shadow and light, but he realizes that she has one smile, the same stretch of nose, the same pair of oceanic eyes. He wonders what it means, how safe it makes him feel—like the security a child finds in an embrace. He thinks it doesn't matter anymore. All he knows is she's worth holding on to, and he will hold on with both hands.