Free Slightly Married by Wendy Markham

anyone, and he isn’t sentenced to death. And I’m not a nun. Far from it.
    So maybe this vibe isn’t exactly like that.
    “Well,” I say, “I guess since you’re getting married anyway, it doesn’t matter when.”
    Yes, that came from the girl who had her heart set on an October wedding before she ever had a fiancé.
    “Yeah, but this July is just so soon…”
    “You’re right,” I tell him. “If Sonja has her heart set on her dream wedding, it will probably take much longer than that to plan it anyway. Trust me, she’ll figure that out when she starts trying to pull something together.”
    I sure as hell did.
    “That’s the thing. She says she doesn’t care about the wedding anymore. She just wants us to be married. The sooner the better, she says.”
    Aha!
    Does my pimply nose smell a desperate bride?
    “Did you tell her you’d rather wait until next summer, like you planned?” I ask him, reaching out and putting a hand on his lower arm, all Sister Prejean again.
    Or maybe it’s more My Best Friend’s Wedding than Dead Man Walking .
    “Yeah, I told her. Well, I tried. But she wanted to know why we should wait. Then she accused me of not wanting to marry her.”
    “At all?”
    He nods.
    See? What’d I tell you? Desperate bride.
    But I refuse to play Julia Roberts to Sonja’s Cameron Diaz. Truly, I don’t want to disrupt Buckley’s wedding plans so that I can steal him away for myself. I’m just his friend, looking out for his best interests. I have a fiancé and a wedding-in-progress of my own.
    Buckley sighs and shakes his head, pushing his soup bowl away. I think he’s so upset that he’s lost his appetite until I look down and see that the bowl is empty.
    I dip my spoon into my own bowl and fish around half-heartedly for a floating ribbon of seaweed.
    Maybe I’m the one who’s lost my appetite.
    This just isn’t going the way I imagined it would.
    I push away my own soup, which I was supposedly craving so desperately, and do my best not to ask the million-dollar question that I’m sure is on both of our minds.
    Unfortunately, my best isn’t good enough, and I hear myself ask, “So is Sonja right about you not wanting to marry her at all?”
    I wait for Buckley to tell me of course she’s not right.
    But some small part of me hopes he’ll tell me that she is right, and he doesn’t want to marry her after all.
    Why am I hoping that? Good question. I have no business hoping that.
    “Forget I said anything.” Buckley heaves a two-ton sigh as the too-damn-efficient waiter pops up to whisk our soup bowls away.
    He simultaneously replaces them with two sashimi deluxe lunches.
    And I try to forget Buckley said anything. Really I do.
    I pour soy sauce into the little square saucer beside my plate and I try to forget, because an otherwise engaged woman has no business having a vested interest in the romantic status of an otherwise engaged man.
    I jab the tips of my chopsticks into the blob of green wasabi paste and transfer a hunk into the saucer, ferociously mixing it with the soy.
    I mean, we’re friends, Buckley and me. Aside from anything that ever happened between us—or didn’t—in the past, friends is all we are and it’s all we’re ever meant to be.
    If we were meant to be anything more, we wouldn’t both be in love with other people.
    Well, I can’t speak for Buckley but I’m definitely in love with someone else.
    Jack and I clicked from the start. He’s everything I ever wanted—smart, loyal, kind, loving, a good person. A great person. My family and friends have welcomed him with open arms, and his family has done the same with me. We belong together and we’re going to have a great life together.
    There isn’t a doubt in my mind about that, or about marrying him.
    Not when I’m actually with him, anyway.
    Not any other time, for that matter, aside from right now, today, when I’m with Buckley.
    I guess any lingering feelings I might have subconsciously been