If I can't be everything to you.....you will be nothin to me

who do you choose as your bride's maids?

I took this picture as well

22 days before the wedding

She'd been staring at it for hours, now. Awake, barely, staring at the ring on his finger as it glistened in the light of the night sky that seeped through her  crowded window.

It was hard to see the stars through the trees, but they shined so bright and the ring on her finger made reflections in the darkness of her guest room.

Blue, deep as the night, clear as the sky, the miles above with or without the sun. Even as dusk met the dead of night, and dawn stood hours in the past and hours in time ahead, that ring was still with him.

On her hand, reminding her of red and blue. She turned her jaw at it, tried to shut the association away in the furthest places of her mind, but she'd known even then why she'd been drawn to this diamond in particular.

She knew it was counterproductive, unnecessary, she should turn it in for a more meaningless clear diamond, but she never could. She knew she couldn't.

She'd never rid herself of the damned glistening stone, no matter the man it swore her to.

Because she could still see eyes of the same color through the glass of her Hamilton home, still see him smiling as he kissed her.

It was burned like a seared tattoo into her heart, out on the stoop like a dog, watching the boy on the other side of the leash let it go.

Jon's lips on her throat and his hand at her waist , kneading, her careening closer, bending her back as his hands went lower.

She'd seen so much of it, too much of it, and the memory still left her just as despondent and numb as it did the first time.

It still broke her in ways she couldn't articulate, made her chest squeeze and her stomach swallow nothing.

She raised her hand and watched the sunlight glisten in her engagement ring, and for once she let the tears fall.

Thick, salty droplets, welling at her eyes as she recalled the way Jon used to kiss her, with his hands polite and gentle at her waist, with shy lips and smiles, the way the ends of Jon's hair felt when his fingers brushed the nape of her neck where he'd loved to hold her.

I want you , he'd said, but that was a lie. It was all a lie. Every kiss, every smile, every time he reached for her hand, was he questioning how he felt? In the last few weeks, what was he thinking when he took her in his arms and held her? When he had his hands on her cheeks and their noses at the brush and their eyes locked, was he mulling over ways to cut the string they'd unraveled together? When she caught Jon staring at her from the side, when she'd met his startled eyes and shy smile and cocked an eyebrow because she'd thought Jon just liked her that much , was he wondering what would happen if he broke her heart?

Such a fool. She laughed and shut her eyes and grinded her teeth as she wiped uselessly at them.

What a fool she was, to think Jon could ever love her, to think, even if just for a little while, that she could ever call him home. She'd thought he had been, she thought so.

Her chest heaved with her quiet sob, and she stubbornly dug the heels of her hands into her eyes and demanded that they stop.

She'd loved him, loved him so, so damn much, and that had been her fault.

Her mother's sin and she hadn't learned from her. Stupid, stupid girl. How could she ever think what they'd had was real?

Sobs wrecked her body and she bit her bottom lip trying to muffle it .