Girls In Love - A Lesbian Romance Anthology

You May Now Kiss The Bride

I went on to High School and was again separated from her, but this time also from my friends. My childhood friend transferred to another school entirely and I have not seen her since. Not since this day, when she's sitting there, in the audience, back row. She might think I did not see her, but I did. I do not know why she came, nor what is her agenda. I haven't talked to her in more than ten years.

When I moved to my final year in High School, to my surprise, Vivian entered too. I was over the moon that she'd chosen the same school as me and I'd get to see her for one final year before our paths would separate us forever. On the spring of my third year, I got weak. I could not handle leaving her forever without even telling her how I felt. We were not close friends, but we talked here and there, been schoolmates for many years now. She knew me as her "Upperclassman Brooks", or if I was really lucky, she'd call me "Melody-senpai" with a grin on her face. I swear I will live fifty years longer because of those smiles. So, when there was less than half a year of school left for me before graduating, I asked to talk to her in private. I was so nervous I though I'd just devour my nails there and then. I was standing with my back against the wall behind the school, my palms sweaty and my breath quick. I felt like I was a criminal on a run from the police, going to do more illegal crap.

As I was standing there, she came. I remember that moment more clearly than anything other in my life. Vivian walked around the corner, with fumbling steps she closed the distance to me. Her cheeks were tinted with red and she was very nervous. I guessed she knew what was coming and was afraid and disgusted. But, before I managed to say anything more than a grunt, she was right next to me, watching me with those sparkling blue eyes of hers. I tried to look for the disgust or the fear, but I could not see either. Just the light that brightened my world. Then she spoke to me, before I could say anything. Words that were forever carved into the deepest folds of my heart. Words that I will never forget for as long as I live.

Melody, I love you.

Even after all these years, that brings tears to my eyes. Nobody had ever before said those words to me. Not my parents, not anyone. My plan was all thrown out the window. I had planned to tell her, then apologize and just walk away from her life, never to bother her again. But those four words changed everything. They changed my plan, my life, my destiny. Or at least I thought at that time.

I broke down in tears, not being able to say anything, I collapsed to the ground, only managing to utter my apologies to her. She kneeled down and held me close. Shh, she said. Don't worry, I won't hate you, I never could. I have loved you since the day I saw you back in middle school. I could not believe my ears. I just lifted my gaze up and got lost into those luminous eyes. I couldn't hold my tears back and just cried against her. She held me close for god knows how long and then she kissed me. It was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me.

We started going out in secret and it was the best time of my life. We were together for five years. For those five blissful years of my life I was happy. We moved together when she graduated from high school. I was in college and she got onto one too. We worked part-time and lived in a small one-room-and-kitchen apartment close to her school. She was going to be a lawyer, and me, I was in a business-oriented program, going for a managerial position somewhere. Well, I did do what I started out to do, I am a manager in a well-off company now, with a salary to match. I would not complain if.. if only.

But one day when I got home from lessons, she wasn't there. There were no messages, no notes. Nothing. Her stuff was all there, except her shoes and jacket. Everything else was there, including the left-overs of her lunch. She had left in a hurry, even her phone was on the bedroom table still.

I waited hours, then days, then weeks. She never came back, I tried reaching out to anybody, the landlord, her school administration, anything. Nobody knew anything, she was just... gone. I read the accident descriptions daily for half a year expecting her name or description to pop any day. But nothing ever came up. I left my school and postponed my graduation for a year and drunk too much for months on end. Even my mother, who had never shown much interest in me came to visit and asked what had happened. Her friend had seen me drunk as a cuckoo crying in a bus stop and called my mother. I broke down in tears and told her everything, starting from middle school and ending in Vivian disappearing and me falling into the pit of depression. That night, I heard another sentence that I won't ever forget. But it was not like Vivian back those years ago.