My Best Friend’s Wedding

Image via WikipediaOkay, so I’m sure you’re all aware of the Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett flick My Best Friend’s Wedding, right? Well, I’m living it… sort of.

I’m the Julia Roberts character, of course. The neurotic, crazed, pact-making female friend, who spent years pining for a guy who is about to marry another woman. Yes, he’s also totally as hot as Dermot Mulroney is, even though I’m no Julia.

I’ve spent these years in silence, mostly because it’s been several years since he and I have seen each other face to face. Last time was when he came up here from Florida to visit with his father, who lives about an hour from me. I brought him out with all my friends, he charmed them to pieces, so on, blah blah.

The thing about he and I is that we never had a romantic relationship. We never slept together. (Though he’s by far the very best kisser/make-out partner I’ve ever had in life.) But I’ve loved that man, and all his faults, since day one. We did make a pact, like in the movie, that if neither of us were married by the time I turned 30, we’d marry each other.  Of course, that deadline has since passed, and he’s now engaged to be married to someone else.

I’ve never met her, but I know him. I know why he’s doing it, and I really think it’s for too many wrong reasons. And no, the reasons do not revolve around how perfect I think he and I would’ve been together… though I know that when he and I get together, it’s like no time has passed. Yet, he’s asked me to be there for the wedding. He used nearly the same words that Dermot’s character uses in the movie, in fact… “I need you here, I can’t do this without you.”

I remember when I told him I loved him. (Yes, this relates to the movie too…) In the movie, he tells her that his fiancee says, “If you love someone, you say it. You say it out loud, because if you don’t, the moment just passes you by.”

We were at a party for one of my college friends, and he went outside to pee. I stood behind him, as he told me of this girl at work (we worked together) that he had slept with. I started to cry, but I refused to tell him why. He got concerned, of course, and said that we were leaving and were going to go talk. We did, and I didn’t want to talk. I brought him home, and he made me get out of the car. We went to the backyard, he brought me lemonade, and sat next to me.

He begged me to tell him what was wrong, and I was so nervous… I couldn’t stop crying, and he said that he wasn’t going to move from that spot, nor was I, until I told him what was wrong.

I covered my face and blurted it out. I almost yelled it out, in fact. I couldn’t look at him, but I said, “I think this is really stupid of me, because it’s going to ruin everything, but I have to tell you that I think I’m in love with you!”

He said nothing, but I felt his hands on my wrists, and he pulled them from my face. He was kneeling in front of me, and said, “Lara, that was the most beautiful, wonderful way anyone’s ever said that to me.”

I bawled some more.

He told me that even though he doesn’t feel the same, he’d never let anything as beautiful as that get between us.

Yep, I was crushed. Embarrassed. Mortified in fact, and then his frat brother friend came in to pick him up to go to some frat house party or something. He saw me crying, and Dave went into the house to put him off for a few while we tied things up. I cleared up my face, gathered my things, and straightened my outfit, and went inside after him. (Because I had to go through the house to get to the front where my car was.) I said hello to his friend and made a bee-line for the front door. He followed me out to the car.

At the car, he told me not to worry, cupped my face in his hands, and kissed me. Later he told me that his friend said, “I know this isn’t the best thing to say, but she’s really beautiful when she’s crying.” Ha! I guess that’s a compliment, I think.

Anyway, long story short, he and I continued to remain very close friends. I mean, nothing did change except for when I would throw in his face that I bared my soul to him and he disregarded it, of course. (He knew I was kidding, he often did the same. I never laughed so much as I do when I’m with him.)

I remember one time we were out together at dinner, we were feeding each other, and it just felt like we were already “there”, you know? I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t a romance. He told me that night, “Lara, if I don’t marry you, the girl I do marry will be just like you.”

Ugh. This chick better be nothing like me. LOL

So while I’m not going to fly down there and break into computers or embarrass her in front of her family, and I’m not going to break out with “the yucky love stuff” three days before the wedding, I think I have to go. I’ve known for so many years now that he and I weren’t going to happen the way I’d dreamed when I saw him standing in front of the mirror in a towel thinking, “I could wake up to this every day for the rest of my life and be happy.”

And despite his reasons for not wanting to be with me, I can’t hate him. I can’t even dislike him. I love him deeper than romantic love and since he once said to me that something so beautiful can never come between us, I have to reciprocate that. I’m pretty sure I’ll be on my way to Florida in a few months, and I’m going to be the best friend he’s always known. My memories are there to serve a purpose to me, to remind me what it’s like to have those crazy, messed up, psychotic feelings about loving a man. They help me remember how it feels so special and wonderful to be with a man you love, who respects you for loving him. And all this comes flooding back to me, simply because of a movie on television on a Sunday afternoon. Go figure!