He remembers times in the beginning when he had wanted nothing more from her than that she acknowledge his existence. Times when he plotted for days, weeks, ways to draw her attention away from her books and her friends and her work onto him, ways to make her look at him—with kindness or disdain he didn't care, just something. And then she would —finally, finally—and for a split second the world was righting itself, satisfaction filling him up at the flutter of her eyelashes as her gaze was drawn up into his direction.
He remembers how, in those moments, he thought there could be nothing so painful as the way her storm cloud and seaweed eyes looked right through him, as if the space he occupied bore no evidence of his presence there. He could laugh at that now. Not because it's a particularly humorous memory—he can think of precious little less amusing than that—but because that pain was nothing, not the smallest fraction measurable, of what he's feeling now. She walks by him like a mockery, dressed in white and lace, music guiding her steps down an aisle not unlike the one he imagines for them in his mind. Her refusal plays like a mantra, looping in his ears, but she looks at him. She looks and she sees and he can't accept that there's nothing between them, that he doesn't see a flash of something when her eyes land on his companion seated so close to him. And just like before he thinks that it is almost worth it to endure.
It isn't something he plans, but he watches her flee and there isn't any time to think about it, he'll miss his chance. He excuses himself from the woman on his arm—pretty, but perhaps not quite fair enough, hair too dark, skin unmarred by the spattering of freckles he keeps finding himself searching for—and dashes after her, what's left of his heart worn proudly on his sleeve. "Anne, wait!" And it's like before, eyes not meeting his, cold shoulders, and stiffness in her movements like she's protecting herself, like she needs protecting.
He wants to beg, wants to drop to his knees right here and pull pretty words from the heavens with which to woo her. Not for the first time he wishes he were a different man, one who could—would—throw reason to the wind and whisper nonsense into her ear. Whisper and flatter until she felt the earth move beneath her feet, saw lifetimes reflected back in his eyes, heard the too-loud thump of her own heart in her ears when he stood so close. But he isn't. He's this man, and he doesn't drop to his knees at her feet. "Anne, I'll wait. Even if I thought you cared just a little." Just that. If she asked him to wait, he thinks, it would be enough.
She doesn't.