"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are nearing our final approach into Columbus, Ohio. At this time, we ask that you please return your seats back and tray tables to their upright and locked position. Please turn off any electronic devices and stow carry-on luggage that you may have taken out of the overhead bins, being careful when you open them as items may have shifted during the flight. A flight attendant will be coming through the cabin to pick up any remaining trash so please have that ready as we pass. Otherwise, we should be on the ground in about 20 minutes. Here at Southwest, we realize that you all have a choice in what airlines you fly and from all of us, we would like to say thank you for your business. It was a pleasure flying with you all today."
Stella rolled her eyes and sighed, turning off her iPod and putting it in her purse before tossing back the rest of the vodka cranberry cocktail she ordered for the flight. She normally wasn't a big drinker but for this trip home, she knew she would need it.
She discarded her cup when the flight attendant came around and reached into her purse, grabbing out a piece of gum and the fancy embossed envelope that had been tucked securely into a side pocket. That stupid envelope. She was thrilled when she first received the invitation but her excitement dwindled a bit when she realized who else would be there.
She opened it up and ran her fingers across the raised calligraphy print, reading it to herself again even though she had it memorized by now.
Mr. and Mrs. Oritel and Marion Domino
Request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter
Bloom Vanessa Domino
to
Mr. Sky E. Eraklyon
Saturday, the nineteenth of June at four o'clock in the afternoon.
8662 North Whitemarsh Street
Columbus, OH 43004
Truth be told, she couldn't be more thrilled for her good friend Sky. He was a genuinely nice guy with a big heart and he deserved someone like Bloom, just like Bloom deserved someone like Sky. Stella had met Bloom on a weekend trip up to New York to visit Sky a little over two years ago, the two women bonding instantly over the littlest things. Whether it was their mutual love of the same authors or karaoke or even the cocktails they preferred to drink, they had so much in common that by the end of the night Sky was left wondering if his girlfriend and best friend even knew he was still there.
She smiled as she thought about their impending nuptials. The week ahead leading up to the wedding would no doubt prove to be stressful, but knowing the crowd that would be in attendance, Stella knew it would be a blast.
Except for one little detail: Brandon Shields.
That was going to be the tricky part.
After all, Stella was the one who was responsible for making things awkward between the two of them in the first place, so she should be the bigger person and get over it. But that was easier said than done. She needed to stay strong and be her usual cordial self to him instead of letting her heart get carried away by him... again. It had taken long enough to rebound from their last encounter that even now, eight years later, she was still haunted by memories of that night.
That night.
The last night she was in town before heading off to start her first year at Yale the following day.
She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat at the memory, trying to tell herself she needed to buck up and deal with it since he would most likely be at Sky's wedding too. They had been cordial to one another over all of the school holidays and when they ran into each other every now and again when they were visiting home, and it had been eight years since that night so she really should just get over it. Yet she knew that would be easier said than done.
Stella sighed and looked at the invitation once more, resolving herself to just swallow the hurt and her pride and try to be friendly with him. After all, they had been best friends for eighteen years before that so it shouldn't be hard to do. Besides, they were supposed to be there for their friend, not to rehash old feelings or memories.
She slid the invitation back into the envelope before pulling out a few old photographs Sky's mom Samara had requested that she bring along to add into the slideshow Sky and Bloom were putting together, chronicling their lives as kids up until they met and started dating. She couldn't help but smile at the first few photos, chuckling at pictures of her, Sky, and Brandon when they were little, all with guilty grins on their faces after setting off a packet of firecrackers in a trash barrel. The next one was of the three of them at Stella's 8th birthday, the two boys standing out like sore thumbs in the sea of little girls also in attendance. There were pictures of when they all played tee-ball together and when they all spent time out fishing on the docks behind one of their houses or swimming in the lake during the summer. They made snow forts and tree houses and secret clubs where Stella was the only girl allowed.
After all, she, Sky, and Brandon had been the "three amigos" since they were all in diapers, the three of them practically inseparable for much of their young lives. They all lived on the same street, each of their houses backing up to the lake in North Columbus, Ohio. They were all in the same grade and had the same teachers for the most part. But despite their vastly different personalities, they made it work, each person offering something different to the "trifecta" that was Sky, Brandon, and Stella.
Stella had to admit that while her childhood was somewhat unorthodox in the fact that she grew up mostly around boys. Her older sister Nova was a good nine years older than Stella and wasn't around much, and the rest of the people that lived in their nice middle-class neighborhood were older couples with kids who had grown and moved out of the house. Except for two of the other houses, that is.
Two doors down lived the Eraklyons with their only son Sky. Unfortunately, when Sky was still really little, his father was killed in action during the Gulf War, leaving the home to his newly widowed wife and their only child. Once the women in the neighborhood learned of his death, they all rallied around her and offered her their support. She fell in quickly with the conservative, buttoned up Luna Solaria and the bohemian, fun-loving nurse Melanie Shields, who happened to reside in the house in between the Solarias and the Eraklyons.
The women bonded instantly, whether it was attending PTA meetings at their kids' school, playing in their weekly bridge games or all being called by the other neighbors to go pick up their mischievous kids after they played one of their infamous pranks. They banded together to support Melanie when she finally had enough of her husband's abuse and wanted out, helping her find a good attorney and kicking him to the curb when Brandon was seven. They stuck by Luna when she discovered her husband's affair and the fallout thereafter when Stella was fifteen. The kids had always stuck together and treated each other like siblings, but this new bond of all the single mothers was truly something else. No matter what, they had managed to stick together through thick and thin, becoming wonderful friends and supports for one another over the years and Stella could not have been more thankful for the environment they all created for one another and their three young kids.
Stella could honestly say that she felt blessed to have two other "mother-figures" in her life that cared for her the same way her own mother did. Often when they were still young, Stella, Brandon, and Sky would return home from one of their adventures in the woods or from playing at the nearby playground to find all three of the women at the same home, giggling with one another as they cooked up a hearty dinner for everyone, with each person taking a place around the table before settling down to eat like one big happy family. Which, looking back now, it definitely felt like they were one big family.
Samara, Melanie, and, of course, her own mom were all like mothers to her, and Sky and Brandon were both like her brothers. However, she cringed now at the thought of ever thinking of Brandon like a brother. From the time she hit her teens, she so desperately yearned for him to be so much more than just a really good friend. Something so much more.
She flipped through more photos, finding pictures of their first awkward middle school dance and one of Stella her cheerleading uniform posing in between the boys in their football uniforms after their first varsity game in high school. The more photos she flipped through, the more her throat started to close up with emotion again.
She saw a few random photos of the three of them goofing off and a photo from their last varsity football game as seniors as they celebrated winning the championship again, Brandon tucking Stella under his arm as he tried to cover her with as much stinky boy sweat as he possibly could. There was a photo from their Senior Prom, Stella having gone with Sky as friends while Brandon went with a girl named Amentia, who ended up getting so wasted and crazy that night the school administrators ended up calling her parents by the end of the dance.
Then there was a photo from graduation with the three of them in their bright red caps and gowns, followed by a photo of their joint graduation party at Stella's house, their lakefront property having the best backyard bar-be-cue set up for a party. The next picture was one of the three of them at the bonfire they made down on the beach the day before Stella left for school. The two boys built it up for her and wanted to celebrate Stella's achievement by throwing her a mini going away party, wine coolers and beers in tow.
Stella smiled to herself as she thought back on that night...well, the earlier part of the night anyway. They sat around and drank while toasting marshmallows and teasing one another, reminiscing on their lives together, for the next day they would all go off in different directions and would be split up for the first time in their entire lives.
The next day, Stella packed up her car and headed out to the East Coast and settled in the small Connecticut town of New Haven to begin her education at Yale University. She double-majored in Fashion Design and English, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a perfect GPA, her mother and Sky in attendance as she walked across the stage to accept her diploma. She enjoyed Yale so much, she stuck around and went to graduate school there, picking up her Master's Degree in the process. Now she currently worked as a consultant for a big time fashion designing firm, and while she somewhat enjoyed her job and the challenges it presented, the hours and constant travel were starting to wear on her.
Sky, on the other hand, went to Boston just for a change of scenery. He picked up a few odd jobs while attending Boston College but decided he missed football enough to give it another shot and tried to walk-on to the team. After his tryout, the coaches were so impressed that they picked him up to play on the scout team. His hard work paid off in the form of a full-ride scholarship the next year where he played tight-end and was the backup quarterback for the Golden Eagles for the next three years.
He decided to major in construction management, as he was fairly handy and really had a knack for the science and design that went into every project he worked on. A friend he knew from football introduced him to a man who worked at an architecture and construction firm in New York City who hired Sky immediately and gave him his first project working on revamping a few of the Broadway theaters. And that was where he met Bloom, who in a week's time, would become his wife.
Brandon, on the other hand, had no idea what to do with his life after graduation. After considering expanding his pool cleaning business, he realized he really didn't have the know-how or business savvy to start up an enterprise like the one he originally dreamed of. He worked at the marina on the lake they lived on, but after a few months of bumming around Columbus, his mother just about had enough. She demanded Brandon get a real job and start doing something with his life like Stella and Sky had gone and done.
Pissed off at everyone else's success and his mother's nagging about how much better his friends were doing than him, Brandon marched down to the Navy recruiting station and enlisted, figuring his love for the water would eventually lead to some type of job later on down the road. After basic training and specialty school, he spent two tours of duty during the war overseas on a naval guided missile destroyer in the Persian Gulf. Ultimately, he returned to the states and settled near Chicago to work at the Naval Recruit Training Command center at Naval Station Great Lakes, where he turned around and became one of the drill instructors he used to despise during basic training.
Overall, despite everything that had happened between them eight years ago, Stella would be lying if she said she didn't worry about him while he was deployed or that she was really proud of him for his accomplishments. He turned things around and the last time she saw him three years ago, he looked like he was doing exceptionally well for himself.
She sighed once more and glanced back at the photo from the bonfire. The three of them had been best friends their entire lives, and while each of them had their own thing going on during high school and college and they floated apart a bit as they aged and developed other relationships with other friends, they each still knew they could be themselves around one another. They had individually seen each other at their best and their absolute worst but the familiarity and sense of family always brought them back together, and continued to still do so up until the present day when the three of them, no doubt, would be partaking in a long awaited reunion of sorts to celebrate Sky's wedding.
It had been a long couple of years since Stella had been home, but as the plane descended through the clouds into Columbus, she began to feel that familiar twinge of guilt and a tad bit of sadness that it had been so long since she had been home. Sure she saw Sky and Bloom regularly when they came down from New York or when she went to visit them, but there was nothing quite like being back in Ohio and being back in her own home surrounded by the people she had grown to call her family over the years.
Smiling, she flipped to the next photo only to have the smile disappear from her face, a tight lump returning to her throat as she stared at the picture she thought she lost years ago. It was the picture she had taken of herself and Brandon after Sky had left the night of the bonfire, Brandon playfully kissing her on the cheek as she smiled into the camera.
She quickly flipped the photo over in her lap and closed her eyes, trying to take a few deep breaths to get over the memory that had come flooding back. She leaned her head back against the seat cushion and tried to block out the memory of what happened after Sky left that night, but it was so damn hard to do when she could still remember the feel of his soft lips against her skin... against her own lips. She raised her hand to her mouth, running her fingertips along her lower lip before gently biting it between her teeth, the memory so vivid in her mind.
"Are you ok, dear?" the old woman sitting next to her asked, breaking her out of her reverie.
Stella paused for a moment to give her a soft smile before lying through her teeth, "Just fine, thank you."
"Old boyfriend?" she asked, signaling to the photo in Stella's lap.
"No," she chuckled, trying to keep her voice steady and light as she bit out the words that tasted like dirt in her mouth, "Just a friend."
The old woman didn't press any further and for that Stella was grateful. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat again, forcing herself not to think of that night. She was a little thrown at seeing that picture, trying to postpone dredging up the memories seeing Brandon again would inevitably bring.
But she knew couldn't fight them the whole time she was in Lima. He would be there in person and that would be even harder.
"Hand me a beer, would ya?" Sky asked as Brandon rummaged through the cooler.
Brandon picked out two before plopping down on the chair next to Sky, staring out over the lake. They had worked their asses off all day building the gazebo Sky and Bloom would be getting married under, and the only payment Sky had promised Brandon for his help was a twelve pack of beer. But Brandon didn't mind, he knew the gazebo was kind of a two part present. It was perfect for the wedding but it was also somewhat of a thank you gift to Sky's mother for holding the wedding at her home, the picturesque backyard the perfect place to exchange vows in Sky's opinion.
According to the very meticulous plans plotted out by Bloom and the "three wise women" as Brandon referred to their mothers as, the wedding ceremony would take place in front of the gazebo on the Eraklyons' lawn while the reception and dance floor would spill over from the Eraklyons' backyard to the Shields' yard. The catering tent and set up would take place in the Solarias' backyard, which meant all three homes would be fair game to guests... and also meant that Sky and Brandon had their work cut out for them in making sure all of the lawns were mowed and all of the landscaping was just perfect. More manual labor.
Brandon grunted as he thought of his to-do list his mother and Bloom had already given him.
"Dude, you owe me way more than a twelve pack for putting up with all of this shit for an entire week. There is a reason I moved to Chicago... to get away from the Crazy Mama and her two crazy friends and their insane demands. And now you're adding another crazy princess to the mix?"
Sky chuckled, "I'll let Bloom know of your new nickname for her, thought I'm not sure she would appreciate the crazy part."
"Whatever. That part is one-hundred percent true."
"Probably, but I love it," Sky joked, "And fuck you, you know there will be plenty of booze to go around this next week. You'll live. Plus it's only fair that if those women are giving me hell that you should also be involved somehow. After all, when we were kids I was always getting in trouble for your dumb ideas."
"Yeah, but did you notice how Stella was the only one who always managed to smooth-talk her way out of everything somehow," he joked before the mention of her name brought back some tough memories, a lump forming in his throat. Brandon took another big gulp of his beer and swallowed hard before trying to change the subject, "So, you nervous?"
Sky let out a humorless chuckle before taking another pull of his own beer, "Ha, ask me again Saturday morning."
Brandon gave him a smirk before leaning back in his chair and dangling his feet off of the dock, "Bloom is a good one, dude. I'm happy for you both."
"Thanks, she's quite the catch," Sky replied before looking back at his friend who seemed like he was lost in thought, the crease of his brow a dead giveaway, "You know, she's gonna be there too."
Brandon snorted, "Who, Bloom? I would hope so, seeing as how she's supposed to be marrying you that day."
"You know who I'm talking about," Sky replied evenly, taking another sip of his beer while trying to decide how far he should push this, "Stella."
Sky watched Brandon's jaw tighten, his teeth clamping together before his friend took another deep pull of his beer, finishing off the remaining liquid in the can before wordlessly standing and making his way back to the cooler and grabbing another.
"You want one?"
"You always do this," Sky replied as he shook his head, "You always change the subject or avoid talking about her."
"No I don't," Brandon scoffed, before grabbing another beer for Sky.
"Yeah, you do. She was a major part of our lives for a long time. She's one of our best friends. Dude, what the hell happened between you two?"
Brandon winced as Sky reminded him of their friendship, the word never sitting well with Brandon when it came to Stella, "Nothing."
"That's bullshit and we both know it. Shit was never like this in the past. Even she acts strange when I mention you. I don't get it. What's your deal, anyway?"
Brandon stared down in to his beer can, remembering the last time he even saw Stella. How tense things had been despite the passage of time.
It had been two and a half years ago, after he returned home from his second deployment and Stella just happened to be home for winter break. Stella's mom Luna had insisted that Brandon and his mom join them for Christmas supper, despite the fact that the Shields were Jewish. The women ate and talked, chatting away animatedly while Brandon watched Stella push food around her plate for the majority of the meal.
Once their mothers started giving them both the stink eye toward the end of the meal, Brandon tried to strike up a conversation with her. They had a fairly polite conversation about what was going on in their lives but it was very surface-level chit chat, the two of them making it through desert and coffee while catching up on the superficial things in their lives.
It used to be different. He used to tell Stella everything and she was an open book too. But he guessed things had changed. It made him sad when he thought back on all the good times they used to have, about how close they were, but as he said good night and she gave him a polite yet weak hug goodbye, he knew that was all ancient history. One he would probably never get back.
As soon as his mother made it through the doorway of their home, she ripped into him for his behavior, demanding to know why the hell he had been so rude to Stella that night. She was baffled at how they two of them barely spoke and that he must have done something wrong since they had always been such good friends.
God, he despised that word.
He could only shrug, offering a half-assed explanation that they were fine and that they didn't have much to talk about since they hadn't seen each other in a while. They had grown up and grown apart and it was just strange seeing her again like that.
He knew his mother didn't fully believe him, but she dropped it and went about cleaning up dishes while Brandon skulked back upstairs. Even though he was trying to make himself believe the same thing he just told his mother, that they had grown up and grown apart, he knew it was all a lie. But he never would admit to her, or anybody for that matter, that the awkwardness and distance between him and Stella was the result of something that happened on a night five years before that.
The night he managed to fuck their entire relationship up beyond repair.
Sky opened his tired eyes back up and glanced over at Brandon, his best friend looking like he was caught in a trance as he stared at the beer in his hands.
"You okay?"
Sky's voice snapped Brandon out of his depressing memory, his eyes quickly glancing at his friend before taking a few more deep slugs of his beer.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
Sky let out an exasperated sigh, "Dude, it's obvious you're not. But I'm not going to push you to tell me shit if you don't want to. Just know I'm here, ya know... if you need to talk or whatever."
Brandon just nodded before glancing out over the lake, the setting sun creating a breathtaking reflection of pinks, purples and oranges across the surface of the calm water.
"But I will tell you this," Sky continued, clearing his throat, "Whatever is going on with you two needs to be resolved soon. This is our wedding and as my Best Man it's your job to make sure nobody, and I mean nobody, fucks this up for Bloom and me."
Brandon just rolled his eyes and sat back in his chair, "Dude, I get it. Everything will be fine."
"I mean it, Shields. You and Stella better learn to play nice with one another and get used to spending time with each other, so you might as well clear the air between the two of you as soon as possible."
"Why are you all of a sudden so interested in patching shit up between me and Stella? It's really none of your business," Brandon retorted, finishing off the rest of his beer.
"It is my business now," Sky replied evenly, looking out across the lake, "You're both my friends and I don't want this thing between the two of you affecting our day."
"It'll be fine. She'll probably just avoid me anyway and things will go back to normal in no time."
"Oh, I highly doubt you two will be able to avoid each other," Sky chuckled.
"Oh yeah, why is that?" Brandon asked sarcastically.
"Because Stella is Bloom's Maid of Honor."
Brandon's eyes grew wide at Sky's revelation . He knew Bloom had met Stella and the girls had struck up a friendship but he didn't know they were that close.
He ran over the mini-itinerary Bloom had outlined for them earlier in his head, realizing that he and Stella were going to have to work together on a lot of the things on Bloom's list to get everything ready for their friends' big day.
Suddenly, that twelve pack of beer seemed to be nowhere near enough booze to help him get through this week.
And what was worse, he may have to finally deal with everything that happened between the two of them eight years ago.
He gulped down the remnants of his beer before reaching for another one, Sky chuckling at his obvious discomfort.
He was so screwed.