This will be my first posted story. Normally I don't do chapters; I'm a short-story (preferably flash-fiction) kind of girl. But I have a rather obnoxious best friend (Marshie12) that coerced me into writing this story under pain of death.

So I guess it's kind of like a companion piece to her story, "Love is a Four Letter Word." Some of her characters will make cameos in my story. (Which proves to be tricky considering that the time scale of our two stories is really different and my characters speak with her characters about certain aspects of her plot that she's not even close to getting to… and so I may reveal secrets to her stories.) And it very roughly follows the whole divorce/cheating spouse part of her story, though our characters deal with the circumstances in a completely different way. As well they should.

And I've forgotten to mention that this is an Emma fic. Well now you know.

I'm Never Falling In Love Again

Prologue: Here Comes the Bride

I had never been one to panic.

In fact, I'd like to think I'd lived my twenty-two years of life quite rationally. And yet here I sat, brown paper bag clutched firmly in my left hand, engagement right hanging loosely in my right.

Oh god! Please don't let me start crying! They'd only just finished my makeup and it just wouldn't do to have mascara streaming down my face. Oh, but how the tears were threatening to fall.

"Chloe," my significantly older sister breathed anxiously, shifting nervously from foot to foot in front of me and holding a small garbage can at the ready in case I had the urge to vomit again. "Do you want me to go get Jack?"

"No!" I gasped, trying to regain my breath. I reached out to grab her arm and make sure that she didn't go get him. Lily completely misinterpreted my attempt, grabbing my head and forcing it over the garbage can in order to redirect what she had only assumed to be my lunch making a second appearance. I grabbed the bucket from her and tossed it away.

I shifted my suffocating white dress and stood up, beginning to pace across the lovely room in which the happy bride was to prepare… or rather in my case: panic. I hated that the only person I had here to offer me any kind of guidance was my ninny of a sister. Lily is eleven years my senior. Outside of my birthday and the fact that she taught me how to tie my shoes when I was three, we never had one of those sisterly-relationships.

And yet here she was: my maid of honor and my only hope for sanity. Needless to say, she wasn't doing a very good job. She suddenly began to flail about, flapping her arms as if she were moments away from taking flight. Out of the two of us, I didn't know which one seemed more likely to cry.

I quickly passed her my brown paper bag. She took three deep breaths and passed it back. I took four and shoved it right back at her. We continued as such for at least four minutes.

I didn't know why I was in such hysterics. I mean it's my wedding day for god's sake! I should be a glowing little bride, perhaps a bit jittery, but overall eerily calm and collected. Instead I was pretty sure I would retch again at any moment.

Oh god, I needed Jack.

But this wasn't supposed to be about Jack. This wasn't Jack's fault. This whole thing had nothing to do with Jack. So why couldn't I stop thinking about him?

It was only because I craved his wisdom and guidance. Nothing more. I repeated such a mantra multiple times in my head, hoping that perhaps it would come true if I believed it enough. Jack was busy. Jack had his own groomsmen/waiting at the end of the aisle affairs to worry about. The last thing Jack needed was to have to soothe a hysteric bride.

I could handle this.

I grabbed the discarded trash can and barely made it before what appeared to be my light breakfast saw the light of day from a whole new perspective than what was strictly normal. This was so not good.

Lily began to panic again. I sobbed heaving wails over my garbage can.

"What should I do?" Lily begged with me, pleading for advice. Just like me, Lily wasn't the most intuitive of beings. She didn't know what to do, what to say, to help calm me down. I couldn't hold that against her. On her wedding day I'd broken our grandmother's string of pearls trying to fasten them around her neck. She'd cried right then and there while I'd sat there blankly and thanked god that she'd remembered to wear waterproof mascara. Why hadn't I been that smart?

"Knock, knock."

Lily and I simultaneously looked at the door, hoping it was some sort of saving grace and not the obnoxious priest coming to make sure, for the nine billionth time, that the bride and groom didn't want to personalize their vows.

We both breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief. Sure it wasn't Jack, coming to quell my fears, tell me that everything was going to be all right, love conquers all, and possibly one of Aesop's fables with a moral about happy endings. Now that I think about it, I was surprised Jack hadn't come to do so already. It wasn't like him to pass-up the opportunity to be the hero of the day. But he's busy, I had to remind myself again. He's my best friend in the entire world, has been with me through thick and thin, and knows me better than anyone else on the planet earth. The least I can do is get through a single day without his assistance. Sure, it's only the most important day of my life, but hey, who's counting?

"Twinkie?" my daddy asked, looking at me as I lay curled up around my smelly garbage can, looking back up at him with mascara raccoon eyes. "What happened to you?"

It was enough to make me start crying again. This did nothing to help pacify the situation.

"Should I go get Jack?" my dad asked Lily. I knew by her silence that she'd merely shrugged in reply. Lily always shrugged. Shrugging for Lily was like breathing for normal people, like telling stories was for Jack.

"Please don't," my strangled voice replied, muffled as I buried my head in my arms.

"Then what should I do, Twinkie?" he asked me imploringly, dolefully.

I looked back up at him. "Hold me, tell me everything is going to be alright, and make me look pretty again."

Dad leaned over and whispered audibly in Lily's ear, "Is it normal for her to be freaking out like this?"

Lily merely shrugged. In this case I knew that that shrug actually meant no, but I chose to ignore it.

Dad took a deep breath, commanded Lily to do something with my makeup so I looked less like a heroine addict, and came to sit beside me. He wasn't holding me necessarily, but he rested his hand complacently on my shoulder. In my dad's world this was as intimate as it got, and I genuinely appreciated the closeness.

"What kind of story would you like for me to tell you?" he asked me softly, while Lily rooted around in her makeup bag, looking for a miracle but only finding concealer. I sat up so she could begin to rescue the Picasso that had become my face, holding back tears. My dad groped around the room, hoping to find something he could read to me that would be within reaching distance. He found a newspaper. The lifestyle section. For some odd reason he began to read from the obituaries. It did not, like I assume he'd thought, put my life in perspective.

It took all my reserve and self-respect not to cry all over Lily again as she smothered my distressing appearance in a layer of caked-on makeup.

I sat there, on the floor of my dressing room, with my father's hand resting icily on my shoulder; my sister's shaking hands stabbing me repeatedly in the eye as she tried to re-apply eye shadow; and the tale of Marcus Ellivarious, who'd recently "passed gently away leaving behind his loving wife, Marge, of 32 years, two sons, Jacob and Robert, and a spacious three bedroom apartment off Kings street."

But it was enough just to know that they were there for me. Eventually I managed to stand, ignoring Lily's quick fret about the crinkles in my white puffy gown, and hold my head in what appeared to be a dignified manner, ignoring the weird throbbing sensation in my chest.

I used my father as support, letting the old man all but carry me down the aisle, and lead me right to the altar and the waiting embrace of my precious beau. I looked over at Jack; he was staring quite decidedly at his feet. For some reason, that made me blush.

"We are gathered here today," toned the rather obnoxious priest, (I wondered fleetingly why he hadn't taken my earlier advice and "shoved those damn vows up his ass." It almost made me laugh, which in turn almost made me start crying again.) "to join this couple in Holy Matrimony."

There was a sickening burning sensation rising in my throat. I hoped like crazy it wasn't more bile. I didn't see how it was possible that it was. I'd emptied my stomach twice-over. There couldn't possibly be anything left. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lily, with her fingers crossed and her eyes shut in silent prayer that I didn't puke all over the minister, as that vile man continued to ramble on and on about "a commitment not to be taken lightly." Oh what did he know? That damn man wasn't even allowed to have sex, yet alone get hitched.

"Does anyone object to this union?" he asked the room crowded with well-wishers and people that were merely waiting in anticipation for the open bar to begin.

I looked over at Jack as he cleared his throat and loosened his tie. When he removed his hand, the tie was crooked and I found I had to resist the urge to reach over and straighten it for him. I had to remind myself that that would be highly inappropriate.

"…Take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, till death do you part?"

I choked. This was my part. I inhaled a single deep soothing breath, wishing I still had my brown paper bag. "I do." I let the words slip out along with all the air from my lungs.

The obnoxious priest nodded and smiled, then turned to my future husband. "And you Thomas Greene, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, till death do you part?"

Tommy's eyes were burning into me and I forced myself to hold his gaze, despite the fact that the burning sensation in my chest had increased ten-fold. Tommy smiled genuinely. My chest constricted even tighter. "I do," he said with one of those brilliant smiles.

The priest, too, smiled. I looked around. Everyone except our two person—best man and maid of honor alike—wedding party, and my father, was smiling. Wait. Was I? I couldn't even tell.

"Then you may kiss the bride," the priest commissioned.

And so he did. As I pulled away I saw Lily looking rather puce and Jack still examining his shoes in a highly interested manner, with a decidedly blank expression, while the rest of the crowd cheered their congratulations. Finally Jack looked up and those big brown eyes were darker than the deepest shade of black, darker than I'd ever seen them before in our ten years of friendship. Lily gave him her customary with that a tight, sad smiled pressed against his lips.

"I will love you forever," Tommy whispered in my ear, nuzzling my neck with the affection of a true newlywed and with a final sinking feeling the burning sensation in my chest slipped slowly away.