Full Circle

It was the best man who spoke last, topping off his wine glass for the third time as he rose from his chair. His gait was already much too unsteady to move without leading a trail of chardonnay from his seat to the podium, prompting his sister, Maren, to usher the ring bearer into action. Eugene was older than he looked. At nine, his height and mass had him looking more like a six-year-old. But what he lacked in form, he made up for in speed, and he was quick to clean up after the best man, gliding on his knees as he wiped the spills off the floor with a tablecloth. This drew a few raised brows and whispers from the guests seated closest to the stage.

"Hey, I'm Ryder, the best man here, and I have my speech somewhere," Ryder mumbled into the microphone, patting down his jacket in exaggerated hand gestures. "I swear it was here a second ago." Squinting anxiously at the reception hall full of guests, the best man forced a smile as he sheepishly dug through his tuxedo pocket.

"See?" He grinned as he pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and flattened it out on the podium. "I knew I had it." Then clearing his throat, he inhaled sharply, straightening his stance and holding up the glass of wine, just like he'd rehearsed over a dozen times in front of a mirror.

"Do as much as you can around the house, Kristoff," Ryder urged in practiced mock seriousness. "That's the secret to a good marriage. Do everything. And I mean everything; shopping, cooking, tidying up, vacuuming," he said as he counted off with his fingers. "Everything...except washing. Don't touch the washing. You're not qualified."

A ripple of laughter filled the reception hall and, seated near the end of the newlyweds' table, Anna fidgeted with a frayed paper napkin, twisting it into knots, and looking on with a firm mouth at the bride as Elsa clung onto Kristoff's arm, bracing herself against him whenever she fell into laughter.

"If you expect your marriage to last, you will not touch the washing," Ryder went on, glancing over at Maren, the smile momentarily fleeing from his face. "There's systems to follow, procedures, rotations….special hanging techniques. Tissue discovery checklists. All of which can't be taught and can't be learned."

"Tell that to my wife!" Elsa's uncle shouted, and another wave of laughter erupted over the dying chuckles.

"And...it's scary too." Ryder continued his rehearsed speech as the silence set back in. "You'll find things you don't want to find. I remember discovering that my wife had an eye abnormality because I kept finding all these eye patches." He paused. "Like the kind that pirates wear...I know, scary. Turned out to be her underwear."

Someone in the back let out a loud whistle, and within moments the hall swelled with whistles and whoops from the crowd. Ryder raised a hand to take back the floor.

"The point is, stick to the vacuuming, and you'll be just fine." Raising his glass up higher, he urged his audience to do the same. "To Kristoff and Elsa," he toasted. "May their happiness endure the most tragic of washing cycles."

"To Kristoff and Elsa," the guests chorused.

Ryder smiled tightly as he nodded to Kristoff, and polished down his teeming glass. He didn't return to his seat after his speech. Jamming the crumpled paper back into his pocket, he walked past his table and out the main doors of the reception hall. Moments later, the band began to play, their music barely muted through the old soundproof walls. Ryder took a seat in the lounge, and lit a cigarette, indifferent to the no-smoking sign in the middle of the room.

"That was quite a speech," Kristoff declared just as Ryder took his first puff, music bursting loudly behind him before the door to the reception hall clicked shut. "You may very well have upstaged me at my own wedding," he chided, swiping Ryder's cigarette before his friend had a chance to protest.

"I thought you quit."

"I did. I will. This will be my last one," was Kristoff's sheepish reply. He took a long puff, inhaling deeply and savoring the sensation as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "And thus, everything is right with the world," Kristoff declared, his body stiffness yielding to the elation of his nicotine high as he sunk into the pleather sofa.

Ryder stood and wordless snatched his cigarette back, crushing it into the stone ashtray on the side table.

"I love you man," he uttered with hard eyes, unfazed by the startled expression on Kristoff's face, "but I'm not sure if you're just blind or if you simply don't want to see what's in front of you."

"What's gotten into you?"

"She was crying, Kristoff. Half of the wedding guests could hear her sobbing all the way from the bridal room. So, how can everything be fine?"

Kristoff stood stunned. He opened his mouth to speak but he was interrupted by the blast of music that flooded into the lounge as the door to the reception hall opened once more. The two men turned to find Anna standing at the door frame, eyeing them curiously.

"Hey kiddo," Ryder grinned, and his demeanor quickly slipped into his easy going ways. "You were great today. I'd never seen a more perfect flower girl."

Anna frowned and crossed her arms stiffly over her chest.

"I was a bridesmaid," she grumbled.

Ryder laughed.

"My mistake," he remarked. "I keep forgetting that you're not so little anymore." Then turning to Kristoff, he added, "Sometimes we just see what we want to see."

But Anna wasn't one to be dismissed so easily. "I'm thirteen and a half," she asserted, offended to be perceived as anything less.

"You certainly are, pipsqueak."

She scowled. "I don't think you're taking me seriously."

"I absolutely will," he chuckled, "in time."

Ryder waved goodbye, and he pushed out into the cold evening, thrusting his hands into his pants pockets to keep them warm. He hadn't bothered to look in Kristoff's direction before he left, but Kristoff could still feel the anger directed his way, lingering like a bad hangover.

"We're fine," Kristoff whispered to no one in particular after his friend had gone. "She said so herself. Just fine."

~X~

"Everything is a mess," Anna conceded, anxiously pulling at her necklace as she stood and paced the living room. "Dad was so angry at me that he wouldn't even look at me. And Kristoff, I don't think he's ever going to forgive me. He won't even talk to me."

Ryder looked up at his reindeer clock, mentally calculating how much longer before Kristoff was due to meet him and his wife for dinner. He had been listening quietly to Anna as she unburdened herself since she had first arrived, for the better part of ten minutes, waiting for a pause before he could interject. But now that the opportunity presented itself, he was at a complete loss for words.

"What other outcome did you expect?" Ryder dared to ask, careful to avoid judgment in his tone. But even in its absence, he sensed that she saw through him.

"I never set out to hurt him," she insisted. "Never. But it just happened that way anyway. Why would I do that? How could I do that?"

She stared at him, as if expecting him to have all the answers to her inner turmoils ready to present on a PowerPoint slide.

"You're not that naive, Anna."

Ryder sighed and rubbed his fingers against his temples, the beginnings of exasperation beginning to form.

"I think you should find someone else to confide in," was his uneasy, although candid reply. "I'm not the right person for you. I mean, he's my friend."

Anna laughed, but there was a note of desperation in her eyes.

"Is there such a thing as the right confidant for sleeping with your brother's wife?" She pondered sarcastically.

"Maybe Hans?"

Anna shook her head. She could never bring herself to tell Hans the truth about why she'd moved out. There was so much to explain, so many gaps to fill, and she couldn't bear the humiliation of unpacking so much personal history, but that was not the case with Ryder.

"I came to you because you know," she confessed, biting down on the inside of her bottom lip. "You know. They were never gonna work out and we both know why. Kristoff was always gonna get hurt."

But he could tell from the hesitation in her voice that she didn't quite buy into her own justification. The Anna that he knew would never have been so callous.

"But it didn't have to be you," Ryder snapped back, briefly glancing out the window, ensuring that Kristoff had not yet arrived. "You're right," he went on, "it was always going to end badly between them, but it didn't have to be you too. It's one thing if she cheats on him with some stranger. But you're his sister. His sister. You're supposed to have his back, but instead you're playing games like some stupid selfish kid who doesn't want to share her toys. Well, People aren't yours to mess with, Anna. Grow up."

He knew he'd hit a nerve because she was visibly agitated, her hands shaking and her breath short and irregular. Anna curled her fingers into fists, and planted them at her sides, willing the trembling to wane.

"Stop treating me like a kid," she shot back, her voice quivering as she clenched her fists tightly. "It was never like that. Maybe when I was twelve, but I never set out to play any games. None of this was ever a game."

"Then what was it?"

Anna froze, her mouth half open as she struggled to find the words. For all her constant babbling, Kristoff's kid sister was finally rendered speechless, and Ryder would have made a big show of that fact had his best friend's life not just been ruined.

"I, me and her, we…It just wasn't," Anna stammered, looking away, unable to give shape to her thoughts.

He wasn't sure what he had expected her to say, but he hadn't expected this. He stared hard at her, searching her furtive eyes, her anxious face, her long slender body and wondered when little Anna had finally stopped being so little. And innocent.

"Does she feel the same?" He had almost hesitated to ask it. As much as he dreaded the answer that was painted on Anna's face, he needed to hear it. Not so much for his sake, than for hers; because she needed to say it and she needed it heard.

"I don't know," she answered, her voice soft and low as she articulated each word. He knew she was lying, and she knew that he knew it too. Her denial would have been just as transparent to anyone listening in on their conversation.

"Then I guess this is worse," Ryder professed, trying to gather his thoughts. Anna refused to meet his eyes, and chewed her fingernails as she stared absently at her feet.

"As awful as things are," he continued, "maybe it would have been better if you had only been playing around." Ryder gave her the courtesy of a moment's pause, allowing her the opportunity to refute what he was saying, and what he was about to say. He understood that words made the unspoken real, giving unretractable substance to truths that would be denied. And Anna understood this too.

But she let the words live on, undisputed, and he took a slow and deep breath before he uttered the thing that had been unspoken.

"But none of that applies here," he surmised. "You're in love with her, aren't you? That's why you feel so guilty. And those feelings you have for her are very much reciprocated, right?"

Tears had gathered in her eyes. She fought them, and held them back by sheer will. But the dam in her eyes was too fragile for her to give a reply. One word and the dam would break.

"So what are you going to do now?" Ryder cautiously implored. "Where do you go from here?"

Anna looked up, but her eyes looked right through him as she sought her reply from the jumble of words that hindered her thoughts. She had literally hundreds of thousands of words to choose from yet she could only play her father's anger over and over again in her head like a broken record, then look of disbelief on Kristoff's face when he caught them in bed. In his bed. The same one he shared with his wife.

"Anna?"

"I," she began to say, and she broke.

Author's Note: Thank you for taking the time to read this story. Feedback is always welcome even if it's just to flambé me.