After finding Freddie's name on the guest list, the burly doorman nodded towards the door. Freddie gave the man an acknowledging nod and headed through the tall, ornately decorated double doors. It was an impressively large room, appearing to be capable of holding at least 300 people comfortably: a condition he had become used to over the course of the day. The ceiling was broken into identical panels, each collapsing upwards into a radially filigreed dome from the center of which hung traditionally designed, gold-plated chandeliers. In addition to the chandeliers, there were multiple light sources everywhere; from the lights draped at regular intervals on the walls to the steel-wire, tri-legged candelabras at the center of each dining table. In spite of the light sources, the brightness of the room never rose above a dull simmer wherever one looked. It forced the guests to stand closer than normal to make out the full range of emotions on their conversational partner's face. It also made it very difficult for Freddie to make out where he was supposed to go to next.
The only noticeable person in the dimmed room was a pale, slender brunette in a long red dress complete with matching elbow length gloves swaying rhythmically in front of a microphone stand. Her smooth rendition of "Misty" served as a pleasant backdrop for the guests who were slowly meandering into their seats. Freddie decided to go with the flow, and moved over to a long rectangular table covered from end to end with white, folded cards that displayed each guest's name and their assigned table. Because they were arranged in alphabetical order, it wasn't difficult to find his name towards the beginning of the heap. He managed to tone an outright grin down to a smirk after he picked up the card and discovered the addition of the title "The Dork" in Sam's messy scrawl.
As he approached the table, he realized he had one of the better seats in the house. It was pushed up right next to the vast, centrally located dance floor. A stone's throw away down the wooden planks, opposite the area where the four piece band was stationed was the table of honor, lifted slightly above the ground by a wide, white platform. The long, empty table appeared to be set up to accommodate the bride, groom, bridesmaid, and best man, marking each place set with a ridiculously complicated folded napkin. From the direct center of the table, a conical structure rose towards a tapered tip, around which two splayed figures chased each other around endlessly. Freddie smiled as he recognized evidence of Spencer's craftsmanship.
"Oh, someone else is finally here," announced a voice cheerfully. Freddie's alerted gaze fell back towards his own table. A cute, brunette girl in her early twenties smiled up at him from her seat.
Not used to talking to cute strangers, Freddie felt a blush creeping onto his cheeks. Ignoring the feeling, he abashedly smiled back at her as he sat in the empty chair next to her. "I'm Freddie," he announced in as deep a voice as he could manage.
"I know," revealed the brunette, the smile remaining on her face. "I used to be the biggest fan of iCarly, growing up."
Freddie gave the girl an appraising look. He had met many iCarly fans since the show ended, and they had ranged from casual admirers to hardcore obssessives. While they mostly consisted of the former, something about the way she had announced herself set off an alarm that suggested the latter. After squinting at the girl for a moment, his eyes opened wide in shocked awe. "Wait, you're not Mandy, are you?"
"You remember me!" cheered the girl in a voice that was no longer squeaky, clapping her hands as she chased her words with a delighted laugh.
It was difficult to reconcile his memories of iCarly's self-proclaimed biggest fan with the young woman sitting next to him. Somewhere along the way she had traded in her enormous coke bottle glasses for contacts, allowing him an unobstructed view of her brown eyes and petite, well-proportioned, facial features. Meanwhile her body had lengthened to a slender height of around 5'6 while filling out nicely at the appropriate places. The body hugging, navy blue dress she was wearing seemed to be highlighting those places for him. By all conventional criteria, she was now gorgeous. Freddie felt his blush deepening.
"You grew up nicely," complimented Freddie, then immediately wished he could have said something less creepy.
A faint redness touched Mandy's cheeks through her olive complexion. "I'm not the only one," she answered, looking directly into Freddie's eyes.
Even if it was the Mandy from his memories, this was the best interaction with a good looking woman he'd had in a long time. Eager to keep the conversation moving, he quickly asked, "So what are you up to nowadays?"
Mandy hooked some strands of her fine, straight hair behind her left ear as she leaned towards Freddie. Freddie fought hard to keep his eyes on her face as she said, "I'm working as a producer."
Freddie blinked in surprise. "A technical producer?"
Mandy shook her head. "No, I'll leave that for computer geniuses like you. I'm one of those legwork kinds of producers." Again, Freddie struggled against his eyes as an additional view was suggested. "That's actually how I met Carly again, a few weeks ago."
"Oh, so you don't work with Carly?"
The woman's hands held themselves up in a sign of dismissal. "No, she was interviewing one of the stars of a project of mine. I reintroduced myself after the interview was over. After she got over her initial surprise, we went out to eat lunch at a nearby café." She gave a shrug of her bare shoulders. "Before I knew it, I was invited to the wedding." Her head tilted to the side as she asked, "So how about you?"
"I work for Pear ..." Freddie's answer was cut short by a buzz of commotion coming from the entrance to the ballroom. In walked Carly, arm-in-arm with her new husband. She was still dressed in a simple, flowing white wedding gown. The man's heart again stopped in his chest. Only Carly could make plain, lightly embroidered fabric seem like it was radiating beauty.
The smile disappeared from Mandy's face after she recognized the way Freddie's face had transformed after laying eyes on Carly. Even though he had been displaying signs of interest in her, what she saw displayed on his face at the moment was something more similar to complete submission. So Freddie was still in absolute love with Carly. In a way, it was kind of cute for Freddie to still be heads over heels for his first love, but that didn't really help Mandy's situation. Now that Carly was in the room, the woman had a feeling that his eyes would unerringly return to wherever the newlywed was for the rest of the night.
It was time to move on to someone more available. The brunette touched Freddie lightly on the knee and announced, "I'm going to go get something to drink." There was barely a nod of acknowledgment in her direction. A wry smile took over her lips as Mandy left the table.
With his eyes glued on Carly as she moved towards her seat, Freddie didn't notice Mandy leave.
Freddie was still looking towards the bridal table when the lights dimmed dramatically, drawing the room's focus towards a pulled-down projection screen in front of where the band was set up to play. A slideshow of the couple's journey to marriage was projected onto the screen while a sappy love song that Freddie had never heard of blared through the room's speaker system. And while all of the eyes in the room seemed to be drawn to the lighted images, Freddie just couldn't seem to take his eyes off of Carly. After the slideshow had gone through a couple of pictures, he wished he could.
With his back to the screen, he had no way of knowing what kind of pictures were showing beyond the crowd's reaction. The "ooh"s and the "ahh"s were squelched however as the newlywed couple took advantage of their relative obscurity. They shared lingering looks and unrestrained smiles. His arm resting on her shoulders. Her hand reaching up to caress his cheek. His hand lifting her chin upwards. Then their lips reaching forward.
He found himself watching the slideshow before he had some kind of heart attack. It was currently showing childhood pictures of the couple. Every time a picture of Matt came up, he would figure out some way to make fun of it. A photo of a half naked 6 year old flexing into a mirror was recognized as the textbook example of narcissism. A young shot of him with his arms around two little girls earned him the title of player.
Freddie kept his comments under his breath until the woman sitting in front of him burst into laughter. After the rest of the table found out what was up, they demanded that he share his thoughts with the rest of them. At first, every comment elicited bursts of laughter. As the pictures continued to come, however, the comments became more sarcastic. A plastic cowboy hat drew a Brokeback Mountain reference. A picture of his 3 year old self wrapped only in a diaper was deemed the headshot of a child porn star.
The man had gotten so into his new game that he didn't realize that the laughter had faded into oblivion. It was Mandy who brought him back from the brink by touching his shoulder lightly. When he turned around, in addition to the worried expression on her face, he found a mixture of worry, pity, and disgust on the faces of the other members of his table. It was only then that Freddie realized the content of what he had been saying for the past few minutes. Oddly, the normally private man felt no shame or remorse for what had left his lips. He was actually experiencing something more similar to pride. Freddie felt as though he had finally stood up to a bully who had been beating on him remorselessly for months. Unfortunately, he knew from personal experience that if the bully was mean enough, they would just use that incident as fuel to increase their assault. He remembered the first time he had stood up to Sam. She had sent him flying to the ground almost immediately afterwards.
After tallying more looks of disgust than anything else on the faces of his table mates, he knew that he was due for another beating backwards into despair. With a sigh, he stood up and said, "I'm sorry about that ... little outburst. Please excuse me."
When he began to turn to walk away, Mandy asked, "Are you okay, Freddie?"
The man gave her a weak smile and assured her, "I'll be fine. I think I just need to get some air." He then completed his turn and walked away from the table, much to the relief of his fellow guests.
Freddie encountered no traffic on his way to the attached outdoor terrace. Almost all of the guests were seated with their eyes glued to the projection screen. He made a point of passively searching for anyone he knew among the guests, but after traversing halfway across the ballroom, he had found no one. Did Carly know all of these people? Well, really know all of these people. She had always wanted a small wedding, shared with only people that she considered important in her life. This had to be the exact opposite of that. There was no way the table filled with overweight, balding men he had just walked past had each played an important role in her life. He should have known at least one of them. And Mandy, who admitted that she had just met Carly again a few weeks ago, had even been invited. This wasn't the kind of wedding that the Carly that he knew wanted. What had forced her to have this gargantuan wedding? Was it her husband's preference, pressure from her considerable celebrity, or ... did he just not know her anymore?
The last thought was a sobering one which he quickly dismissed thanks to the strong belief that Carly wouldn't change so drastically without his noticing and the fact that he was now standing outside of the ballroom. He closed his eyes briefly, concentrating on the refreshing feeling of the evening air. A cool breeze drifted across his face, dragging away with it any lingering feelings of embarrassment he had held for his little display.
When he opened his eyes, he took in an expansive view of downtown Seattle. Having lived in the city for most of his life, it was not necessarily an unfamiliar one. Still, the view he was more accustomed to was from a higher vantage point. When you looked at people from too high up, they tended to look like animated figurines or toys. From his current view of one story above the street, that normal feeling of detachment was replaced by the renewing one of viewing life from a new perspective. It was like the answers were right there, just waiting for him to see them. Now if he could just figure out what question he really needed to ask.
His existential pondering was interrupted by the sounds of the other two people sharing the terrace with him. They were standing a few feet away from each other much closer to the railing than he was, offering him only a view of their backs; one covered entirely by a black, tuxedo coat, and the other barely concealed by a purple, open back dress. There was something familiar about the man that Freddie couldn't put his finger on, mostly because he had his back turned to him. Freddie shrugged it off and went back to watching the city move around him as the man inched his way closer to the woman.
When the man had come within a few feet of the woman, he stumbled towards her, grabbing the railing to prevent himself from crashing into her. It was at this point, when the men looked at the girl coyly and let out in a pseudo-debonair voice, "Why, excuse me. I didn't see you there," that Freddie realized that he was watching none other than Spencer Shay at work. Freddie resisted the immediate urge to call out to his old friend, since based on his knowledge of Spencer's love life; he was in for a show. After a few seconds went by with no response from the woman, Spencer asked nonchalantly, "Did you happen to see that sculpture in front of the bride and groom?"
"That weird helicopter thing?" countered the woman in a flat tone.
"Er, yeah, I guess," sputtered Spencer. Freddie found a spot on the wall behind him and leaned back into it. This was going to be entertaining whichever way this conversation went. By the time Freddie had made himself comfortable, Spencer had recovered and announced, "You know, I made that."
The woman turned her head to ask with a laugh, "Why?" Her profile confirmed that Freddie had never seen her before, and that Spencer had a good eye for beauty.
"Well, it's ... art," answered Spencer matter-of-factly.
The woman turned her head back towards the city street. "It looked more like junk to me."
Spencer had been stunned into shocked silence by this point. Freddie could almost hear the gears in the older man's head grinding, desperate for something to say to salvage this horrible outing.
The woman saved him the trouble of wringing his brain out by asking, "Is that all?" Spencer's words failed him yet again, and he ended up hanging his head in shame as she turned around and walked past Freddie into the ballroom. A faint scent of lavender hung in the air long after she had exited the balcony.
Freddie waited until the woman was well out of earshot before moving up to Spencer and commenting, "That was an epic strikeout, Spencer."
Spencer's expression shifted from accusatory anger to pleasant surprise once he realized it was Freddie standing next to him. He almost didn't recognize his old friend. It was like there was something off about his face. Shrugging off the feeling, Spencer's left hand clamped onto Freddie's shoulder companionably. "So you heard that?" he asked with a pained grimace.
"Yup," answered Freddie with a small nod.
"All of it?" questioned Spencer, his right eyebrow raising high.
The younger man said no words, but his silence answered his question succinctly. An embarrassed smile appeared on Spencer's face, which he quickly turned towards the city sprawling out beneath him. Not wanting the conversation to turn towards his recent failure, he asked lightly, "So, what'cha up to nowadays?"
Freddie gave a large shrug of his shoulders. "Not much, really. Just working."
The word "work" brought a sour expression to Spencer's face. "You should have been an artist, Freddie! It's the best!" Spencer's hands began to gesticulate wildly. "You make your own hours. You work on your own ideas. Oh, and the ladies love artists!"
Freddie nudged Spencer in the ribs with his elbow. "Just like that last woman, huh?"
Spencer's posture dropped slightly, but he still had some energy to his voice when he shot back, "Well, you know you have to swing to hit the home run."
The analogy drew a chuckle from Freddie. Continuing in the same vein, he jested, "It's too bad you struck out this time."
The artist's arms flailed out in Freddie direction. "Alright, alright! Quit rubbing it in!" pleaded Spencer. "I feel like I'm talking to Sam or something." The comment drew a grimace from Freddie. He knew just how painful that could get. While Freddie was being apologetically silent, Spencer asked, "So how about your love life, Mr. Regular Job?"
Freddie's palms reached towards the skies as he admitted, "Its pretty much non-existent."
Spencer threw his arm around Freddie shoulders as he said with a laugh, "I guess I'm not the only one striking out, huh?"
Freddie's thoughts drifted back towards Mandy. It wasn't like he was striking out, per se. "I guess you could say I'm not even playing the game."
"Why not, man?" Spencer threw his arms open wide for dramatic effect, narrowly missing Freddie's face. "You're young, you have your own place, a stable job, and it's a wedding!" After it appeared as though Freddie wasn't going to answer him, Spencer accused, "I know you're not seeing anyone right now. Carly told me."
The young man knew that the conversation was headed in a dangerous direction, so he did his best to avoid it. He kept his mouth closed and allowed his eyes to drift down towards the city where they settled on a young hipster couple practically skipping down the street hand in hand.
The dodge was unsuccessful. Spencer's head tilted in Freddie's direction as he interrogated, "What's the matter? Do you already have your eye on someone?"
He knew he should just make it easier for everyone and lie his ass off. Unfortunately, Spencer was one of his oldest friends, and Freddie found that he just couldn't lie to his face. No matter how hard he wanted to. An ironic smirk found its way onto Freddie's face as he answered flippantly, "I guess you could say that."
Something about Freddie's answer sparked a ridiculous thought in Spencer's mind, and soon the man-boy had fallen into uncontrollable bursts of laughter. In-between gasps of air, he joked, "Back ... in the day ... I would say ... it was ... Carly!" After he had finished laughing and caught his breath, Spencer realized that he hadn't heard a peep out of Freddie. For good measure, he repeated, "Back in the day, I would say it was Carly!" When his uninterrupted joke drew no sound from the man next to him, Spencer's head turned to find Freddie squirming uncomfortably. Fixing a piercing gaze on Freddie's face, the taller man cautiously asked, "Uh, it's not Carly is it?"
Once again, the younger man said no words, but his silence answered his question succinctly.
This time the silence held its ground, lingering over the two men like a thick, green, cloud of noxious fumes. Or so it appeared to Spencer who only then realized the severity of the evening for the man who had only had eyes for his sister for as long as he'd known him. Words of comfort, words of pity, and words of deflection all balled up in his throat: each wanting to burst free, yet unable to penetrate the miasma. His arms, normally so expressive, remained glued to his side, positive that their gestures would be inappropriate at this point in time.
Now Spencer realized what had been off about Freddie's face when he first noticed him. He wasn't displaying signs of pain, but he wasn't displaying signs of much else either. His face seemed almost lifeless, like it was a mask. Every smile or smirk he had displayed during their interaction had appeared briefly, and then disappeared back into the void. And his eyes which normally shined with intelligence appeared dull and uninterested in the world around him. This wasn't Freddie. This was a Freddie doppelganger, sent in to hold his place in the wedding while the real Freddie sat in a corner and bawled his eyes out.
A feeling of sadness washed over Spencer, causing his vision to blur at the edges. The artist realized that if he stayed out here any longer, he would be joining the real Freddie soon. Considering that that would be a disastrous event at his little sister's wedding, he awkwardly stated, "Hey, I'm going to head back inside. I'll ... talk to you later."
A brief nod was the only acknowledgement that Freddie gave. He continued to look out onto the city streets, still searching for the answer to the question that he didn't know he needed to ask.
Spencer took one last look at the hunched over form of his friend before stepping back into the ballroom. How old was he now? Around Carly's age, so that meant in his mid-twenties. He'd been holding onto that flame for over half of his life, and it was still burning as brightly now as it did when they were teenagers. Spencer could barely remember even knowing a girl he liked for that long. That had to be love. No, it was. Anyone who had ever seen Freddie around Carly knew that it was.
Nothing in particular was going on, but the noise level in the room was at an unhealthy decibel level solely from the sheer number of attendees. Spencer could not find an inch of the room that was not occupied by a wedding guest. This was the grandest wedding he had ever attended, probably one of the best Seattle had ever seen. And it was for the joining of Freddie's true love and another man. The poor bastard.
Spencer spotted his sister in the center of the room, laughing lightly at something her newlywed husband had whispered into her ear. A thought brought a rare frown to Spencer's normally jovial face.
He wondered if Carly knew.
Author's notes: 85% of this chapter has been written for a while now. Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble closing out this chapter. Everything I wrote between Freddie and Spencer felt unnatural at first. Eventually I just threw the focus on Spencer and it turned out the way I wanted it to. I guess. By the way, anyone doubting if Mandy could grow up cute should look at pictures of the actual actress (Aria Wallace) for proof.
In any case, be prepared for a perspective shift in the next chapter!
Thanks for reading!
Falling Further