You stand there in your green dress and let the night settle around you.
A few minutes later, Lara joins you.
She slips off her heels and sighs with the dramatic exhaustion of a bride who has survived both ceremony and emotion. For a while, neither of you speaks. You simply stand side by side, two women at different ends of life’s long corridor, both somehow changed by the same day.
Then she turns to you.
“Were you angry at me?” she asks quietly.
You look at her.
“For what?”
“For making it public. For pulling you into the center like that.”
You think about it.
The honest answer deserves the moment.
“At first,” you say, “I was terrified.”
She winces. “That’s fair.”
“But no,” you continue. “I was not angry. I think…” You search for the words. “I think my whole life, I learned to survive by becoming smaller in rooms that wanted me to feel small. Today you refused to let me do that.”
