I’m going to preface this post with a quote from my old blog. Almost exactly nine years ago, as I was planning my wedding to Julian, I wrote this (emphasis added):

The only thing that is really bothering me is that J says I need to fix things with Alex because he wants to have him as his best man at the wedding. I thought I was hallucinating when I heard him say that and had him say it again. Yeah, Julian wants Alex to be his best man. I mean, on one level I totally understand it because Alex IS his best friend after all. But with everything that went between us in the past I can’t understand how he can do this to me. Julian said it was all ancient history, and that Alex and I need to grow up, both of us, and put it in the past. That we both owe it to him, since he has behaved so well considering what kind of position we put him in. And I think he’s right. I am willing to stop feeling so much confusion about Alex and anger and whatever if he’s willing to stop sending me nasty things and calling me up (like I don’t know it’s him) at 4 in the morning. It has been about a week since he’s done anything like that, so maybe he’s trying to as well. If he is, then I’d be happy to put all of it away for the sake of Julian and what is HIS big day too, after all. Julian says he has some idea about how to make it better, but he needs to figure it out. 

I did not want Alex as Julian’s best man at our wedding. At the time, Alex was pulling out if not all the stops, then a great majority of them in trying to convince us not to get married. It was a two-theatre war: harp on my inconstancy and unsuitability as a wife when he saw or spoke to Julian, and send innumerable emails and messages to me about how Julian would be ruining his life to marry me, thus playing on my tendency to put Julian’s happiness before my own. This was not Alex’s finest moment, by his own admission. He was ruthlessly cruel to me. Not only were there the 4am hangup calls to contend with, there were the biting little e-mails touching on what were then my biggest insecurities: that I would never be the person Julian wanted for a wife and mother of his children; that my anxiety and depression would only deepen if I got married, since I was not compatible with Julian’s take-charge, my-way-only attitude; that Julian would always side with his mother over me, so I could never be the number one woman in his life. Huh, when I put it that way, I think Alex was actually right.

Because he was correct about all of those things — I wasn’t willing to go along with the post-wedding roadmap Julian had sketched for me. I was desperately sad that my husband left me for six months to work abroad, and ended up spending two months in London and Suffolk moping about (and hanging out with Alex), trying to get Julian’s attention unsuccessfully while he worked and went to innumerable events for which my presence was apparently not necessary. I gave up and came back to Pasadena on my own. I wanted to work full-time, and not be a housewife. I wanted to delay having children instead of jumping right in (this was the source of innumerable screaming matches in which Julian claimed he had been “hoodwinked into marrying a career girl”). I did not want to host weekly dinner parties for business prospects. And while I was focused — too focused, maybe — on making Julian happy by giving into his wishes wherever I could, I always seemed to be making some minor faux pas or grave error. Of course, his mother and I never saw eye to eye about almost anything, except that Julian’s wishes were to be placed before my own. Jocasta, his mother, delighted in telling me where I was falling down in my duties as Julian’s wife, from my wardrobe (“cheap”), to my career aspirations (“common”), to my general appearance (“plump, though I do recognize that you are making some minimal efforts towards improvement”).

No, Alex was right, but his methods were wrong. Under siege, I drew closer to Julian, defended him against every sally. Eventually, Alex admitted something close to defeat, and agreed to Julian’s demands: not only was Alex to refrain from trying to convince me that marriage was a bad idea, Alex and I were to find a way to work out our differences and lay the past to rest so that Julian’s wedding party could be composed exactly as he wished. We were both so under Julian’s thumb at that time — my identity was aligned solely with being Julian’s partner, and Alex, well, I didn’t know it but Julian was bankrolling him. The little money left in trust for Alex and Fenn by their father had dried up, and Alex was blowing through his weekly paychecks from Goldman Sachs like there was no recession going on out there. There seemed to be no choice but a trilateral truce, and slowly, slowly, Alex and I built up something like trust again before the wedding. (Occasionally, Alex would still beg me to reconsider. Once I joked to him, “I almost think it’s because you wish it was you and not Julian standing up there in a couple of weeks” and he had no reply.)

It was always one set of rules for Julian and another for everyone else. I was to “grow up” and overcome my complicated feelings for Alex, pitched somewhere amongst longing and anxiety and revulsion and desire, and let Alex stand up with Julian on my biggest day, like I had never fallen as hard for him as I had. Alex was to pretend he didn’t want me for himself — as if Julian didn’t know, which of course he did — and smile while his best friend married the woman he had been bribed to walk away from. It was punishment and sadism inflicted on us both for having crossed Julian before, for daring to escape the orbit of his influence. But now, when confronted by the prospect of having to stand beside a person whose presence reminds him of his own failures, Julian will not Grow Up, he will not Put It in the Past. Alex cannot attend, and I must. We must be willows and bend to his gust of wind.

I won’t do this anymore, I can’t do this anymore. And I still haven’t told Alex, because now it’s late Tuesday night, and he should be told in person. So instead I called Jenn yesterday, since she’s the most sensible person I know, particularly when it comes to dealing with Julian post-divorce. She was in her first year of law school when Julian and I married, and now she’s a family law attorney in LA, partly because she found fascinating the intersection of love and money she saw in my marriage. She refused to represent me in my divorce — I needed someone without any possible conflict, and with considerably more experience — but she held my hand all the way and encouraged me to “fuck Julian where it will really hurt — his offshore bank accounts.”

While I was prepping ingredients for watercress and potato soup (as in many things cookery, I prefer Delia’s recipe), Jenn returned my call. “Hey sweetie, miss your face. What’s up?”

“Making watercress soup to go with some wholegrain bread.” Alex does not shame me about my carb consumption, so homemade bread is back on the menu. “Wish you were here for a bowl.”

Jenn sighed. “Me too, I’m sick of getting food delivered to work. What’s this really about, hm? Your message said you needed my advice on something tricky, so I just know this is Julian-related. I love you, but you know I live for these moments. Go.”

I threw the onions in the now-melted butter in my stockpot. “Well, it is about Julian. I mean, it’s really about Jamie, and it’s also about Alex. But yeah, it’s about Julian.”

Jenn cackled. “I KNEW IT! Was it a vaguely stalker-ish comment on how he ‘always loved you in blue’ on that picture you posted of yourself and Ben the other day?”

“Um, no. We spoke.” I pushed the diced onions about a bit in the pan. “I mean, he texted me on Friday and asked me to call him, and that it wasn’t urgent. So I called him and we, uh, talked for a while.”

“You spoke to Archduke Julian himself? How is his Most Serene Highness? How could you assist him?” I could hear Jenn pop open a can of something.

“Are you opening a can of beer at work, Jenn?”

“Why the fuck not, this is going to be excellent and I’m just settling in. Please continue.”

“Well, I asked him how he was, and he said –“

“Mel, I don’t care about the chit chat. Gimme some red meat. I want some grade A, prime Julian.”

Exhaling, I threw the watercress into the sweated onions and gave it the “good stir” Delia instructs, then put the lid on the pot. “Okay, this is it, basically. You know how I told you that my friends Jamie — you met him at the wedding — and Bex are getting married in Sussex in October, and how Alex and I are going back together, and we’re going to see Lucy and then go up to Scotland?”

Jenn took a long sip on her beer. “Mmmmmhmmmmm. So how does His Nibs fit into that?”

“Jamie asked Alex and Julian to be ushers — groomsmen — at his wedding and Julian told me to ask Alex not to attend but just send a gift because it will be too uncomfortable for everyone if both of them are standing up there, like everything was fine when Alex was the reason our marriage blew up. It’s okay if I come though.”

Silence, and then Jenn’s raucous, hiccuping laughter filtered out of the speakerphone. “Are you FUCKING kidding me? He ordered you to tell Alex he couldn’t attend because his precious snowflake fee-fees might be hurt? That,” she had to break here, because she couldn’t stop laughing. Eventually, things quietened down to a giggle, followed by a generous swig. “That has got to be the fucking Trumpiest shit I ever heard out of that MAGA. But you can attend! My lord, the nerve of him!”

“Yes, and he said it would be good to see each other without ‘distractions’ as he put it.” I wasn’t supposed to open the pot, but I did, and a gust of springlike steam flew out. The water for the potatoes was now boiling, so I chucked them in with the seasoning.

“Oh Mel, I bet he thinks that! I can see it now: Julian, emboldened by Alex’s absence and imperial gallons of champagne, decides he’s going to get you alone and convince you of what a ‘stupid mistake'” — she mimicked his accent — “you made in your ‘senseless affair’ and how he’s willing to forgive you as long as you never speak to Alex again. Am I right or what?”

I paused for a moment to stir the potatoes. While this was admittedly an overwrought scenario, it wasn’t completely out of character for Julian. I ran into him at a charity thing once in LA, before I moved up here, and while Alex and I were still in limbo, neither together nor not-together. I had gone with Jen (not Jenn), and we were about 20 minutes into the cocktail hour, looking at the photographs of New York subway stations which were going to be auctioned off later that evening. Our backs to the noisy room, neither of us saw or heard him approach. I felt someone brush my hair over my shoulder and turned around to see Julian, all lopsided grin and kind eyes. And I am sorry to admit it but I felt it again — the tingle I used to feel when I’d see him as he walked out of customs at LAX to visit me.

“Jen, nice to see you.” He put his hand out for Jen’s shake and she gingerly clasped it while looking to me for approval. As he dropped her hand, he put out his arms for me and said, “Hullo, Mel. I’ve missed you.”

To my shame, I walked right into those arms and allowed myself to be embraced, to be crushed to his chest. I could see Jen out of the corner of my eye, slinking away towards the bar. Julian and I must have been — what? — eight months separated by this point. Alex had just moved to SF on a work visa, and I had moved into the spartan Burbank apartment a week before with only a mattress, some photo albums, my laptop and a few suitcases. We were still married, on paper at least, but I hadn’t seen him in at least two months. He looked… disgustingly well, red-cheeked, cheery. His beard was a little lusher, bigger. I was no longer the waifish creature I had been in the immediate months following his departure — I lost 15 lbs in the first two weeks after he left, and I wasn’t exactly the “plump” girl Jocasta accused me of being in the first place — and had thankfully put on a few pounds, but I still thought I looked exhausted all the time.

Julian smelled of Etat Libre d’Orange “Je Suis Un Homme,” which I had bought for him the Christmas before during a brief stop in Paris prior to the disastrous New Year’s Suffolk trip that was the very end of the beginning of the end. It suited (suits?) him so well — a little old-fashioned, a little leathery and rummy. I breathed it in as he whispered in my ear, “I’ve missed you, little one. God, I’ve missed you.” I let him lead me away to a corner — I don’t know what I was thinking. I spotted Jen at the bar, furiously texting someone (Jenn, of course) about what was happening. When I caught her eye, she scowled at me.

“Julian, wow,” I said, when I’d caught my breath. “You look… good.”

“Yes, well, a week in Bali will do that for you. Got back yesterday. You should have been there, Mel, you would have loved it. Quite stunning, and so relaxing.” He took my small hand in his, and put it to his cheek. “You would have scolded me about letting my beard go wild out there, but of course… well, you know.”

Yes, I know. No Bali vacation for Melissa, because I had forced him to leave me when I had cast my lot in with Alex. As Julian said to me later, “He’s the real villain, Melissa, luring my wife away with his sad, sad stories of his sad, sad life, taking advantage of her love of broken things, when all of his misery he made quite on his own through his complete and unremitting commitment to making poor choices.”

I moved my palm from his face and a little of the joy left his eyes. “I’m not with him.” I said this softly, looking down now at the hand I’d withdrawn, still wearing my wedding ring. “I don’t know what’s happening between us, but I’m not with him.”

He placed his hand on mine. He was not wearing his ring. “I know. Miranda told me.” (That cow! I didn’t speak to her for three weeks after this.) “You know, Liss, it doesn’t have to be like this. It could be like–”

He pulled me toward him again, roughly this time, and pressed his lips to the dip on my throat, up the side of my neck, up and up, around to the nape. I felt like I was an open low E string on a guitar, lightly brushed, reverberating. Oh, I was weak, weak, just as Julian had always said I was. And how Alex said I never was. And in that moment, as I leaned in further to Julian, my own lips lightly parted in anticipation of his kiss, I thought of Alex, tall and tired and lonely in San Francisco, missing me, he said, waiting for me to make up my mind, he said.

“Julian, no.” I turned away from him, smoothed my hair. I dared not turn back, lest I fall back into that familiar embrace. Though I knew it wasn’t good for me, it was an unhappiness I was at least acquainted with, not like this new world where I was responsible for myself alone.

“You love him, don’t you?” he asked me after a while, very quietly, his hand now on my right shoulder, my back still to him. His grip was light, but reminded me that he still thought of me as his girl. It was too intimate a touch. “If you don’t, Melissa, what will all of our pain have been for?”

“I don’t know. I think I might, but some days I’m not so certain.” I turned around to face him, look in his green eyes, so much like my own. “But you and I… this isn’t right. It’s not fair to you. I won’t lead you on again.”

“Fair? You want to talk about not being fair? You lied to me, told me you loved only me for years, and every day while I was working for us, you were at home talking for hours to him. Talking about his pain and you never asked about mine. Never thought to ask me anything beyond, ‘how was your day’ or ‘how was traffic’ while you left your best self for him. And I would have you back tonight if you just asked, more fool me.” His face was so close to my own, but I felt no fear, there was no anger there. I saw only despair. We could have been so good, if only you’d let me.

“Good to see you, Jules. Be well.” I pressed one kiss to his cheek and returned to Jen, who was still glowering but holding a glass of Pinot Gris for me. I was powerful, I realized for the first time in a long time. I had power over Julian. I only had to use it.

So yes, Jenn was right. It wasn’t totally preposterous. I was brought back to the here and now by the kitchen timer, reminding me to check the potatoes (they weren’t quite ready). “I suppose,” I replied. “But it really could be awkward, or at least be a distraction from Jamie and Bex’s ceremony, if the two of them are staring daggers at each other.”

“But that’s Jamie’s problem, not yours! Don’t you think Jamie was totally aware of what has passed between those two? He doesn’t give a fuck, probably thinks it’s hysterical. And Alex? He knows too, and doesn’t give two shits. Might be training for a battle royale for all you know. He’s in for it, Mel. What did Alex say when you told him?”

I checked the potatoes again and they seemed tender enough, so I drained them, then returned them to the pot to mash with the butter and milk. I wanted to mash by hand, since I thought it might be therapeutic. “Well, I may not have told him yet,” I mumbled into the phone.

“ARE YOU SHITTING ME? You’ve been letting this turd of a diktat fester since Friday and you haven’t shared it with Alex? He is not going to like that. Sweetie, you don’t need to hide things from Alex like you did from Julian. He isn’t going to punish you for bringing him bad news.”

I ground the masher into the spuds, harder and harder. “I know he’s going to be furious that Julian wants me to be the messenger, and I know he’s just going to double down on being in the wedding party, and then I’m going to have to tell Julian that I wasn’t able to help him.”

“Melissa, listen to yourself. Why do you owe Julian anything? He treated you like garbage for years, tried to make you into some person you never could be, and got angry at you for not fitting perfectly into his vision of his life. Listen to me: you owe him nothing. I don’t care that you had some grand emotional affair with Alex that went on for years. You worked for everything you got out of that marriage. Fuck him.”

I mashed away ferociously now, creaming the potatoes in a far more satisfying way than using a hand blender. “Yeah, fuck him.”

“Ha!” Jenn shouted. “That’s my girl. Now, don’t get me wrong, you need to tell Alex exactly what Julian told you. Because it’s going to get him really pissed off, and that is something I would pay to see. I want to hear back from you that Alex is not only going to be in that wedding, he is going to kick Julian’s white ass during the reception. God, ask Bex to set up a livestream. If there’s an open bar, this is going to be fucking amazing.”

I added the stock and the milk to the watercress and onion, and tipped in the mashed potatoes, stirred it together and tasted for seasoning. (Little more salt, much more pepper.) I let it simmer, grabbed my wine and half-reclined on the blue velvet loveseat Rachel had occupied only a couple of weeks earlier. “Yes, of course there’s an open bar. That’s what Julian is worried about — Alex getting drunk and angry — ‘unstable,’ he called it. I’m not a huge fan of drunk and angry Alex either. But what am I supposed to tell Julian? That Alex is going? Or should I not respond?”

I heard another swig of beer on Jenn’s side. “Mmm, your call. He said to text him? Call him and tell him over the phone. Hell, have me on conference call so I can hear. I’ll stay on mute. Drive him batshit crazy, tell him Alex is putting his foot down and you agree. You’ll feel great and Alex will love it. If you patch me in, you don’t even need to buy me a birthday present this year, this will be enough.”

“But what about Bex and Jamie? This is just going to end up being another ‘Alex at the wedding’ stunt meant to make some stupid point. I wanted to die when Alex was hitting on you and all the other bridesmaids right in front of my face, just to piss me off.” Alex had said before my wedding that while he wouldn’t try to stop the marriage, he wasn’t going to make the day easy, even if he didn’t try to punch Julian. (After all, he still needed Julian’s money at that point, and he wasn’t going to cut that off.) He was as good as his word, because his open flirtation drove me absolutely green with jealousy on my own wedding day, which again, should have been a sign something was terribly wrong. My own grandmother was so taken with Alex she asked me, right before Julian and I cut the cake, why it never worked out for us since “that Carr boy is so adorable and respectful.”

“Oh, none of us took it seriously. We all thought it was cute, except Rachel, who took it as an invitation and still couldn’t get in his pants though damn, she tried. Look, you are going to that wedding, Alex is going, Julian is going, there’s an open bar, and shit is going to go down. Remember: Jamie set this up on purpose with Bex, it’s not like they don’t know the situation is combustible. Buckle up. This is going to be spectacular.”

I tipped what was left in my glass down my throat. Spectacular, yes. It will certainly be a spectacle.