It was surreal. To be standing there with her after all these years about to say our vows.

She looked so, so happy. Our friends and family were there and her eyes were just full. It wasn’t often that she looked at me like this, as though she really looked up to me. Ready to go on our lived journey together.

As we were about to begin something seemed to distract the vicar. I looked to my right and couldn’t believe my eyes, the sight of him winded me.

She looked to her left and he was just staring right at her with that familiar, impenetrable, hyper focused gaze.

He stood there by the doors staring right through her. Her shoulders dropped and her eyes moistened as she raised her hands to her chest, giving a longing look that said ‘you came back for me’...all in slow motion. I still see it like that now. She dropped her bouquet, carelessly tossing it aside, kicked off her low heels and ran back up the aisle towards him.

She ran into his arms for an embrace, completely crumbling and looking up for a kiss of religious surrender.

Our kisses were always tinged with a faint reluctance as if her lips, body and mind could never really soften for me. But here he was, solidly intimidating, and hard enough that her softness could reveal itself around him unencumbered.

A place designed for the resonant acoustics of songful worship turned the inevitable gasps endlessly back in on themselves.

As the gasps and shock swirled about the room, I just stopped there knowing as only I knew, just what that endless moment meant.

While we always had a close connection, I was her emotional support and as we joked for a long time, the third wheel in their exciting little ‘entanglements’ over the years.

I was the one who she had finally decided to settle down with three years ago when I’d shown the mettle to ask her out, filled with the pride and confidence I’d felt after passing my accounting qualifications. Earning a good promotion too!

But I was also the one who would lie next to her at night. Every now and again since we’d shared a bed she’d say his name in her sleep and it was never flat, it was always pain, passion or both. Longing for our old friend and her old lover who’d gone off to be a naval pilot. He was the personification of brave, exciting and distant, both temporally and emotionally speaking.

After leaving the forces he’d gone on to start his own now very successful defence technology company. Everyone knew how he was doing because he’d often be in the news as sought after as ever, by everyone who came into his magnetic orbit.

This move surprised me a little because although it was just like him, he had a whole lot to lose by stealing some poor sap’s wife from under his nose. The whole world would know about this by tomorrow morning.

The guests eyes fixed on them and some people had even taken their phones out to film the awful moment for posterity. She was crying and his hand moved from around her waist, spreading its size over her belly. They looked at one another deeply and then I knew.

We had been planning to announce our good news at the wedding reception.

Their good news.

The day had started normally enough and here I was. A character in their mutual story again. I’d come so close to everything only to see the distance open like some chasm across the galaxy. And I was floating in it’s dark empty vacuum.

I nearly had it all.