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MY GUESTBOOK
When you met Andrea Wyatt she was an opinionated volunteer who wanted to escape the life her parents had planned for her, and working for an unknown Democrat who was fighting a Congressional race that no one expected him to win had done just that. She was twenty, you were twenty-nine, and while you were instantly attracted to her you don�t remembering speaking to her until after the campaign was over and your guy had been officially declared the loser. You remember that she came up to you after the TV�s were turned off because no one needed to watch the joys and defeats of others and you remember her asking, in that no-nonsense way she had that always appealed to you, if you were ever going to ask her out. Your romance was hardly a whirlwind, though you didn�t exactly take it slow, either, and you were oftentimes unsure, especially when she invited you to her birthday party and the age gap, that you never noticed when you were alone because she was always so much smarter and more mature than everyone else her age and most people your age as well, became painfully delineated, but by the time she was twenty-two you were married in a small ceremony that twined your two religions in a way that her parents found distasteful, though you always believed that it was you that they found distasteful and not the ceremony.
The ceremony was�though you hate to use the term�lovely. Tiny white daisies were everywhere, a priest and a rabbi taking turns offering up the rites of marriage, vows you wrote yourselves that brought tears to the eyes of even those who didn�t believe you were truly in love with each other. Your college roommate was your best man, though you never cared for him all that much, and you wish that you had known Josh and Sam back then because it would have meant a lot to have them standing at the altar with you when you married Andi�you�ll never tell anyone that you feel that way, though sometimes you think that they know anyway�and Andi�s sister was her maid of honour, though she and Andi barely spoke because Alicia had embraced her parent�s plan for her while Andi had run from it as fast as she could. And Andi, eschewing many traditions, had walked herself down the aisle in a gown the palest green you could imagine, looking like a fairy princess with some kind of shimmering make-up highlighting her eyes and her smile so bright and beautiful that it almost broke your heart.
�I keep thinking about the day you put this ring on my finger. I know I should have taken it off a long time ago�� you trail off, shaking your head. �My hands were covered� covered in Josh�s blood,� you confess, you voice barely more than a whisper, more because you can�t bring yourself to put any more force behind the words in case this is all just a horrible nightmare than because you want privacy, though you do want privacy and you have it because everyone knows that this is your catharsis, that this is how you�re going to make it through the night. �I was scrubbing it out with soap in the bathroom� but it was everywhere. Especially under the ring.�