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The photographers swarm us as he leads me around the dance floor.

So many couples have something choreographed for their first dance, and I wonder if it looks weird that we don’t since everything else about this wedding is so picture perfect.

But I’m not sure our guests even know it’s not choreographed.

Maybe it was, and I just wasn’t taught the steps.

It’s neither a slow song nor a really fast one.

It’s danceability is questionable at best without a plan, which Aidan clearly has.

And he knows exactly how to move me through it.

When to dip, when to spin me, and I somehow also know when these things will happen.

He pulls me in and whispers in my ear. “I picked this song for you. Listen to the words.”

I swallow around the lump forming in my throat…

I’ve known the words to this song forever.

Erica and I used to sing it in her car with the top down.

There’s no way I can shut these words out…

they are a plea for me to give him a chance.

Even now he wants me to come around. Even after everything that brought us here.

I take in the reception space. There are many round tables with linen tablecloths and a special table set aside for me and Aidan.

Our guests have already been served and are eating dinner.

Our food hasn’t been delivered to our table yet, probably being kept warm in the kitchen.

There are huge bouquets of colorful Gerbera daisies for centerpieces.

It’s a more fun party flower than the serious roses and lilies of the ceremony.

The cake table is at the far end of the room with a spotlight shining down on it.

A large dance floor has been installed for the reception.

Along one entire interior wall is aquarium glass, with fish and sharks swimming in the saltwater behind it.

It’s one of the many deep tanks. This particular view is only available to those who rent the banquet space.

Two cylindrical tanks stand on either side of the big tank filled with glowing blue and green jellyfish.

and above us in this part of the building is a flat glass ceiling, giving us a perfect view of the emerging stars as the full darkness of night blooms.

Fireworks start to go off, bursts of bright colors exploding above us. It’s a spectacular show, and if our guests’ oooh’s and aaaah’s are accurate, they seem to be transported by the display as well. At least they aren’t paying too close attention to the bride and groom now.

I feel Aidan go stiff, tension rolling off him. I glance up to see why he’s stopped dancing. He’s staring up at the sky. His face looks haunted like he’s somewhere else entirely.

“Aidan?” I think it’s the first time in my entire life I’ve ever said his name in a way that sounded like concern instead of derision or fear.

“Hey,” I say, again, not sure what to do or what’s happening right now.

He seems to snap out of whatever fugue state he was in, but when he looks at me, I still see the shadow of something I can’t explain in his features. I don’t know what this is about, but it’s something about the fireworks. He pulls away from me suddenly and rushes to the nearest exist.

The song has changed and no one has yet noticed the groom’s absence. They’re still staring at the exploding flashes of light overhead. Most of the photographers are capturing the light show. Only Giselle’s attention has stayed on us.

“Is he okay?” she asks.

“He got a call he had to take,” is the first lie I can think of.

She nods. “I hope everything’s all right.”

Clearly she wasn’t paying close attention this whole time since Aidan never had a phone in his hand. Or maybe she’s just being polite about my obvious lie.

I get off the dance floor before our guests notice Aidan is gone and tell the DJ to get everybody out on the dance floor, hoping to obscure our absence. Then I go in search of the wedding planner.

I finally find Carol in the kitchen.

“Did Aidan plan the fireworks?” I ask.

“Oh, no, that comes as an add-on with wedding receptions at the aquarium—at least if they happen at night.”

“Did he request it?”

“We didn’t discuss all the exact details. He said he trusted me to handle and manage everything. Why? Did he not want fireworks? I thought they were a really romantic touch.”

“No, it’s okay. I was just curious.”

I return to the party, and against my better judgment I go to the door Aidan disappeared out of wondering if I should go out there and look for him.

I don’t know why I would do something so insane, but he did not look okay. Is this sympathy for my captor? Already? I shouldn’t be concerned about his well being, I should hope he falls into a shark tank and meets an untimely death so I can go back to my life.

I’m still standing in this indecision, fantasizing about Aidan being flung over the railing to his doom when the door swings open, and he’s back.

“Are you okay? What was that back there?”

He shakes his head and avoids my gaze. “Fine. It’s nothing. Let’s go to our table.”

He doesn’t say anything else about it. They bring our food as soon as we’re seated.

Dinner is rosemary roasted Cornish hens, caramel-glazed carrots, green beans, potatoes, and Caesar salads.

I’m surprised that I can actually eat right now, but I’m starving.

Instead of forcing myself to eat I’m having to force myself to slow down so I don’t embarrass myself.

As soon as we’re served, the toasts start.

Aidan’s best man, Vale, gives a nice but largely forgettable speech.

Erica is next, and she’s very careful about how she phrases things, focusing more on how long she and I have been friends and how much she loves me and hopes for my happiness more than anything else…

then Aidan’s Uncle Martin gets up and takes the microphone. He turns to us.

“It touches my heart to see my nephew find love, and even though marriage was never for me, I hope you two find an ever-deepening love and commitment to each other as the years go by.” The finality of these words press in on me, shrinking the room to a size far smaller than should be possible with this many people.

He turns back to the rest of the guests to get to the meat of his speech.

“Aidan might kill me for saying this, but it’ll be worth it.

Soon after he came to live with me, he became absolutely smitten with this little girl at his school.

I got to hear nearly every day about how “so cool” Madison Prescott was.

He was obsessed with making Valentine’s Day perfect for her that year.

He knew exactly how he wanted the class cupcakes to look, and he insisted we get them from the “good bakery” since if I made them they would be bad and if we got them from the grocery store they would also be bad. ”

Laughter bubbles up around the room. Uncle Martin continues, “He told me he was going to marry that girl someday. Being the confirmed bachelor that I am, I tried to talk him out of this foolishness, but he wouldn’t be swayed.

If I remember correctly Aidan, your exact words were ‘Well I’m marrying her, and we’ll just see about all this.

’ You were bullheaded even as a six year old. ”

I glance over to Aidan who chuckles at this along with the rest of our guests. Then Uncle Martin turns back to me. “Anyway, Welcome to the family, Maddie, Salut !”

He raises his glass. Our guests start clinking their champagne glasses encouraging us to kiss, and so we do.

Brian gets up next. “I’m afraid I’ve got more details to share about the sordid history of these two.

” He waits for the guests to get their nervous giggles out and continues.

“I was there the first time she broke his heart that Valentine’s Day.

It was brutal. And he might have been a tiny bit of a stalker for a while after that. ”

“She finally came around and gave me a chance,” Aidan says, his arm around me.

Is he trying to manifest right now? But I can see what they’re doing.

All of this has been orchestrated to disperse the unease of that first dance song, so this can all play off as “cute” and an “inside joke” instead of creepy to calm our guests’ minds.

My parents, Erica, and I all know the truth. And none of us will dare speak it.

Brian goes back to talking, “You’ve got your chance, Kid, now don’t fuck it up.”

After the toasts we return to the dance floor. Some of my chosen playlist gets played, but there’s also a definite stalker theme going strong… “Every Breath You Take”, “I Put a Spell on You”, “Make You Feel My Love,” “God is a Weapon.”

We slow dance to “Unchained Melody”. I try not to look into his eyes, but I can’t help it. His gaze consumes me. It takes everything in me not to reach up and trace the angry scar on his face. When the song is over we sit back down for a while.

Aidan and I don’t get to talk to each other because about fifty of his relatives come by in a nearly endless line, introducing themselves to me, making comments about my “birthing hips”, something which I do not have. They’re asking when we’re going to start a big Catholic family.

I blanch at this because somehow in all the details and in my knowing Aidan was probably Catholic, it somehow escaped the screaming pit inside my brain that he might be against birth control, and it might not be a matter of having one kid I don’t know if I even want to have, but eight or ten.

I’m about to turn to gauge Aidan’s reaction to all this talk about big Catholic families, but he’s disappeared again. I politely excuse myself and go find Erica.

“How are you holding up?” she asks.

Much like Carol, who is flitting about the actual party now, “managing things”, Erica has found the magic of hiding out in the kitchen.

“As well as can be expected,” I say. I usually tell Erica everything, but something stops me from telling her about Aidan’s reaction to the fireworks.

In the first place, I don’t know what the hell it means, but also it felt private.

It feels like I witnessed something he would have never wanted me to see, so now I’m busy trying to pretend I didn’t see it.

Some vulnerability I’m not supposed to know. Is he angry I saw whatever that was? I’m not sure.

I’ve increasingly been keeping more and more things from Erica. I’m not sure why, but now I feel compelled to tell her about what happened in that alley that night when we were on the phone and who drove me home.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you about that night I found out I was marrying Aidan.”