Platonic Soulmates

“Well this is entirely untraditional,” Luna turned over in the crisp hotel bed sheets to face Cam. Morning sun cascaded into the room and sounds of the city below forced their way through the walls. Her head pounded from the five - or was it six? - dirty martinis that she’d sipped during the rehearsal dinner and welcome reception the night before and her fake eyelashes still clung to the corners of her hazel eyes.

Cam smiled the most familiar smile in the world to Luna. They’d met in undergrad; Luna a serious student on the pre-law track desperate to get the best grades to get into the best law school and someday secure a job at the best law firm in New York (she had, by the way - summa cum laude at Duke, Yale Law School, and a signed offer letter to start as a first year associate at Millbank LLP when she returned from the honeymoon in August) and Cam an unserious Philosophy major who hadn’t thought past what he was going to order at the dining hall that day for lunch. They’d met at debate club, sparring over whether the U.S. should adopt a universal basic income.

“It prevents competition. What incentive would anyone have to become the next Mark Zuckerburg or Jeff Bezos?” Luna objected to a spattering of applause.

“Isn’t that kind of… fucked up?” Cam retorted, fidgeting with the tie on his sweatpants. “I mean, I think I speak for a lot of people in this room when I say we don’t even want another Mark Zuckerburg or Jeff Bezos. We want to put an end to the homelessness crisis in this country.”

Their fellow debate club members hooped and hollered as Luna fumed, digging her french manicured nails into her palm.

“Hey!” Cam called after her as she was walking back to her dorm. She didn’t stop. “Hey, Luna!”

“Yes?” She whirled around to face him.

“I just wanted to say good debate tonight,” His face was earnest. Luna studied the way he was looking at her. His soft brown eyes fixed on her, lined with thick black eyelashes, and his skin was too tan for late October in Durham.

“Thanks,” Luna pivoted back around and started again towards her dorm room. “I should have won, you know. They all just like you better.” She finished without turning around.

“You’re right,” she heard him say with a laugh.

That was precisely the moment that Luna and Cam fell in love, Luna had realized as she reflected on their relationship leading up to the wedding. They were debate partners the rest of the year and started dating shortly after that. They hadn’t spent more than a few days apart since Luna was in law school at Yale and Cam was working for the Peace Corps in Uganda.

Cam stretched and pulled the duvet over his face and groaned. Luna snuggled under the covers so they were there, together, hiding from the 250 wedding guests that awaited them later that day.

Slowly, the two of them gathered their clothes from the night before. Luna slipped into the white pajamas with “BRIDE” stitched in delicate cursive on a pocket that her future sister in law, Maggie, had gifted her and Cam pulled a 10-year-old Duke sweatshirt over his head.

“Well,” Cam sighed, “I guess the next time I’ll see you you’ll be walking down the aisle.”

“Yup, I’ll be the one in white,” Luna reminded him.

“I’ll see you then,” Cam wrapped her in one of his signature bear hugs. He was tall enough to rest his head on top of her web of curly brown hair and she breathed in his oaky scent.

“See you then,”

The hotel door clicked shut and Luna leaned against it, taking a deep breath to steady herself. She padded across the room in her hotel slippers and reached for her cell phone. A few texts from colleagues wishing her a happy wedding day, an update from her future mother in law that the makeup artists would be there early and to be in the bridal suite by 7:30, and a text reading “Can’t wait to marry you today baby” from Henry, her fiance, flashed menacingly back at her.

**

“Welcome to Luna and Henry’s wedding weekend. Cheers to the Courtlands!” splashed across a giant poster in gold foil lettering greeted Cam at the entrance of Bianchi’s. It was Luna’s favorite Italian restaurant in the city, and although Henry’s family wanted something a bit more upscale, hosting a welcome party there was the only request of Luna’s that they had ended up folding on. Ivory tablecloths were draped over long banquet tables with bud vases overflowing with red roses bleeding down their centers. Steaming trays of meatballs and arancini were being passed around by waiters in clean white shirts and bowties as a mustached bartender shook together martinis and old fashions in hyper-speed.

This wedding was basically a business function for them, Luna had explained a few months earlier when Cam asked her why she was inviting 250 people she barely knew when she’d always wanted to elope. The Courtlands owned a private equity firm and were using the wedding of their son, and the heir to their company, to a Yale-educated future first year associate as a networking event slash brag-fest. It all felt very medieval to Cam. Like when the highest lord in the land was marrying a lady from the next kingdom over.

“Cam Anderson!” Luna’s dad clasped one hand on Cam’s shoulder and the other around a bottled Miller Lite. His salt and pepper hair was combed neatly to one side and he was dressed in a navy blue suit, probably provided to him by the Courtlands. He looked funny, Cam thought, dressed in anything other than his usual uniform of a tattered Virginia Tech T-shirt and gym shorts. Cam remembered Luna yelling at him one Duke family weekend when he’d shown up to a football tailgate in a Virginia Tech shirt, to which he’d responded “I’m spending enough money on your tuition, I’m not going to wear their merchandise too!”

“Mr. Parker, congratulations!” Cam smiled with his whole face, relieved he recognized someone.

“Can’t believe our Lu is getting married!” he responded. Cam felt his stomach twist, he couldn’t either.

“You must be so excited,” he managed.

“Of course, we love Henry,” they looked at each other for a beat, the silence between them thick, Mr. Parker was waiting for any indication of jealousy on Cam’s face.

Cam and Luna’s breakup hadn’t been contentious, the opposite in fact. Cam had admitted he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship, and Luna was. They decided they’d be better off as friends, and their relationship had largely remained the same just without the sex.

“Well, I’ll let you go, I’m sure you have to make your rounds.” Cam stepped up to the bar and ordered a bourbon on the rocks. He found an unattended corner table and surveyed the room for Luna. Face after face filtered in and out of the room, mingling, giggling. He overheard 12 conversations on what a lovely summer they were having, six on stock market performance, and four on the upcoming mayoral election. But he still didn’t see Luna. Then it hit him: the terrace.

They’d discovered the secret hallway in Biachi’s that led to a vine-covered terrace overlooking the entire East Village one of their first weeks in New York. Cam had a friend who was a bartender there and he had shown them one muggy evening in June, saying it used to be the VIP section in the 1920’s but hadn’t been used in years. It would take between one and four drinks on their standing weekly Bianchi’s reservation for the two of them to exchange a knowing glance and make their way out to the terrace. They weren’t technically allowed to be on it, but in the years since they’d discovered it, no one had ever checked out there.

Cam took his drink down the hallway and opened the french doors that lead out on the terrace. Luna was standing near the railing, her typically unruly hair neatly slicked back neatly in a low bridal bun with a few tendrils hanging near her face.

“Well hello, bride,” Cam said.

“Oh, thank god it’s you,” Luna said, squinting in the dark. “I can’t talk to another one of Mr. Cortland’s partners about my thoughts on the mayoral race,”

“I sat in there for like twenty minutes and they’ve already convinced me to change my voter registration to republican,” Cam joked. Luna laughed and set down her dirty martini.

“I’m so glad you found me.”

They stood in silence for a while. It was, admittedly, awkward. Cam had always thought that he and Luna would live as platonic soulmates forever, both of them waiting for the other one to admit that they were way too close for friends of the opposite sex and they should just be together already.

“Are you excited?” Cam finally asked.

“ No,” Luna responded honestly. “I don’t love him.”

“You don’t love him?” Cam repeated back to her.

“No, not really. I love the life in New York that he’s helped me get, but I don’t love him.”

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Cam threw his hands on the railing of the terrace. “You’ve had a million chances to break it off with this guy and now, the night before your wedding, you say you don’t want to marry him?”

“I do want to marry him,” she blinked. “I love my life because of him. I wouldn’t have my job if it wasn’t for him. Or my apartment. I wouldn’t be drinking nice champagne in shoes that cost more than my parents' mortgage. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, this is what I always dreamed of for myself, I just wish I also loved him,”

It was the first time she’d allowed herself to say what had always been true. Marrying someone like Henry had always been her plan. It’s probably why she wasn’t upset when she and Cam had broken up, because she knew she could never actually be with someone like him.

“What the fuck Luna?” He threw his hands on top of his head. “You’re going to marry someone you don’t even love for money?”

“Not just for money,” Luna said plainly, taking a chug of her martini. “It’s how people look at me when I’m with him. Like we’re this New York power couple and we can do anything. I’m going to make partner by the time I’m 30. I could start my own law firm! I could run for senate! We’d be like the Clintons!”

“Yeah, because that turned out so well for them,” Cam sat on one of the metal seats facing out over the city. “Marriage isn’t supposed to be like merger and acquisition. It’s supposed to be about loving and caring for someone.”

“I don’t think I could ever feel like that about anyone,” Luna sat next to him. She wrinkled her nose and took another slug of martini, prompting her bravery. “Unless I married you.”

Cam whips his head to look towards Luna, whose gaze is fixed on the twinkling lights of the skyline. She’d said it. The secret truth dancing silently between them for the last four years that neither of them was willing to confront was suddenly out in the open.

“Why don’t you marry me? We’re in love, aren’t we?” The corners of Cam’s mouth pointed down when he asked it and his throat went dry.

“We are,” Luna admitted.

She turned her face towards Cam, his green eyes slick with tears. Her manicured palm reached up to his face and kissed him. They hadn’t kissed in over four years, but it felt like no time had passed. Like they were still 22 and living in a shitty apartment in midtown and staying up until two in the morning on random Tuesday nights, belly laughing until they fell asleep watching Scrubs on Cam’s bed that reached the length of his bedroom. Everything was new again.

They wrapped up in each other, unbothered by the chance of someone walking out and seeing them, and waited until the party had cleared up to make their way back to the hotel room where Luna and Henry were supposed to stay the next night as husband and wife.

**

Luna looked stunning. Her white crepe gown hugged tight through her torso and flowed out into a dramatic train behind her. Her makeup set perfectly on top of her face, concealing the dark circles and puffiness she’d earned the night before, and her curls were blown out and pinned in a half up-half down hairstyle that highlighted the expert contouring applied to her temples. She still felt unsteady from the night before, the weight of her terrace conversation and subsequent sleepover with Cam knocking her off balance.

She was positioned in the bridal holding room of the church, peaking through curtains down at her guests already milling in to the pews thirty minutes before the ceremony was set to begin. Pale pink roses lined the aisle and sunlight filtered in though the ornate floor to ceiling stained glass windows. An instrumental version of Perfect by Ed Sheeran played by a string quartet from the New York City Philharmonic reverberated off of the ancient rafters. Old colleagues traded pleasantries and family members reunited for the happy occasion. It was a shame she was about to blow up this entire wedding.

Luna knew she had to tell Henry about Cam. Although she didn’t love him, she still cared about him and knew that entering into a marriage with someone who knew they didn’t and could never love him wasn’t fair. Luna always set herself up for the next right thing, and telling Henry she’d slept with Cam the night before her wedding was, unfortunately, the next right thing.

She slunk through the bridal suite and waited until the wedding planner, Luisa, was distracted with a napkin fiasco at the reception venue to crack open the door to the groom's suite across the hall. Henry was sitting alone, nursing a glass of champagne and watching the Yankees game on his sideways turned phone. She smiled sadly when she saw him, mourning the loveless, but still lovely, life they could have spent together.

“Ah!” he yelled and covered his eyes when he saw her creep into the doorway. “I’m not supposed to be seeing this!”

“Shhhhhh!” Luna cupped a hand over his mouth. “I need to tell you something.”

He uncovered his eyes and took her in, his face melting into a goofy grin. Luna couldn’t believe she couldn’t love someone who looked at her that way.

“I slept with Cam last night,” She delivered the news plainly, like she was reading him a weather report.

Henry was stoic. If the news was a shock to him, he didn’t show it.

“Okay,” He finally said. “Does this mean the wedding is off?”

Luna hadn’t considered an outcome of this conversation where they still walked down the aisle. She had assumed Henry would call everything off the second she told him, his response puzzled her.

“I know you love him,” Henry said earnestly, his brown eyes soft. “But love isn’t enough to make a happy life and a happy marriage; and I can give you that. You can run off with him if you want, but I still want you to be my wife,”

She thought of the differences in what her life would look like with Cam versus what it would look like with Henry. With Cam, she’d feel safe. She’d feel fulfilled and never stop laughing.They’d live a normal life; one week-long vacation in the summer, fighting at the kitchen table over bills, coordination of work schedules and childcare.

But with Henry she saw promotions with more zeros than she even knew could be on a paycheck, dinners with senators and lawmakers, one to two children with Henry’s blonde hair/brown eye combination and a slew of nannies and housekeepers to ensure they didn’t interfere with her career. Her children would get to go to the best schools and she’d be able to pay for her parents to get an apartment near them in New York after they retired. It was the kind of life she’d always wanted. It was the kind of life she still wanted.

“I still want that too,” a single tear dropped from Luna’s eye, leaving a track through the thick foundation caked onto her face.

“Good,” Henry nodded, and gave her a smile like they’d just closed a business deal.

Luna took a deep breath. She felt her center of gravity return to normal as Luisa knocked on the door.

“Oh!” She was startled by Luna’s presence and frowned. “You’re not supposed to be in here. No time to dottle, it’s go time!”

Luna returned to the bridal suite and slipped her veil into her hair. She clicked on her phone and saw three missed calls from Cam. She ignored them, the weight of her decision finally taking over. Their friendship would never be the same.

She made her way to the doors of the church, the string quartet launching into Lucky by Jason Mraz. She linked arms with her father, who swiped at tears pooling in the corners of his eyes, and floated down the aisle. The over 200 guests blurred together and her gaze tunnel visioned on Cam.

He sat in one of the back pews, looking cleaned up and handsome in a full suit and bowtie. They exchanged an understanding look– Luna’s choice was final, and Cam knew she’d get the type of life she’d always wanted. He just wasn’t sure that he would.