In Another Life...

Look, I wasn't trying to be dramatic about it. But Meredith's wedding was the kind of event where you end up drinking too much prosecco and having conversations you'll regret, and I already knew I was going to be the tragic single sister, so I figured I might as well lean into it. The hotel bar was doing that thing where they try to make everything look expensive with dim lighting and too many candles, and I was working on my second gin and tonic—heavy on the gin, because who was I kidding—

"Excuse me," she said, and something about her voice made me look up from my phone. "I'm sorry, but do we know each other?"

And here's the thing—we didn't. I would have remembered her. But there was something about the way she held herself, like she was trying to take up less space than she deserved, that made me think of myself at every family function for the past five years. The way she'd tucked her hair behind her ear, the way she kept glancing toward the door like she was planning an escape route.

"I don't think so," I said, but even as I said it, I knew it wasn't entirely true. Maybe we'd never met, but I recognized something in her. The way you recognize your own damage in someone else's careful smile.

She laughed, but it came out wrong. "God, I'm sorry. I've been staring at you for like twenty minutes trying to figure it out. I'm usually better with faces."

"Are you hiding from the reception too?"

"Is it that obvious?" She gestured to the bartender. "Could I get a whiskey neat? Make it a double."

I liked her already.

"So whose side are you on?" I asked, and immediately wanted to take it back. Wedding small talk. Christ.

"Groom's. College friend." She paused. "You?"

"Bride's sister. The unmarried one."

"Ah." She understood. "I'm the lesbian friend they invite to prove they're not homophobic."

We both laughed at that, and for a second it felt like we were the only two people in the room who got the joke. She had this way of looking at me—not like she was checking me out, exactly, but like she was trying to solve a puzzle.

"I'm Nora," I said.

"Claire." She raised her glass. "To surviving other people's happiness."

"I'll drink to that."

And we did. And then we ordered another round, and somehow we were talking about everything—how we both grew up moving around because our dads were in the military, how we both learned to make friends fast and leave faster, how we both had that thing where we could walk into any room and immediately identify the other person who didn't quite belong.

"Fort Benning," she said. "Ages six through nine."

"No shit. Fort Campbell, eight through eleven."

"Did you do that thing where you'd memorize the layout of every new base in the first week?"

"Emergency exits first, then the good hiding spots." I was grinning now, really grinning, for the first time all day. "Jesus, I thought I was the only one who did that."

"Self-preservation," she said. "You learn fast when you're always the new kid."

The wedding reception was still going strong in the ballroom next door—I could hear the DJ playing "Don't Stop Believin'" and my cousin Derek's terrible singing—but here in the bar, it felt like we'd created our own little world. Claire had this way of listening that made me want to tell her things I'd never told anyone. About how I still packed like I might have to leave at any moment. About how I'd never lived anywhere longer than three years, even as an adult. About how I sometimes wondered if I was actually incapable of staying in one place, or if I was just too scared to try.

"So what do you do?" she asked, and I could tell she was trying to change the subject because I was getting too intense. I did that sometimes. Gin made me honest in ways that weren't always pretty.

"I'm a photographer. Weddings, mostly. Ironic, right?"

"Actually, that makes perfect sense. You get to be part of the story without being the story."

And that's when I knew I was in trouble. Because she got it. She got me in a way that felt dangerous and necessary and completely impossible.

"What about you?"

"I teach high school English. Try to convince seventeen-year-olds that poetry matters."

"Does it work?"

"Sometimes. There's always one kid who gets it, you know? Who understands that Emily Dickinson wasn't just some weird lady who never left her house. That she was actually writing about desire and death and all the things we're not supposed to talk about."

The way she said it—desire and death—made something twist in my chest. There was passion there, carefully contained but still burning.

"Tell me about the worst wedding you've ever photographed," she said.

So I told her about the bride who threw up on her dress during the ceremony, and the groom who got so drunk he fell into the cake, and the father-of-the-bride who kept hitting on the catering staff. She told me about the worst poetry her students had ever written, and how she secretly loved even the terrible ones because at least they were trying to say something true.

We were on our fourth round when she mentioned Sarah.

"My girlfriend's deployed right now," she said, casually, like it was no big deal. "Iraq. She's been gone eight months."

And there it was. The reason this felt so familiar, so inevitable, and so completely off-limits.

"When does she come back?"

"Two months. Maybe three, if they extend the deployment."

I nodded like this was normal information, like my chest hadn't just caved in a little. Like I hadn't been imagining what it would be like to kiss her for the past hour.

"That must be hard."

"It is." She looked down at her drink. "Sarah's... she's good. She's really good. The kind of person who sends care packages to soldiers she doesn't even know, who adopts old dogs from the shelter because no one else will take them. I should be missing her more than I am."

"But instead you're here talking to a stranger."

"Instead I'm here talking to someone who feels like..." She trailed off, shook her head. "Never mind. I'm drunk."

"Feels like what?"

She looked at me then, really looked at me, and I saw something there that made my stomach flip. Recognition. Want. The terrible knowledge that this was exactly the wrong time and place and person.

"Like someone I've been looking for without knowing I was looking."

The DJ had moved on to slow songs now, and I could hear couples shuffling around the dance floor next door. Meredith would be dancing with her new husband, probably crying happy tears into his shoulder. My parents would be talking to his parents about retirement plans and vacation homes. Normal people doing normal things.

"Dance with me," I said.

"Nora."

"Just one song. Then we'll go back to our respective lives and pretend this never happened."

She hesitated, and I thought she was going to say no. But then she stood up, and I followed her to the small space between the bar and the windows where hotel guests sometimes had business meetings. There wasn't any music except what drifted in from the reception, but it was enough.

She was smaller than I'd expected, and when she put her arms around my neck, I could smell her perfume—something clean and complicated that probably cost more than I made in a week. We moved slowly, barely moving at all really, and I tried to memorize everything. The way her hair felt against my cheek. The way she fit against me like we'd done this before. The way she was trembling just slightly, like she was trying not to cry.

"I'm not a cheater," she whispered.

"I know."

"I love her. I really do."

"I know that too."

But we kept dancing anyway, and when the song ended, we didn't step apart. We just stood there, holding each other, and I thought about all the ways this could go wrong. All the ways it was already wrong.

"I should go," she said, but she didn't move.

"Yeah."

"Sarah's going to call in a few hours. She always calls after midnight her time."

"Okay."

"I can't... I can't do this to her."

"I'm not asking you to."

But I was. We both knew I was. I was asking her to choose me over the good person, the person who deserved her, the person who was serving our country while I was getting drunk at my sister's wedding and falling for someone else's girlfriend.

She pulled back then, just far enough to look at me. Her eyes were bright with tears she wasn't going to let fall.

"In another life," she said.

"In another life, we would have met when we were both free."

"In another life, I would have been braver."

"In another life, I would have kissed you in that bar and not cared who saw."

She smiled then, sad and beautiful and final. "In another life, we would have had time."

She kissed my cheek, soft and quick, and then she was walking away. I watched her go, watched her disappear into the crowd of wedding guests and hotel patrons and people who belonged to other people. I stood there for a long time, still tasting her whiskey on my lips, still feeling the ghost of her hands on my neck.

When I finally made it back to the reception, Meredith was cutting the cake. Everyone was cheering and taking pictures, and I grabbed my camera and did my job. I took photos of the bride and groom, of our parents dancing, of my cousin Derek passed out in a chair with frosting in his hair. I captured all of it—the joy, the tradition, the beginning of something that was supposed to last forever.

But later, when I was back in my hotel room, I didn't think about any of those pictures. I thought about Claire, about the way she'd said "in another life" like it was a prayer instead of a goodbye. I thought about Sarah, who was probably awake right now in some desert halfway around the world, missing her girlfriend and counting days until she could come home.

I made myself a cup of terrible hotel coffee with the little machine on the dresser, and I sat by the window looking out at the city lights. Somewhere out there, Claire was probably awake too, probably talking to Sarah on the phone, probably not mentioning the woman she'd danced with at a stranger's wedding. Probably not mentioning that for one night, she'd felt like she was exactly where she belonged.

I raised my coffee cup to the window, to the city, to all the people out there living their almost-lives and their what-if stories.

"In another life," I said to no one, and drank my coffee, and tried to forget the way she'd felt in my arms.