When she mentioned Andrew, it was in the way she had developed of sharing information about her life with me: informative but selective. She told me she was seeing someone, that his name was Andrew, that he worked in finance. She told me he was kind and that she thought it was serious. She told me his family was from Hartfield, which surprised me — I would not have expected her to choose someone from the same town she was eager to leave — but I did not say so.
She did not introduce us. Over the fourteen months she and Andrew dated before they married, I heard his name regularly and learned a general outline of who he was, but we never met. Paige’s explanations for this were always reasonable in isolation: Andrew was traveling for work, I was visiting a friend, the timing was never right. The explanations accumulated without ever triggering the direct question I should have asked: why am I not meeting the man you’re going to marry?
The wedding was the one that broke something for me that I have not entirely repaired. She called me on a Thursday evening and told me that she and Andrew had decided to do a courthouse ceremony the following Tuesday, that it was going to be just the two of them, no family from either side, and that they would celebrate properly later with a party.
I cried. I cried while we were on the phone and then I got off quickly because I did not want her to hear me cry about it. I told her I understood, which was not entirely true, and I told her I was happy for her, which was true, and I told her to let me know how it went.