Wedding

Wedding
Abel’s Voice

I had been waiting for him all my life. Since my most innocent years, since I was fifteen. I had always been behind him, trailing his shadow like a devoted ghost.

We had dreamed of this together—a wedding, *our* wedding. Shining candelabras casting golden light upon polished floors, an abundance of food and wine, and me at the piano, for I could not bear the thought of any other hands upon those keys. It had been a foolishly planned dream, meant only for us, whispered in the privacy of his chamber beneath the soft glow of a single candle.

But that dream had never been meant for me.

Now, before a throng of strangers, I watched the love of my life marry a woman.

Anna stood by my side, her fingers discreetly intertwined with mine. She knew every secret of ours. She was my confidante, my only true friend, and without her steady presence I am certain I would have collapsed upon the cold marble.

Abdón—my dearest man, whose caresses had always been the tenderest thing in my existence—was binding himself to another.

He was drunk; I could scent the liquor upon him, and I suspected his bride was no more sober. She was beautiful, yet he seemed scarcely to notice her. Her face slowly grew sad.

When the priest intoned those fatal words—“If anyone objects, speak now or forever hold your peace”—my entire body trembled with violent longing.

I gazed at him. I longed to cry out. I longed to run to him, to cradle his face between my hands and claim his mouth with mine. I longed to be Eleanor.

Had I been born a girl, I would have been the one wearing his family ring, and he might have kissed me openly before all the world.

But I was not.

The ceremony ended at last. He did not kiss her, and I knew—God help me—that I was the reason.

They danced in the centre of the ballroom. She looked upon him with admiration, yet his eyes searched elsewhere, always seeking me through the crowd.

I remained where I was, waiting for him as I had always done.

After all this time, he always returned to me—to my hands, to my red hair, to the freckles scattered across my skin, to the violet eyes that had never looked upon another with such devotion.

And that was precisely what occurred.

He took my hand with cautious urgency after the dance and led me swiftly until we found a silent, private chamber.

For a moment he stood quiet. Then, suddenly, he began to weep.

And so did I.

“Turn around, my dear… please…” I whispered, drawing him closer, my voice thick with the hunger I dared not name.

He looked about the room, studying its every detail.

It was a new chamber. The bed remained perfectly made, draped in white sheets prepared for the newly wedded pair.

I caught my reflection in a large mirror. My eyes—those strange violet eyes of mine—were filled with the same deep suffering that weighed upon my heart. My face was pale, and my freckles stood out sharply beneath the dim light.

But Abdón… Abdón was worse.

He looked as though he had gazed upon death itself.

Yet I knew better. I knew he felt death stirring *alive* within him.

At last he embraced me with a desperate force, so tightly that I feared every bone might shatter. For a moment I forgot how to breathe. My hands moved over him as though this entire nightmare might dissolve if only I held him hard enough.

“Forgive me, Abel,” he murmured against my neck, his breath warm and unsteady. “My love… I swear to you, I shall never love her. You are the only one. The only one I desire…”

“I know.”

I took his hands and began to move slowly, drawing him into a private dance.

He looked at me in confusion, yet I offered him a small, sorrowful smile.

“Dance with me, Abdón. Dance as though this were *our* wedding.”

A silent tear slipped down his cheek, but he smiled. He rested his chin upon my shoulder and held me with such tender care that I felt myself the most precious treasure in all the world.

The music from the ballroom drifted through the walls—a perfect melody, soft as a lullaby.

In that lonely room, locked in the arms of my man, I wished time itself would halt, so that we might remain forever in this interminable, infinite dance.

This forbidden love was the sweetest sin I had ever dared to commit.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he said, and his hand descended with delicious restraint along my back, lingering near my waist. “You have no notion how fiercely I yearned for you. Throughout the entire ceremony I imagined *you* standing before me in her place—your red hair perfectly arranged, my ring upon your finger…”

Something deep within me ached at his words, as though every hidden affection had been summoned to the surface.

He was longing for me, and the mere thought of losing even a fraction of that longing made me feel small and undeserving.

I gazed at him then—truly gazed—and for the first time that night I allowed myself to speak of what I saw.

“Look at you,” I whispered, my voice trembling with both sorrow and desire. “Even now, even in this torment, you are the most radiant creature God ever fashioned. That golden hair of yours… it catches every scrap of light like sunlight itself. And those green eyes—how they undo me. They have always undone me. I have spent years drowning in their colour, Abdón. Green as the first leaves of spring, green as envy, green as the jealousy that now consumes me…”

He stared at me, stunned by the sudden confession.

Then I kissed him with all the love I had been forced to conceal for so long.

With him, I was no longer the proper, genteel, modest gentleman the world believed me to be.

I was simply Abel—hungry for his lips, for his presence, for every forbidden part of him. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that he felt the same.