"Why are you visiting Atlanta?"
"Oh, my best friend is getting married."
"How nice! Are you the maid of honor?"
"Hahaha, no, this is my best guy friend."
"Ah. [awkward pause] So is this a Julia Roberts' My Best Friend's Wedding kinda situation?"
"Oh GOD no."
---
J got married yesterday.
Ten years ago, if you had told me that J would be the first of us to get married, I would have snorted Coke out my nose in disbelief. But here he is. Married, with an adorable kid and a slightly manic dog, making mortgage payments on a cute little apartment in Seattle.
I don't really know what I expected from the wedding weekend. J and I barely have time to talk these days, instead relying on figuring out snatches of our lives from quick texts and one-liner emails. But he still has an uncanny ability of knowing exactly when I need to hear from him. True story: he texted me exactly eight hours after my disastrous car crash, before any mention of it went up on the blog or on facebook. I guess that's why he just might be a fantastic psychiatrist.
The thing is, J and Lisa made me believe in true love. Because that's what we've got for each other. True, unadulterated - completely platonic, yes - but absolute, total, and undying love. It's okay that we don't have those long JLM homemade dinners, where we depended a little too much on our guaranteed acceptances into medical school to completely slack off and watch Bravo reality TV marathons for hours on end. We don't have time for that anymore, what with our actual jobs and the whole being states apart instead of mere blocks away.
But I will always remember that
J always knew my idiosyncrasies. That he would bring me two halves to a bagel, that he'd throw snowballs in my face, that he'd go grocery shopping with me and tell me to start my day off with a
big bowl of pink cereal, that he'd give me his honest truth, no matter how hurtful it might be at times. J knows me. Just like how I know that he dances like an absolute dork, that he watched every episode of Smallville religiously because of his unwavering love for Kristin Kreuk, that when he falls in love he loses sight of everything else (including organic chemistry unit tests), that it doesn't matter how much he's eaten, if you put another plate of food in front of him, he
will eat it and yet, it will never show up on his nonexistent gut. Yes, I know J, too.
And so, even though he denied it, I knew he got misty-eyed when his bride started her walk down the aisle. I knew he got a bit choked up on his vows but instead just gruffed them out as quickly as he could. I knew he was nervous when he first walked out to take his spot, forgetting to smile until me and Lisa beamed slightly-crazed grins at him. And that's when I knew that this was far from the end of our friendship. No, I won't deny it -- when Jeff smiled back at our over-the-top grins, I got a bit misty-eyed too, so happy that my best friend has found someone who can take care of him the way he took care of us, someone who doesn't deny him his friendships, someone who loves him and his somewhat annoying quirks.
We're expanding our JLM trio into an AJLM quartet. We're still separated by state lines and time differences, but it doesn't matter. None of it matters. What matters is that, as corny as it sounds, we're friends forever.
