I should have sensed it earlier. When she phoned me on Christmas Eve, she didn’t end the call with our usual sweet words “You’re the person I love most in the world!� Afterwards, a couple of our mutual friends asked me for her number and address, and some of them sounded very urgent…
I should have sensed it earlier, or her email would not have been like a bomb, sending a shiver down my spine and making my fingers tremble. She said, “It’s so hard for me to write this email…we decided to get married, the only thing that upsets me is I feel so sorry for you, you have been looking forward to my returning…� I sort of freaked out.
I started planning to ruin her wedding. Plan A: Send someone who can leave for London without needing a visa, to kidnap her. Plan B: if Plan A failed due to someone’s terrible karate skills, at least he could still speak up at the 'any objections' stage. If someone felt sympathetic and kept quiet, then he would be screwed. Actually, I was screwed already since I knew my best friend would get married and might not come back to Beijing. I think only she knew I burst into tears when I got the news, and that I would spent a few days sleeping as she said I was like Naoko’s sister in Norwegian Woods… meanwhile, it’s just her that couldn’t do anything for me…
I answered her soon, with this only. Then got her reply, “I almost wrote to you, but when I started, I didn't know what to say…He’s really a good man, please, bless me. Your blessing is what I most want to have� I felt ashamed afterwards then asked her to forgive me. Although in fact, something inside me seemed to have dropped away, leaving an empty cavern nobody can fill.
Since then, almost everyday I spent a short while weeping when I thought of her. As the tears dropped, little by little, I was trying to come to my sense and stop behaving foolishly. “He gave me a violin for Christmas. He'd said it would be great if I'd learnt to play violin by summer, then I could play The Four Seasons on it. Then he bought me one for Christmas. I was so moved when I saw him concentrating on making something for me, right now, he is making an iron ring. He said he would be the best husband in the world, and I can't wait to see him become a good father, a good grandpa…we read Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching) together every evening, and enjoy it so much.� Reading this, the cavern inside was smaller.
On New Year’s Eve, I finally plucked up the courage to talk to our mutual friends about her marriage, and I finally knew I was the last one to be told. Well, she knew me pretty well, she knew I've have trouble coping, I would be sad, would need time to adapt… But damn, she was going to get married on January 6. Whatever, I needed to hear her voice, even if we couldn't think of anything to say. Then we talked, I just remembered I kept laughing and she kept quiet, because we couldn’t cry. Having hung up the phone, I realized she really cared about me, just as she told me in the email she sent a few hours later, “You’re not the last one I told, but you’re the first one I thought of when I decided to get married, so you can understand what I felt at that moment…sorry, thousands of sorries� No, I should say sorry, as her best friend, I’m not supposed to let her down, how can I disappoint her?! she must be totally happy, how could I be so shitty?! Thinking this way, I suddenly felt relieved, by myself, not only because “I should�
I just called her, she was doing her make-up for the ceremony. She asked,
“—are you crying?�
“—Not at all.100% happy for you�
“—I know you will be happy for me, you’re the best!�
“—I am. Because I love you!�
“—I love you the most!�
Nothings has changed, or at least, nothing has changed for the worse. I realize, I was slow though. Even though she is moving on, we’re still cool, the best, friends.
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