Love Is An Open Door

Wounded Elegance

The exchange was observed in full by Mei, standing at the periphery, the sole bridesmaid in a dress that would have been called “sangria” in catalogs but, on her, looked more like an exposed wound. The silk clung to her in places it wasn’t meant to, hips, ribs, one shoulder blade that never quite sat even with the other. She fidgeted with the seam at her hip, rubbing the fabric between her fingers until it balled into a tiny knot. It gave her something to do. A small rebellion. A private ritual.

Her bright green eyes never left the hands of her sister and new brother-in-law, especially the way Kye’s fingers enclosed Thomas’s, so tight it might leave a shadow underneath the skin. Not bruising, exactly. Just… memorization.

Mei had seen that grip before, years ago, on the playground, when Kye had pulled her away from a snarling stray dog by the wrist. Same fingers, same force. A gesture of protection. Possession. Panic.

The photographer, a slim woman with pastel nails and a perpetually encouraging tone, directed people into constellation-like arrangements: families, friends, the odd workplace superior with a practiced smile and hands always just behind someone's back. Guests obliged without question, shuffling into place with murmured laughter and teeth bared in cooperative unison.

When it was time for the “nuclear unit” shot, Harold and Pearl moved in like the jaws of a vise, each setting a hand on Kye’s shoulder. Their placement was perfect, symmetrical, unmistakable. Thomas, meanwhile, was gently but firmly shunted toward the edge of the frame, where the light didn’t quite reach him. He stood with his arms at his sides, smiling as though he didn’t notice. But he noticed.

“Mei,” the photographer called, waving two fingers.

She stepped forward, not exactly smiling, not exactly resisting. As she approached, Pearl reached out and placed a guiding hand on her back, just below the shoulder blade, and steered her with the same grace one might use to adjust a decorative candle slightly to the left.

Mei was positioned beside her sister, but not quite beside her. Her hem did not touch Kye’s. Her shadow did not cross the border of Kye’s veil. She hovered just outside the radius of her sister’s skirt, a satellite in an unspoken orbit.

The photographer said something cheerful. Everyone smiled.

The camera clicked.

Thomas blinked three times in rapid succession, his lashes fluttering like a code only Mei seemed to catch.

Kye did not blink at all.

She stood still, gaze unbroken, the ghost of the photographer’s flash reflecting in her pupils like something behind glass.

Mei wondered, not for the first time, if anyone else could tell that her sister had disappeared on the inside.

While the formalities persisted, Mei floated among the guests, smiling and nodding at comments she did not quite hear. Her lips moved on autopilot, thank you, yes, wasn’t it lovely, the weather had held after all, but the words passed through her like music in another room.

She found herself at the drinks table with a glass of club soda, the condensation pooling under her fingers like something melting without permission. The ice had already dulled, the bubbles rising lazily. Around her, the murmur of conversation rolled on, velvet and champagne and a low undercurrent of performance.

She was just lifting the glass to her lips when she overheard it:

“You know,” said one of Kye’s old friends, an aunt, or maybe a cousin, hard to tell through the lacquered makeup and wine-glass voice, “you never see two such beautiful sisters. Mei’s like a fairy tale princess, isn’t she?”

A ripple of polite laughter followed. It didn’t reach Mei’s ears so much as it pricked along the nerves beneath them.

She turned and nodded at the compliment, catching their eyes just long enough to seem gracious. She had been taught how to do that, how to accept praise like a good coat: thank you, yes, it fits. But her eyes, wide and green and arrestingly clear, flared with the acute, secret pain of someone being admired for attributes that felt more like punishments.

Because what they never saw was how her beauty froze her in place.

How it made people believe things about her that she never said.

How it became a mirror that reflected everything but her.

She drifted after that, orbiting the proceedings like a minor moon. She stayed in motion just enough to avoid being caught in conversation, sipping her club soda as if it had secrets at the bottom. Around her, the wedding unfolded with a choreography too intricate to disrupt.

She watched Kye and Thomas perform the cake-cutting. His hand covered hers on the knife, a picture-perfect gesture, but his knuckles were white around the hilt, and Kye’s smile was stretched tight enough to split. The slice landed askew on the plate, but no one commented. Forkfuls were exchanged with the awkwardness of people reenacting a memory they never owned.

Farther off, Harold was in quiet conference with three men in identical suits, dark blue, clean-shaven, forgettable by design. They nodded in sync, faces arranged into the solemn expression men wore when discussing matters of consequence: contracts, mergers, inheritances, obligations.

Mei’s gaze slid to her mother, Dr. Pearl Tanaka, who moved from table to table with gliding precision, dispensing compliments like political favors and slices of cake so thin they could have been measured in angstroms. Not a crumb touched the tablecloth. Not a word wasted.

Mei paused near one of the tall glass columns where candlelight licked the edges of the evening. From here, she could see the whole scene in a single glance: the way Kye’s veil dragged slightly behind her, how Thomas never let go of his wine glass, how the guests rearranged themselves around the center of gravity that was her family.

Mostly though, she watched her sister.

Kye was the bride everyone wanted her to be: laughing in quick, silver spurts that sparkled and vanished before they could be interrogated, tucking stray hairs behind her ear in that practiced, effortless gesture that seemed born from muscle memory. She smiled in every direction, at relatives whose names Mei could never keep straight, at business partners who introduced themselves twice, at the elderly couple from their mother’s orchestra board who gifted her a calligraphed check.

She made eye contact with each guest as if she were imprinting them in her mind, collecting the night in fragments to one day replay like evidence: See? I was gracious. I was beloved. I was the dream fulfilled.

But there was a single moment.

Just after the dance, when the air still shimmered from the lights overhead and the scent of rose petals clung stubbornly to the floor, Kye disappeared.

Mei followed, half-aware of her own footsteps, and caught her in the mirror-glassed corridor outside the powder room. Kye stood alone, shoulders slumped, one hand braced against the doorframe. Her veil had been removed, leaving her hair undone at the edges, tendrils slipping from their pins. Her face was stripped bare, not of makeup, but of its practiced choreography. The smile gone. The eyes dull. She looked, not like a bride, but like someone emerging from deep water, unsure if she'd made it to the shore or simply found a different kind of drowning.

Mei froze. She didn’t speak. The air between them was too thin for language.

Kye must have sensed her, she always did. In a single, sharp breath, she pulled herself upright, as if yanked by invisible string. Her posture returned. Chin lifted. Shoulders squared. She gathered the veil from the chair beside her and stepped through the moment like it had never happened.

She passed Mei with a ghost of a smile, fragile but flawless, and walked back into the clamor of applause that greeted her return.

Mei didn’t follow. She leaned against the wall, cool stone biting through the thin silk of her dress, and waited for the pounding in her chest to settle.

And she thought, not unkindly, I am the only one here who doesn’t belong to something.

Not to the marriage. Not to the power brokers. Not even to the fairy tale they kept trying to write her into.

Her reflection shimmered faintly in the dark pane of a nearby window. The sangria dress, the glass in her hand, the practiced expression.

She let out a heavy sigh before joining the crowd again.

As the music began, the couple stepped onto the polished wooden floor, their movements synchronized with precision. Every twist and turn was executed flawlessly, their feet gliding effortlessly as if they had practiced this routine a thousand times. Yet, despite the seamless execution, their eyes barely met, and their smiles seemed painted on, lacking the warmth and spontaneity that comes from genuine affection. The audience watched in awe of their technical prowess, but a subtle emptiness lingered in the air, a dance beautiful to watch yet devoid of heartfelt connection.

When the applause came, Mei clapped too, but her hands made less sound than anyone else’s.

It wasn’t deliberate. She just couldn’t bring herself to do more. The sound that emerged soft, and papery was the kind of applause offered at the end of a memorial service. Her palms barely met. Her expression stayed fixed, a gentle smile with nothing behind it.

She stared at the rings, at the way they gleamed too brightly in the fading light. She stared at her own hands, fingers bare and white from clutching too hard at nothing. The skin at the base of her thumbs was creased from where she’d twisted a cocktail napkin too many times.

She wondered, in the privacy of her own mind, if anyone had ever wanted something so badly and so quietly at the same time.

Not even a someone, really. Just… something else.

Something real. Something chosen.

Something that didn’t come with a script or a designer label or the expectation that it would be beautiful on command.

Mei folded her hands and let them rest against the silk of her dress like a secret.