InsaneJournal

"Come on, Lise, it can't be that hard," Mandy sighed, flopping down on the sofa so her legs were propped up on the coffee table right next to where her best friend was agonizing. To take what could have been misconstrued as a bite off of her words, she reached forward and tugged teasingly on one of her curls. "You've only been going on and on about how great and grand your love for him was since we were seventeen."

"This is different," Lisa replied thoughtfully, letting the feather of her quill slowly trace over her lower lip. She drummed her fingers quietly on the coffee table she was sitting next to, just above the parchment. "I can't just say, 'I love you because you know the best places to snog at school without getting caught.'"

"Not exactly applicable," Padma agreed, setting a cup of tea next to Lisa before falling to the floor on the other side of the table.

"Besides," Lisa continued, giving a short nod of thanks to Padma before setting the quill down and reaching for the tea. "It's not that I don't know what I want to say, but I'm more worried about how. How do I say all the shite I want to say and make it okay for an audience of family and friends?"

"You just have to be honest," Padma replied, leaning her chin on her open palm. "No one is going to be judging your vows."

"Besides, he's a bloody writer," Lisa groaned, tilting her head back to stare up at the ceiling as though Padma hadn't put in any input. "He's probably going to write a damn poem or something in meter and a rhyme scheme and it will be brilliant and wonderful and make everyone cry and - "

"Stop, stop, stop," Mandy scolded, leaning forward to slide her hand easily over Lisa's mouth to stop the flow of hysteria. Then, for good measure, she reminded: "Stop."

Lila, who had been mostly silent during the past half hour of Lisa's freaking out, finally spoke up. "Lisa, why don't you just read us what you have so far? And we can tell you if it's bad."

Letting out a sigh that was chiefly melodramatic - but just a bit actually born of frustration - Lisa sat up and tilted her parchment toward her. She let her eyes flick over her handwriting for a few quiet seconds, ignoring the scratches out and the additions in the margins before paraphrasing her ideas as what could almost be a speech.

"I love you," Lisa started simply, leaning back against the couch and not noticing as Mandy leaned over to peer over her shoulder. "You know me and you know that I've been agonizing over this. I want to express to you my love for you perfectly. I to pledge myself to you, to make my promises known - that I promise to be there through everything - the laughs and smiles, the tears and struggles, the spring rolls and B movies." A pause, then, when she scribbled a note to herself. "We both know that among the easy times there will always be the hard, but I pledge to be with you through it all. I will always cherish you, will always regard you, and will always, always love you."

Lisa paused again, her eyes flickering up to glance at Padma as she was closest before looking back at the parchment. "I don't know if I believe in past lives, but there has always been something so familar about you and me from the very start. It was like the world finally started turning, giving sense to everything." By now, Lisa was just speaking, past where her ideas had been written down. "I love you. You are my best friend and I pledge myself to you yesterday, today, and all the tomorrows to come."

There was a silence, then, where Lisa stared at the parchment as though everything she had just said had written itself onto it and her words hung in the air. It ocurred to her right then that in all the years that she had been with Seamus, she had always felt that but she'd never said it - not really. Yes, she told him that she loved him all of the time, but he was the writer and the one that was good as using words to make her feel warm. She, on the other hand, would just kiss him. Maybe that was reason enough to go out on a limb like she was.

Finally, Mandy cleared her throat and broke the silence. "You need to say that."

"Yeah?" Lisa asked hopefully with a twinge of a smile. At their nods, though, her smile turned into an bemused sort of frown. "Like I'm going to remember any of that."