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Cleo thinks that they’ve fallen in love only a few times in her life.
The first is when she’s young, and dumb, and hasn’t started building the shell they’ve so well prepared as an adult. Cleo meets a girl in high school, someone who she sat beside in science class and made them laugh. She is young enough to convince herself that maybe, just maybe the girl is looking at them with something more than friendship in mind, that she likes her. She manages to think about her so much, imagine in only the way a young, dumb teenager can, that Cleo nearly gives her whole heart away. They get as close as thinking about confessing when the girl rejects her.
“You’re such a good friend,” she says. “I wish my boyfriend was like you.” And Cleo’s heart begins to break. They patch it up with superglue and a heart-shaped band-aid.
The second time Cleo thinks she’s fallen in love, it’s with a person she has a short fling with in college. They talk every day, plan their kids’ names, even pick out wedding colors. The fling ends suddenly and quietly, the summer after the other person graduates. Cleo hadn’t got their hopes up the whole relationship, hadn’t even tried to think of any future she could have with this person. But she fell anyways, and when it ends (just a text saying I love you, but it’s over .) the superglue holding the shards of her heart together fails. Cleo doesn’t try to fix it this time, just sort of pushes the pieces together to form the shape her heart once was.
The third is Etho. Cleo makes it clear that she’s not interested in anything serious, in getting married. Etho doesn’t say anything.
Etho treats being in love like a game. It’s less of a commitment for him, more of something to have fun with then drop when he gets bored. Luckily for everyone around him, he doesn’t get bored easily.
They meet because Etho just so happens to be walking by the school where Cleo works when they leave. It’s so stupid, the way he manages to ask them to dinner, that it’s almost endearing. Cleo’s not terribly interested in dating, but she takes him up on it anyways, seeing as nothing bad comes out of a free meal.
It’s somehow just bad enough that Cleo thinks about ordering the strongest stuff they have just so they’ll forget about the night, but not quite bad enough that she leaves. And, when Etho drops her off later that night with a stammered goodbye, Cleo is a little enamored. They’re not sure why, maybe it’s the jokes or the way he looks at her when he thinks they aren’t paying attention, but whatever it is she kind of wants to see him again.
And she does. Etho manages to just be there whenever Cleo is walking to work, or getting groceries, or walking her cats in the park. Occasionally he’s in trouble and needs her to get him out of it (a particular evening in which he has been cornered in a tree by an incredibly scary chihuahua and needs her cat, Atlas–who doesn’t even like walking–to save him comes to mind), but often Etho just wants to talk. And Cleo lets him, even though sometimes they don’t really know why. She even lets him take her on a second and third date.
Eventually Cleo gets tired of meeting Etho outside like a stray animal or at restaurants neither of them really like eating at, and invites him to her home. They’ve been seeing each other for a few months now, and it still hasn’t gotten that far. He shows up in a rumpled button-up shirt and a pair of jeans that might have been black at some point, untied bow-tie around his neck. He doesn’t have flowers, but then again he never does, and Cleo doesn’t expect them. She prefers flowers when they are wilted and dying, perfect for pressing into books.
“I ran out of time,” he mutters nervously when they look pointedly at his tie. “And… I don’t know how, anyways.”
Cleo takes the two ends in her hands, stepping closer in order to tie it. Then, maybe because she wants to, maybe because she can feel the pitiful begging in Etho’s eyes, she pulls him even closer with the tie, and kisses him. It’s meant to be soft, and sweet, but they accidentally snag a tooth on his lip, biting down before she can even think.
“Sorry,” Cleo says, pulling away. “I shouldn’t have…”
“It’s fine,” Etho mutters, looking not upset but surprised. “I won’t say I didn’t want it.” He pauses. “Um… do you want to watch a movie?” That’s what he’s here for.
They watch some cheesy horror movie, just scary enough that it has both of them jumping but cliche enough that they can laugh. And when he leaves late that night, Cleo kisses Etho again, just once, on the cheek. That time he grins.
It is not Cleo’s idea to move in with Etho, but it turns out that his lease is up and he needs a place to live. They’re not too happy with it, but Atlas and Glados seem to like him, and he’s not an awful roommate, so she lets him move in. This proves to be a choice, although she can’t quite tell if it’s a good one or not. Cleo has learned, about herself, that they don’t quite live well with other people. They’re snappy, always tense, petty about the smallest things. Etho is too, sometimes, when he’s present. So they work. Cleo makes a petty comment about the forgotten laundry in the machine, and then the next day she receives a delivery at her bedroom door of a dish they forgot to wash the night before with a post-it note taped to it with a skull and crossbones on it. It’s the first time that they’ve actually had a roommate they meshed with well.
Of course, this would work if they were just roommates. It works less well now that they’re trying to have some sort of a romantic relationship. And they’re both trying, no matter how much Cleo’s friends at work insist that she's trying so much harder than Etho is. Romantic gestures, dates, anything of the sort, are hard when they're both so busy, but they both try.
Etho leaves Cleo little notes places, makes them food when they stay late at work. He listens to her crap and rubs their back when the scars across it ache. Cleo will give him little kisses, tokens of affection, even playfully swat at him. But it, somehow, doesn't feel enough.
Etho's parents expect a marriage. They've been dating for a few years now, it's expected of them by most of the older generation. So they begin to plan.
Cleo is still not sure she even wants to be in a romantic relationship with Etho. They reciprocate, of course, when it comes to their sexual relationship. But romantic relationships make Cleo's heart scatter like a feral cat away from a trap, like a kaleidoscope of butterflies pounced upon by a bird. She's not sure if she loves Etho. She's not sure he loves her back.
Still, she leaps into the deep end of wedding planning without a life jacket. Still, she lets Etho's mother and aunts and her sister drag her to every appointment like the corpse she feels like.
The only bright side is, ironically, Etho, who treats the situation as if nothing has changed. They still joke, he still teases, she still snipes at him. They still sit on the couch, watch scary movies until the dark looks back at them, and make jokes about the character choices. It is all the same, and yet, it isn't.
Cleo watches the days before the wedding fly by like a prisoner on death row. It’s not the actual wedding that scares her, Cleo would rather die than be scared of something that involves Etho. No, instead, it’s the moving parts of it, the dress and the cake and the officiant and the wedding party and the massive amount of everything that’s been involved. And it’s the vows.
They are going to have to stand up there, look Etho in the face, and lie to him. They are going to have to say that they love him, that Cleo will spend her whole life loving him. She won’t. Cleo’s come to the conclusion, over the past few months, that she doesn’t love him. She enjoys being in Etho’s company, and the occasional sex, but anything that would mean love, real and true spend all your days with him love, couldn’t ever happen.
Regardless, though, she sits through all the fittings and makeup appointments and budget meetings and smiles. Cleo ignores the way the makeup artists try to cover the scar on her nose, even though she knows no amount of makeup will hide it. She ignores the unflattering dresses her future mother-in-law chooses for the bridesmaids (she’s only going to have one, her sister, and a bridesman, her best friend Joe) and the strange color choices Etho throws out (Cleo vetoes those).
They ignore it all and count down the days until it happens, until everything goes back to normal. As much as it could, anyways, after a mistake of such horrid proportions has occurred.
They break pretty much all of the Rules Of Weddings. Etho and Cleo get dressed together, in their living room, like teenage girls getting ready for a dance.
“Isn't this, like, bad luck?” Cleo asks as she pulls her hair into a bun. “For you to see me?”
Etho shrugs, fiddling with his tie. “I’unno. Uh, will you…” He still hasn't learned how to do it.
“Fine.” Cleo grabs the two ends of the bow-tie, ready to tie it. Before she can, however, her sister barges in.
“You two,” she says, voice piercing Cleo's ears and making her wince. “Are going to be late.”
The tie goes forgotten on the floor as they rush out in a whirlwind of tulle and glitter. Etho looks better without it, anyways.
The next Rule Of Weddings that they break is that Cleo walks down the aisle alone. This is a choice she made for herself, the only thing they put real input in for. Their father is estranged, mother dead, sister already at the altar, and Cleo walks alone.
As they walk, emotions begin to build up. Regret, anger, confusion, fear. She is walking towards the death of her future, right now, towards someone they will never love the way they’re supposed to, towards someone who’s ruined their life.
Cleo reaches the altar and tries to smile at Joe and her sister, but she knows it comes off as a bit of a grimace. Joe gives her a thumbs up, always supportive but also a little confused as well. They can feel everyone’s eyes on them, all twenty people in attendance (mostly Etho’s family and some of Cleo’s friends, the ones she’s known long enough to trust. The eyes feel like they’re burning into their back, peeling away the high-backed dress to reveal all of her flaws. Etho, the one person who probably should be looking, is not, and that makes Cleo even angrier.
Just look at me, idiot! She wants to yell, but doesn’t. Instead she smiles at the priest, straightens her back, and prepares for the worst.
Etho gives some… empty, emotionless speech about love and life and death and when he’s done they’re all looking at her, ready to hear the meaningless words that they scribbled down at one AM the night before. And Cleo looks back.
And then they stop.
“I can’t do this,” they say, first quietly, just for Etho, then louder. “I can’t do this.” It’s dead silent. “I don’t love you, Etho,” Cleo says. “I’ve never loved you, not like that. I’m so sorry. ”
The chapel is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Behind them, Cleo can feel her sister staring daggers into her back, shaking silently with the anger only a sister can have. Someone–maybe an aunt, a grandmother–gasps from the audience, a few people murmur. Cleo keeps staring dead ahead, straight at Etho, daring him to say something. He doesn’t, doesn’t even look her in the eyes. Tell me something to change my mind, Cleo wants to shout. Make this better, somehow. They don’t.
The priest clears his throat. “You wanna… take that back?” He mutters. “We’re not that far into the ceremony, it’s not too late.”
Cleo swallows, feeling the jagged shards of the truth slice through her throat. “I-I… I can’t. This is so much, so… so much. It’s too much.”
“Cleo,” Etho says quietly. He doesn’t sound angry, just tired. “Let’s get this over with, please.” They’ve fought like this before, but never in quite an inopportune place. They’ve fought like this before, the quiet fight of two people that have given up, and it never goes the way either of them want.
This argument ends the way that most of them do. Cleo does a 180 and storms out, back down the aisle, to the church doors. They can hear muttering behind them, starting quiet but getting louder, and footsteps running after them.
“Cleo!” They hear Etho yell as they reach the doors. “Sto-op!” She doesn’t, storming outside into the sun.
“Don’t pretend you want anything good for me,” she spits. “You’re the reason we’re here in the first place.”
Etho laughs. “ I am? You could have said no at any point! You know I was only going along with this for my family!” Cleo whirls on him, and lunges, landing a crisp slap on his cheek. “Oh, so that’s how you want to play it.”
He punches her shoulder. “Yeah,” Cleo yelps. “That’s how we’re doing this.” While he’s still following through from the punch, she grabs his hair and collar, shaking Etho back and forth like a doll. He does the same, grabbing onto their necklace and updo, locking them both in a grapple.
“Were you telling the truth in there?” Etho grinds out, tightening his grip on the hair and knocking an elbow into her nose, causing blood to drip down and onto her dress. “That you don’t love me?”
“Yeah,” Cleo says flatly. “It took me some time to come to terms with it, but I’ve never loved anyone like that. Not even you.” As she’s pulling, her hand slips and scratches his lip, causing the skin to break.
“Guys!” Someone shouts, trying to get in between them. “Stop it!”
In a frantic bid to land more hits before they’re split up, Cleo flings her fists wildly, hitting Etho in the eye (and also maybe landing a hit on her sister, who has rushed over to break up the fight). “You’re both children,” she says. “We’ll be inside at the reception when you decide to grow up.”
Cleo’s sister and the few other guests that came out to witness the fight file back inside, leaving the sad, disheveled pair to sit on the church steps and nurse their wounds. Despite the fight that just happened, they sit next to each other, and it somehow feels nice.
“Hey,” Cleo says eventually, once her face has stopped throbbing. “Wanna go get boba?”