I was the one standing next to Fred when Angie walked into the hall in her dress. It was all I could do to not think about her naked with her legs open with her bush and pussy lips looking as elegant and luscious as he had relished and described so well. I say it was all I could do, but it's exactly what I thought about. Until I turned to Fred that was. He was beaming, his lungs were pumped with all the breath he could take - I'd swear that he was breathing in twice as much as he was out. He looked, how can I say it, well, like he was in love completely. He looked stupid in a way - like he'd plunged into a dumbness called love. I guess that what it is - love suffocates other emotions - it's like a detergent for all the shitty ones we feel in a way. Yeah - some emotions live in the toilet and love blasts it clean - just like in the adverts. Seeing him in this way I realised his face had been doing this since he met her. I'd never seen it look quite so acutely dedicated though. I made me think of a conversation we'd once had, way before he'd met Angie, when he was in a particularly ascetic mood:
'If love really exists. I mean if it's a substance of some kind, then please, please stuff my bags and pockets full of it. Or is it, as I suspect it is, some end of the rainbow crock of gold shit? Whatever people say, it's no more than wild chemicals in the brain - zipping back and forth sending us loopy.'
I'd argued at the time that he didn't know that it was a load of nonsense - I think I'd said something crap like he wasn't dead yet.
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If he wasn't genuinely in love with Angie I could have enjoyed a moment of smugness looking at his love-stuffed phizzog, but it really was too pure. It took my mind of where it shouldn't have been wandering - between her legs. You might think I'm a bastard for thinking about Fred's betrothed's cunt on the wedding day, especially since I was the best man, but he'd put it there. It wasn't a desirous thing - it was just an image he'd firmly planted on me. That was his brand of honesty for you - he'd say things exactly, brutally, as he saw them. I usually appreciated him for that, but when you're standing next to a man and his wife-to-be-in-about-ten-minutes walks in the hall, and you're thinking about her naked pussy - then I wasn't so appreciative.
Sorry, I'm going off on one here. The wedding was great - a real party and everyone was very into it, partying until about ten the next morning. I suppose the only odd thing, if it was that odd, was that Fred stayed sober the whole night. Even Angie got drunk, but he stayed sober and the more I looked at him the more smacked all over by love he seemed - is what I thought at the time.
I asked him if he was alright:
'Ruk - I'm wonderful. You enjoy yourself. This is the best day of my life, isn't it? Sorry ' remove the 'isn't it'. I wasn't asking you a question. I look at Angie and it's all there. What more is there?'
I was drunk at the time though and think the best reply I had in me was:
'Fucked if I know mate.'
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Anyway, lets have another coffee and I'll get to the main part of this story. To be honest, I've only just got to the main point.
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