Posted on 2019.04.15
I wasn’t working the weekend I went to this wedding. My friend didn’t want to go alone and had asked me to go with her as her plus one. I’m one of the few people in the world who love wedding cake. Throw in some teary drunk speeches and a DJ, and I’m good to go.
The ceremony was beautiful. Held in a large old church, my friend and I were seated near the back. We could barely see the wedding party as the came down the aisle, but there was one groomsman who looked familiar.
At the reception, I took a detour past the caterer’s staging area to see if I could get a glimpse of the cake and when I turned the corner, I bumped right into the groomsman that had caught my eye earlier. Making eye contact, I realized why he felt so familiar.
His eyes widened in recognition and got wider when the panic set in. Although this was the first time this had happened to me, I was ready. I held my finger up to my mouth to say shhhh and winked. After all, we shouldn’t have been sneaking around back in this part of the hall looking at cake ~wink~
When we’re out in our regular lives (and yes we have them!), we are off the clock. You are also out in your regular life. What happens in our lives as a Companion stays there and it’s very easy to keep it there. All you have to do is follow our lead.
I headed back to the table and checked the place card. My friend knew I was a Companion, and kept my two lives very separate. Thankfully, my real name wasn’t on the guestlist and my place card simply read “Guest”. Content that he wouldn’t know my real identity, I smiled at my friend and whispered to my friend, “Batman mode, okay?”. For a moment, she just looked at me with confused expression. I sipped my water and winked. Then, she clued in.
We have that kind of friendship where we can just use our eyes to say complete sentences. Seated at the table with the bride’s other university friends, I was able to confirm that yes, a Client was present and no, it was not the groom. Insert a sigh of relief, because that would’ve been just a little too awkward. She knew that she didn’t need to ask who it was because she didn’t need to know.
The poor groomsman though. I could feel him looking at me throughout dinner trying to figure out if I was going to go up to the mic and announce to the room that we knew each other. I found his panic funny but at the same time, I needed to reassure him somehow.
As the night progressed I could sense that he wasn’t staring as much, but enough to make his date feel nervous. As the music picked up, we all eventually made our way to the dancefloor. I had found myself an amazing dance partner for a moment forgot that the nervous groomsman was even present. Until my dance partner sent me on an awkward spin right into him. I was laughing too hard to even notice that I had practically landed in his arms until I looked up at him. I couldn’t resist and blurted out, “we can’t keep bumping into each other like this!”
Which only got a reaction out of his date.
The groomsman? The poor man completely froze! He looked at me, I looked at him, my dance partner looked at the date, and without even turning my head, I knew she was looking at me.
I looked and him and laughed.
“You think you know me from somewhere…”
The girlfriend went from looking at me to looking at him. He opened his mouth to say something and I cut him off before he could.
“The gym. I used to go to the gym…”
“Oh! The GYM!”
He chuckled with a sigh of relief until she said, “you don’t go to a gym?”
Like a moment in a sitcom, all eyes turned to me to get the rest of the story.
“No, but we would bump into each other all the time. In that building? I dunno. This was over a year ago…”
He looked at his date and said “there was a gym in the same building as my old office on Richmond. So you would see the same people coming in and out all the time.”
His date nodded slowly as she accepted that answer. I said to the visibly relieved groomsman, “so no, you don’t know me from somewhere, because we’ve never actually met!” Thankfully, the DJ had a perfect sense of timing and started to play a song that everyone loved, which distracted everyone from asking any more questions.
I danced away with a smile, and enjoyed the rest of my night. I was having so much fun, I missed out on having any cake though.
Photo by Unsplash