MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING
CLARK
What do you want, Lois?
LOIS
I want you come to my wedding.
CLARK
I can't.
LOIS
Why not?
CLARK
I just can't.
LOIS
You hate him that much? Or is it
me you hate now?
* * *
He stared at the woman behind the wheel of the fancy car, shock written on his face. She was known to everyone walking by, staring into the classy vehicle, as Lex Luthor’s fiancée. Soon to be wife. Soon to be rich.
But to him, she was Lois.
Lois Lane.
And he wondered how she could *ever* think that he could hate her. He loved her more than anything. He had told her that!
“I could never hate you, Lois. You know that,” he said. “I just…”
“What? Clark, please. If I never ask anything of you ever again, I just ask that you – “
“ – Why? Why do you need me there? Do you want my approval or something? Because that is something you’ll never get. Not on this.”
She stared at him for a moment before breaking down.
“I feel like everything is changing, Clark. The Planet is gone. You and I… we’re drifting apart! And… I’m scared, Clark! I am so scared of losing everything. I am scared of getting married and of everything that is going on and changing all around me. I am scared and I need you! I need my best friend! I don’t think you know how much it matters to me that *you* are there; how much it would mean to me if – “
“ – Okay,” he said, staring ahead.
“What?” she asked, her crying stopping dead in its tracks, her pain replaced by confusion.
He sighed.
He just couldn’t turn his back on her.
He couldn’t support her choice, but it was *her* choice. She’d made it. And while all he wanted was for her to return his feelings, he knew it was impossible. He was hoping for the absolute impossible.
And, supporting her choice or not, she was right; he *was* her best friend.
He’d made sure of it.
When he had come into her life, he had seen that she did not trust easily. He had told her she could trust him. That he wouldn’t hurt her. She had finally *put* that trust in him. And he hadn’t let her down so far.
What would happen to her down the line if he turned his back on her because of a major disagreement now? She would never trust again. She would never let anyone get close to her. What kind of person would she then become?
She’d be alone…
It made him ache inside to picture her alone in this great, big world.
He remembered how alone she had seemed when he had first met her. Not in some ways… but in so many of the ways that counted most. He’d identified a kind of loneliness in her that he himself had felt, and he had known there’d been a connection between them. He had known that if they became friends, they’d never be lonely again.
He had successfully broken down the walls she had built around herself. This moment – her begging him to come to her wedding, admitting what she would have once called a weakness, saying she was scared – was proof of that. She had learned to trust him over the year. She confided in him and let him see how imperfect, how *human*, she really was. She let him in. She called him her best friend. She meant that. And he knew that it took a lot for her. All of it.
It didn’t take the sting out, though.
“I said, ‘okay’. I’ll come,” he finished, getting out of the car, not looking at her.
“You will?” she asked, incredulously. “Oh… oh, Clark! Thank you!”
“Sure,” he said, tonelessly, with a wave – a dismissal - walking away. Not looking back.
* * *
Clark pulled out his address book and started flipping through its pages.
There were a few people that came to mind immediately.
Rachel Harris.
Lana Lang.
Even Cat Grant.
He needed a date to this wedding. There was no way he was going on his own. Besides, if he went with someone from Smallville, he didn’t have to stay long. If it were just him, Lois would beg him to stay until it was all over. The champagne, the dancing, the music, the food…
He couldn’t stay and torture himself like that.
If he brought someone from out of town, there were plenty of excuses that they could get away with, which would offer him reprieve from his silent suffering.
…There was jet-lag.
Had Lana gotten married, he wondered, as he looked at her old address, which she had scribbled in his book the summer after their junior year at college. What was it his mother had told him about her…
…There was sickness. Cold, nausea, flu…
Rachel had been the same old Rachel when he’d been in Smallville earlier in the year. With Lois. Lois… that dress she’d worn… He shook his head, trying to shake the image away.
He and Rachel had had fun at the senior prom together. She was incredibly sweet and fun to be around. He had no history with her, as he had with Lana… Well, no bad history, rather.
…There was the flight excuse. “She has to get back to Smallville tonight. Her flight leaves in a little while and we must be going. Well, congratulations. Goodbye…”
Goodbye.
He stared ahead for a moment, a familiar tightening in his chest making it hard to breathe for a moment.
He looked at the book again. At his own scribbling.
Cat Grant was out of the question, he realized immediately, crossing her name off of his small list of potential dates. She would read into it, and make him incredibly uncomfortable for hours on end. And she was a friend. He did not want to be in a position of letting anyone down on that particular day. As it was, he was willingly going into a situation where someone he loved was letting *him* down. He could only deal with so much…
“I can’t believe you are going to this wedding, Clark,” Martha Kent said on the phone, later that night. “Don’t you want to fight for her?”
“Fight for her?” he asked, his voice taut, strained, nearly breaking.
And then, he was angry.
His mother could afford to think romantically, to assume that there was always hope. He was almost angry at her for raising him to believe that too.
His mother could think that Lois Lane might look at him someday and be swept off her feet, realizing she was in love with him. He had dared to imagine it could happen himself. It was stupid! It was so stupid! She wasn’t just any girl. This was Lois Lane. She stood out from the rest. He was a nobody and a fool at that. He was nothing but friend-material to someone like her. And how stupid he must have looked that day, putting himself out there like that, imagining that she might choose him over Lex Luthor. Forgetting all about her infatuation with Superman.
Didn’t his mother know that she was out of his league? That he was an idiot. A fool. A child, practically. Complete with naïve dreams and hopes that should never be voiced. That could never come true.
He learned to face reality a few days ago. To grow up. Why couldn’t his mother!
Fight for her, his mother said. Sure. Because to win her over, he had to just work harder at it. Handing her his heart, only to have it returned completely bruised and battered hadn’t been enough. He just hadn’t done enough! He had to fight! Fight.
*Obviously* that was the problem! He wasn’t fighting nearly hard enough!
It wasn’t that Lois Lane was too good for him and he had been a complete idiot to think otherwise. It wasn’t that he was destined to be alone and was stupid to have even allowed himself to fall in love, when he had *known* that. And he’d known what was happening when he’d met her! How he should have taken her cue and allowed them to simply exist together at work. Not become friends. He should not have let it happen. But no! He pursued the friendship knowing fully well that he had fallen in love with her before it had even begun to form.
He embarrassed himself in the name of that love that he was not fighting for. He allowed his heart to be shattered for all to see. But… he had not fought hard enough!
“Mom,” he eventually said, his breathing heavy, fighting his anger which was trying to get the better of him, trying not to take his wounded feelings out on his mother, knowing she did not deserve it. “I called you for Rachel’s new number. I told you, the one I have is not working. Please,” he added, his voice failing, finally, as his eyes filled with tears that just would not fall.
They would not fall.
He would not break.
“Okay, Clark… I will look for it. But why don’t you come here to get it and I’ll make dinner,” she said softly. Soothingly.
“Yeah, fine,” he said.
What else could he do? What was there in his life besides his parents?
No Planet. No Lois…
He should go there.
He hung up the phone and stood up. He looked around.
Dammit!
He *had* fought. He’d fought hard enough! He had given her his heart!
He had fought!
He’d just lost.
* * *
Lois stood in the center of her apartment, looking around at it. It seemed big and cold and very lonely. Or rather, she felt cold and lonely. And so empty inside.
She found herself thinking about Clark. She hadn’t stopped thinking about him since he’d walked away from her.
He was going to come. He had granted her wish and said he’d be there. He hadn’t turned his back on her. He had never turned his back on her in their entire relationship. It just was not surprising, in the end
She should be happy. Clark was going to be there! Clark! She should be ecstatic. Why wasn’t she ecstatic?
She could hear her own voice in her head, begging him to come. It sounded needy and pathetic… and selfish. She had asked him to come and be there for her, knowing that he hated Lex. He hated him with every fiber in his being. And aside from that, he was in love with her. To ask him to come knowing of those two major facts was beyond selfish. She was beyond cruel.
But he had agreed.
She had begged him like a child wanting candy. And just as he had always done in their relationship, he did what she asked. He agreed.
And instead of feeling the relief that she had thought she’d feel when he agreed, she’d felt just awful.
He hadn’t looked at her. He couldn’t look at her. He’d gotten out of the car, as if it was suddenly too much. Too hard.
Her life had been so hard these last few weeks, she hadn’t thought about his life. What he was going through. She just hadn’t given it much thought at all. She could see it, though. He was going through an awful time. And agreeing to go to this wedding that he was so completely against had been hard. But he had done it. For her. And he couldn’t sit there with her anymore because of it.
He’d stood up. He’d gotten out of the car. He hadn’t looked at her.
But she had seen it.
She lay back on her pillow in her bedroom and closed her eyes. Maybe she could shut it out. Maybe if she tried to focus on something else, she could shut out the image. Shut out his face. And the look she had seen when he had stepped out of her car.
He had looked positively broken-hearted. So hurt.
She had hurt him. Again.
He looked like he couldn’t believe it. What, she didn’t know. Maybe he couldn’t believe that she could actually not only expect him to attend, but beg him to. Maybe he couldn’t believe that he had accepted. Maybe he couldn’t believe that she could cause him even more pain than she had already caused him. Maybe all of those things.
She just needed to forget.
But she couldn’t. The look on his face had been too awful to shut out. She had seen it. And the moment she had seen it, she had wished she hadn’t. But things could not ever be unseen. She knew that only too well.
Maybe, she thought, she should call him and tell him not to come. That it had been selfish of her to expect him to.
But… she couldn’t!
She hadn’t been lying in the car. Things were changing so fast that she was scared of losing everything. They *were* drifting apart and she was desperately scared of losing him. She was getting married and that was a major thing in her life. She needed to share it with him, because if they couldn’t face it together and get through it *together*, they would never face it and get through it at all. She would lose him. Everything she had known and loved would be…
… gone.
* * *
“Your mom said you might stop by,” Rachel said, wiping her hands on her pants before giving Clark a warm, welcoming hug.
“Yeah, I’m just in town for a night,” Clark said.
“It’s good to see you!”
“You too.”
He looked down at the baby goat she had been feeding.
“So when you’re not off chasing bad guys, you’re a mother to lost baby animals?” he asked, smiling.
“I don’t know what they’ve been telling you about my job, Clark, but aside from that one time you were here, nothing too exciting happens. The last ‘bad guy’ I chased was a fifteen year old boy, making out with his girlfriend, who was a little too young to be doing such things with him behind the Dairy Freeze,” she said, laughing.
Clark smiled, but didn’t laugh, as a memory passed over his consciousness and his heart felt heavy with everything that had been weighing him down lately.
“Clark?”
“I’m sorry… I just remembered something, that’s all,” he said, not actually lying.
“Okay, where’s the happy, carefree Clark Kent I knew from years ago, who could make anything happen?”
He smiled. “I’m here, Rachel. It’s just been a rough time lately. I’m sure you’ve heard about the Planet.”
“Oh… that’s right; your mother told me. I had forgotten. Oh, Clark, I am sorry. That was your dream job and now… well, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. These haven’t been my best few weeks, that’s all. But that’s not why I’m here. I was wondering if… hoping… would you like to go to a wedding with me? In Metropolis?”
She smiled and looked away for a moment.
“That would be great! I’d love to,” she said when she looked at him again.
“I haven’t even told you when it is,” he said.
“Whenever it is, it would be great. I’d love to,” she said, her smile growing.
“Great. Well, it’s this Saturday. This is kind of last minute.”
“I don’t want to give you any ideas or anything, but I’m curious. Why aren’t you going with Lois? It seems more convenient, since she’s in Metropolis and the wedding – “
Her words trailed off as she noticed the expression on his face.
“Clark?”
“It’s nothing,” he said, suddenly finding that he couldn’t look at her. “It’s, uh, Lois’s wedding. That’s all,” he said, shrugging casually, like that fact meant absolutely nothing to him.
“I am always putting my foot in my mouth, I swear,” Rachel eventually said.
Clark looked at her then and laughed a little. It was true. As far back as he could remember, Rachel always said whatever came to her and usually ended up putting her foot in her mouth. It was endearing, really. And just so uniquely Rachel.
“It’s fine. And I’m glad you’re coming. I don’t plan on being there long either. Just the ceremony. After the last ‘I do’ we’re out,” he said.
She nodded. “Sure, Clark, whatever you want.”
He started to walk away when she called his name.
“It’s all going to work out,” she said.
He turned and smiled at her. “Sure,” he said, a note of something – wistful – in his tone.
And then he continued on his way, realizing that for the first time in his life, he had absolutely no hope at all that anything in his life would work out. And what was worse, he no longer cared.
