sy: part 2 of we never dated, where your best friend's wedding forces you to see him again after four years apart.
a/n: sorry it took me so long. i genuinely had no idea how to write part 2 the way it was requested. i think i'm actually terrible at writing sequels and i kinda feel like this story needs a part 3 to wrap everything up (don't worry, i'm already working on it!!) also, i'm writing his pov too because i feel like we definitely need it…
sorry if there are any writing or translation mistakes
She had written your name inside the bride's dress at three in the morning on a Wednesday, with a blue ballpoint pen and the expression of someone executing a very well thought out plan.
You found out afterward — Amara had told you laughing, without any remorse, while you were in the makeup chair with cotton between your toes and a reduced capacity to react with the intensity the situation deserved. It's superstition, she had said, as if that explained everything. The next one to find love is the one whose name is in the dress. It's tradition.
"My grandmother told me," she had answered, with a small smile that had nothing of regret in it. "I just want to share my luck with you. I want you to find love and live the happiness of marriage the way I have."
That was the problem with Amara — she believed in these things with such warmth that she made you believe in them too, and she had always been like that. She had been your best friend since university, had watched you survive two relationships that hadn't worked, had listened to your analyses of why each one had failed with the patience of a saint — and had arrived at the conclusion that you needed divine intervention or, failing that, the groom's cousin.
It was fine that over the years you'd had bad luck in love. It was fine that every time you allowed yourself it went wrong. You had arrived at the quiet conclusion that perhaps love simply wasn't for you, and you had made peace with that in a way that was honest and not bitter. The adult version of accepting that not every story has that particular chapter.
But Amara didn't accept that conclusion, and Amara had a name written on a wedding dress and a groom's cousin called Lucas.
Twenty-seven. Architect. Had lived in Lisbon for three years and come back. Amara described him with the efficiency of someone writing a product brief: ''attractive, funny, intelligent, uncomplicated, you'll like him'' and had decided, with the unilateral authority of a bride, that you and he would walk in together because you were the wedding party and because she had a plan and the plan made more sense if you had time to get to know each other before the altar.
You had said fine, Amara.
Because it was her wedding and you loved her.
What you hadn't said, in the same conversation where you agreed to all of this, was that three weeks earlier she had mentioned in passing, with the criminal casualness of someone who doesn't understand the weight of what they're saying, that Desiré had confirmed he was coming.
"Desiré confirmed", she had written in the message, as if it were logistical information, as if you were going to process it with the same neutrality with which you processed the dinner menu. You had been holding your phone when the message arrived and had stood looking at the screen for a stretch of time you couldn't quantify, with that specific feeling of when the ground changes texture under your feet before you've noticed you were walking.
Four years. Four years without seeing each other, without being in the same place, and you worked in a field where you could easily have crossed paths with him dozens of times, but never the same event, never the same city on the same day. You had arrived at the quiet conclusion that there was something looking after your heart in a way you couldn't name but appreciated. When fate sees that someone isn't right for you, it makes them disappear and that's a good thing.
But this time there was nowhere to go.
So you had replied "wonderful, it'll be beautiful" and put your phone down and sat in silence for a considerable while.
On the morning of the wedding you were ready before time, which was rare enough for Amara to comment when she came to pick you up.
"Of course I am. You're the one who's supposed to be late, Amara."
"You're never ready before me."
You adjusted an earring that didn't need adjusting. "Today I am."
She looked at you with the expression she used when she was processing subtext. You looked away.
The bridesmaid dress was green — Amara's choice, because she knew it suited you — and it looked good, you knew it looked good because you had tried it on three times at home before the day, at different moments, verifying that it was still right, which was behaviour completely unconnected to any specific person who would be seeing you in that dress. You'd left your hair down because Amara asked and because it was easier than arguing with a bride.
Completely fine. Nothing to worry about.
"You're nervous," said Amara.
"What?" you gave a flat smile. "It's your wedding. I'm just anxious for you, because of you."
"Both things can be true."
You breathed. "He's practically a stranger now. It's been four years. I'm twenty-six with a career and a life and..."
"You're nervous," she repeated, without changing her tone.
You picked up the bag. "Look at the time, Amara. You're the bride, but we don't need to be any later than necessary." And you pulled her gently toward the door, reminding yourself that today was her day and the only job you had was to be the best bridesmaid possible for your best friend, and if you focused on that, just that, maybe you could get through the whole night without thinking about anything else.
It was a reasonable plan.
Lucas was waiting at the entrance to the estate when you arrived, in a grey suit and with the smile Amara had described accurately — the kind that reached the eyes before any conscious effort, that was hard to manufacture and that he clearly wasn't manufacturing. He had introduced himself with a charm that was genuinely disarming, made a joke about the nerves of groomsmen that made you laugh for real, and on the way inside had asked about your work with the genuine interest of someone who was listening and not just waiting for their turn to speak.
You had thought, objectively, that Amara wasn't completely wrong.
Which was reasonable information you were processing normally as you walked together. Until the moment in the corridor leading to the church entrance when you looked up on instinct and saw him.
Desiré was about fifteen metres away, in a navy suit, in a group of guests being directed to their seats. He was turned to one side, responding to something someone beside him had said, when the movement of the corridor made the group shift slightly and he turned with it and your eyes met with the surgical specificity of gazes that the body searches for before the mind gives instructions.
Enough to see his expression change. Not dramatically, he wasn't someone who let things appear dramatically, you knew that. But there was a subtle reorganisation, a stiffening somewhere between his jaw and his shoulders, and his eyes went from you to Lucas beside you and back to you with a speed that was answer enough even without words.
Lucas said something and you responded without knowing what you said, and you kept walking, and you looked ahead and not back and breathed in a way you hoped seemed normal.
Walking into the church beside Lucas was one of the strangest experiences of your adult life.
Not because Lucas was difficult, on the contrary, he was exactly the kind of person whose presence made situations easier, who could fill silences with ease and who walked with a naturalness that required nothing from you. The problem was the peripheral awareness of where Desiré was sitting, which your nervous system had located with a precision that was inconvenient and completely involuntary.
Third row on the right. Groom's side.
You knew this without having looked directly once, which was the kind of information you preferred not to have about yourself.
The ceremony began. You concentrated on Amara walking into the church with that expression that was the most real version of her — not the performative Amara of social situations, but the three in the morning in a kitchen one when conversation became honest. You felt the genuine tightening in your chest that came from watching someone you loved arrive at a moment that really mattered.
You were present. You were emotional for her. You were fine.
And at no point, at no point during the vows, had you raised your eyes for a fraction of a second in the direction of the third row on the right to find Desiré's eyes already on yours, which would have been information neither of you would have known what to do with, so it was good that hadn't happened.
The cocktail hour in the gardens had the golden quality of late summer afternoons, the light at the right angle, the tables with white flowers, the sound of conversation mixed with something instrumental coming from discreet speakers. You were with Lucas and two other groomsmen in a circle that had started as protocol and turned into real conversation, and there was a genuine lightness in the group's dynamic.
Lucas was funny. Like genuinely funny — the involuntary kind, that appears when people are intelligent and relaxed and not managing their own image.
You were laughing at something he'd said about an architectural project that had gone wrong in a way that was good to tell, when you felt the gaze.
Not from where Lucas was. From another angle.
You didn't turn. You kept laughing, replied to something, and waited thirty seconds before letting your gaze go casually sideways and Desiré was about twelve metres away with a glass in hand and his eyes on you with an expression that was none of his public expressions that you had learned to identify over four years.
You turned back to Lucas.
Dinner had Amara's logic printed into the table configuration, which meant you and Lucas were side by side at the wedding party table and that this had been a deliberate choice by a person who had written your name inside a wedding dress at three in the morning.
The conversation at the table was good, but even so there was a part of your nervous system that had located Desiré two tables to the left and refused to switch off. You hated that you were tracking him without meaning to, hated that your body did this without asking permission.
You saw him throughout dinner in moments you hadn't planned, when you looked up to reach the water glass, when you turned to reply to the person on your left, when the conversation took a natural pause. And on at least two of those occasions his eyes were on you before yours reached him, which was information your brain catalogued with a precision it didn't need.
On the third time you watched him turn quickly to the person beside him as someone who had suddenly decided that conversation was very important, and there was in that movement something so recognisable that you had to set your glass down slowly to not show anything.
You had made that movement several times that evening.
The bouquet toss arrived with the organised chaos these moments have, and you had stayed at the edge of the semicircle with the intention of catching nothing. Based on years of practice and the awareness that you were not the kind of person who ran after thrown flowers.
What you hadn't calculated was Amara. Who had known you for eight years and who knew exactly where you were standing.
The bouquet went high, more to the left than the centre, with a trajectory that had everything of accidental and nothing of accidental, and you caught it on instinct before the conscious reflex of don't catch it reached the system.
The room reacted at once. Amara celebrated with the contained intensity of someone whose plan was working. And you stood with the flowers in your hand looking at them with the expression of someone who has just realised they've been completely set up.
When you raised your eyes, you found Desiré across the room.
For an instant. Your eyes met before either of you could look away and he smiled. It was a small smile, almost involuntary, the kind that escapes before the person has time to hide it. It was light, genuine, and it seemed to have appeared solely because it was you standing there, holding the bouquet.
Your chest barely had time to register what had just happened when Lucas came closer with a joke about weddings, and you laughed, and when you turned back Desiré's expression was different.
The smile had disappeared instantly.
The controlled composure he had carried throughout the entire evening returned as if that brief moment had never existed. You lowered the bouquet. And the room continued around you both with the complete indifference of the world to what was happening in the space between two people who had four years of unsaid things accumulating pressure.
You found him on the terrace by accident — that was the word you would use if anyone asked, even knowing the honest version was more complicated than that.
You had stepped out to breathe after the intensity of the room, the bouquet still somewhere inside, Lucas having stopped to greet a relative, the night outside with that bluish quality of end-of-party that old gardens have when artificial lighting starts competing with the sky. You were at the balustrade with your arms resting on it and your eyes on the garden when you heard the door.
You didn't need to turn to know.
There was a type of presence the body recognised before the eyes.
He stopped a few metres from you. You kept looking at the garden for a second that was too long to be natural before turning.
Desiré had the most unguarded expression you had seen on his face in a very long time — not the interview face, not the celebration photo face that had appeared on every feed during the past weeks. The other one. The one that appeared when he wasn't managing what appeared.
The silence that settled had weight.
You waited for some social convention: polite greeting, easy question, anything to fill the first moments of an encounter between people who were something to each other and then weren't. Instead he kept looking at you with that attention that was specifically his, that was intact after four years as if time had done no work on that particular part.
"Lucas," he said finally.
"You and Lucas." Not a question. A statement that carried something you hadn't named yet but were recognising with the speed of someone reading a text they know.
"We're the wedding party," you said, slowly.
"Then what are you saying?"
He didn't answer immediately. Looked ahead, then at the garden, shook his head in a slight negative with his lips turned down — and in that silence there was a tension that was new, not the cautious tension of dinner, not the calculated reading of your movements throughout the evening.
"I saw you walk in together," he said. "At the ceremony."
"We were the wedding party, Desiré. That's how it works."
"And I saw how he looked at you at dinner." His voice came out differently on the second sentence — not louder, but with less distance, like something being said more from the inside than the outside. "And how you kept laughing. And the dance."
You looked at him for a moment with something moving in your chest that wasn't anger but was getting close. Older than anger, more complicated, that had been quiet in a place you didn't visit often and was now very awake.
"Honestly, I don't understand," you said, and your voice came out quietly because the most serious things don't need volume. "Because you were with my friend. With other girls. While it seemed like you were giving me false hope, and now after four years of not seeing each other you show up demonstrating this and I genuinely don't know what this even is."
"That's not what this is," he said.
"It's..." he stopped. "It's that I watched you all evening," he said, lower, "and every time you were laughing with him I kept thinking I threw away something I shouldn't have thrown away. That I made the wrong choices. That every time I could have..." he stopped again, and in that stopping there was something more honest than the words that came before. "That I was an idiot long enough to arrive here and see you with someone else and not be able to pretend I'm fine with it."
There were things you wanted to say, there was an entire argument formed and ready, with premises and evidence and the clear conclusion that he had no right, that four years was too long, that you had done your work and rebuilt and that his arrival now with jealousy and confession didn't change any of those things.
And he pulled you in by the waist.
"What are you doing?" you said, looking at him without understanding.
"Let me do something I've wanted to do for four years but you never let me." His voice was low, direct, without the performative layer he used when he didn't want to show what he was feeling. "Let me kiss you, so at least one of us knows whether it was right."
You kept looking at him steadily.
Your heart was beating hard — that specific kind of hard that didn't ask permission, that happened specifically with him since you could remember and that was exactly why you had always run. Because when it came to Desiré everything became harder and more complicated, because you had always known he could affect everything in you in a way you couldn't control, and that irritated you, and scared you, and you had spent four years convincing yourself it was easier without it.
But how many more times were you going to run from what you felt?
You raised your hand to his face and kissed him.
It wasn't slow — it was the kind of movement that happens when someone has reached the limit of what they can contain, the urgency of something that had been waiting too long and couldn't wait anymore. His hand on your face was immediate, his lips found yours with the weight of four years of unsaid things, and the kiss was impulsive in the way only the most honest kisses are — without calculation, without planning.
And then the urgency began to slow. Because you understood he wasn't going to run, and he understood you weren't going to run, and the kiss shifted from impulsive to something else, growing slower as the initial urgency met what was on the other side and realised it didn't need to rush anymore.
He moved his hand from your face only to place it differently, gentler, his fingers against your cheek with a care that was the opposite of the impulse that had started everything, as if he had begun running and arrived somewhere he wanted to stay. The kiss grew quieter.
You had your fingers in the fabric of his jacket without knowing when that had happened.
When he pulled back. Slowly, by centimetres, without going far. His forehead rested against yours and his breathing was different from before. "I've wanted to kiss you for so long," he said, low, in the space between your faces. And then he brushed his lips against yours again, soft, almost a question, and it made the fine hairs on your cheek stand up in a way you couldn't ignore.
Not because there was no answer — there were several, there was an entire argument still formed and ready and that continued to be true and you still wanted to have it with him. But there was also the weight of his fingers on your cheek and the smell of the end of the night and the way the kiss had started with urgency and arrived somewhere that felt like recognition, and all of it was happening at the same time and none of the answers you had knew what to do with the whole of it.
You kept your forehead where it was.
And between you, on that terrace, with the garden below and the party inside and four years of distance trying to fit into a space too small for them, there was the very specific feeling of two people who were hungrier for each other than when the kiss had begun.
