time goes bye

With clenched teeth Sidney stood at the edge of the dance floor and stared at the bridal couple dancing. His heart was beating wildly and tears tickled behind his eyelids as he closed his eyes briefly to avoid just that. Reluctantly, he looked up again and took a look at the happy couple once again.

They looked into each other's eyes in love. He, tall and his short black hair combed from his face, with a lovesick expression that made him look even stupid. Well, he wasn't stupid. This guy was anything but stupid, after all, he had convinced this wonderful girl, this beautiful and intelligent young woman so much of himself that she wanted him as her husband. And she loved him, he could tell by the glint in her eyes and slightly reddened cheeks.

She looked in his direction a few times, then a shadow briefly covered her pretty face, but after Sidney smiled at her and convinced them both with a nod that everything was all right, she turned back to her newlywed husband. Sidney saw some stubborn dark curls steal from her updo and curl up in her neck. The memories that flooded his mind then conjured up a brief smile on his face. That one little curl that reminded him of the one little curl that drew his attention to a beauty spot he had never noticed before. At the first ball in Sanditon after Antigua. Time goes bye.

He traveled back to the ball that had changed his life. The first ball of some which followed and joined the ranks of being life changing.
At first, he hadn't felt like it and had travelled back to Sanditon annoyed. After he had met Mary and her guest, his thoughts kept circling around the young lady. When he entered the assembling room at that particular evening and his eyes instinctively glided in her direction, he hardly noticed the steps he was climbing down.
She was a picture. Innocent and pure. Real. Neither fashionable nor forced, not overdone or too elegant. She was just her. But she couldn't be real. He just needed to find proof that she was like everyone else. But she wasn't.

Images of this first Sanditon ball still come to his mind. A similar white dress to what the bride wore today, but with blue applications. A feather in her hair, not pearls. But also little curls that had escaped the needles of her hairstyle here and there.
Charlotte had been so beautiful. And overwhelmed by the light and the music, the heat and him, as she had confessed to him sometime later. And he was irritated by her and kind of cornered. That's where they had their first fight. He raised his eyes and stared at the balcony, the balcony where he had given her the first tongue lashing. The balcony where he was going to propose to her months later. Oh, how he still cursed Sir Edward Denham for the interruption.
He sighed and sipped his wine as he glanced at the smiling couple in the middle of the dancefloor. Time went slowly. Tonight.

"You must get over it, old boy!" said his friend Babington in a soothing tone, patting him on the shoulder.
"If your wife sees your face, she'll be angry." 

he grinned pityingly at his friend, but Sidney just shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care. But he did care. He knew exactly that she watched him from a distance as she spoke to Mary. She raised one eyebrow and he nodded in her direction, even though he avoided her gaze. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts. For the moment.

"What's wrong, Parker?" Babington asked. Sidney answered with a sigh,
"Oh, I was just thinking how time goes bye," he sipped on his wine, "then you have to take a step back and remember!"
„What you're doing right now?"
"Yes." Sidney smiled at his friend and a small tear stole into the corner of his eye, which he could wipe away unseen. The day made him very emotional.

„And what exactly are you thinking about?" his friend asked him curious.
"There are a few people in this room who took their second chance."
"Like you and your wife or Esther and me?" He remembered another celebration in this room. At the Midsummer Ball, as Esther gave him her hand, he was the happiest man in the world.