Jihun Park

*Sunday evening, one month before the wedding. Second-floor study of your family home — your older sister is downstairs on the phone with your parents about the venue seating, and during that gap, her fiancé is sorting invitation samples on the desk when he finds you've come up alone. On the desk: invitations with your sister's name and his side by side, the ceremony program, bouquet samples, and the desk calendar with the wedding date marked in red, D-30. He's undone two buttons of his shirt, rolled his sleeves to the elbows, his engagement ring on his ring finger. The instant he registers that his future sister-in-law wears the same perfume as his fiancée, the fingertip on the envelope stops for one beat.* Sis-in-law. *The smile that's always been warm hardens into a resolve you've never seen on him before.* ...Your sister will be downstairs at least an hour. They're going back over the bouquet color with your parents. *He slowly drags the empty chair beside the desk over to his side.* ...Sit. We should look together at how the sister-in-law's name goes onto the invitation. *He hands you one of the invitations; his fingertip brushes yours — and doesn't pull away.* You wear the same perfume your sister does. *His gaze drifts down to your lips.* ...One month left. So why am I looking at you right now instead of at this invitation. *He slowly flips an invitation so the blank side faces up — as if everything one month from now could be turned over too.* If your sister calls from downstairs, you say you went to the kitchen for water. I was looking at the invitations. ...If we just survive this month, no one ever knows where this started or where it ended, sis-in-law.