The Green Between Our Teeth

Marcus found the spinach three hours before David's wedding. It was wedged between Marcus's own front teeth, a remnant of the rehearsal dinner's forgotten salad, visible in the rearview mirror as he parked his car outside the church.

He'd been running for three years now—not the athletic kind, but the coward's variety. Running from conversations, from photographs, from the way David's voice still sounded the same when he said Marcus's name, as if nothing had happened between them. As if Marcus hadn't fallen in love with David's fiancée.

Not that she'd known. Marcus had never told Sarah. Some betrayals are small enough to fit inside your mouth.

"You're my best friend," David had said last night, drunk and beaming, clapping Marcus's shoulder. "After today, things change, but not this. Never this."

Marcus had nodded, swallowing the taste of expensive wine and cheaper lies. He'd met Sarah first, actually—introduced her to David at a party three years ago, watched them fall in love over shared spinach salads at that downtown café they all frequented. Watched from the sidelines as his own attraction to her curdled into something bitter and withdrawn.

Now he scrubbed at his teeth with a knuckle, trying to dislodge the green evidence. The wedding march drifted through the open car window—strings, swelling and hopeful. People inside were making promises. People believed in forward motion, in the possibility of becoming someone better than who you'd been yesterday.

Marcus stared at his reflection. The spinach was gone, but his mouth still felt full of words he'd never spoken.

"Friend," he whispered, testing the word. It sounded thin. It sounded like something you said when you meant something else entirely.

His phone buzzed. A text from David: *Where are you? We're starting.*

Marcus turned off the engine. He could start the car, drive away, keep running. Or he could walk in there and stand beside his friend, watching someone else get the life he'd been too cowardly to claim for himself.

He got out of the car, adjusted his tie, and headed toward the church. Running was easy. Standing still was the hard part.