“Cheap buttons.”
I glanced over my shoulder and found my brother, Matthew, struggling with the cuff of his dress shirt.
My in-laws had already been making comments about his height all morning.
“That suit cost more than my first car, Matt,” I teased.
He finally forced the button through the cuff and examined it.
“Then expensive buttons.”
I laughed.
He didn’t.
Instead, Matthew turned toward the full-length mirror in my bridal suite and adjusted his jacket.
Then he straightened his shoulders.
Lifted his chin.
Straightened them again.
Something about the way he was looking at himself made my stomach tighten.
“Matt?”
He stepped away from the mirror.
“Nothing, Jo.”
I’d known my brother for 32 years.
I knew his jokes.
I knew his silences.
And I knew that Matthew’s word “nothing” had roughly six hundred different meanings.
That particular “nothing” wasn’t one of the good ones.
Before I could push him for an answer, someone knocked on the door.
The wedding coordinator leaned inside.
“Five minutes.”
Matthew looked at me.
For half a second, the uncertainty disappeared from his face.
There he was again.
My big brother.
The person who had stood beside me through every important moment I could remember.
He held out his hand.
“Ready?”
I slipped my fingers into his.
“Absolutely not.”
He smiled.
“Good. I’d be concerned if you were.”
Then I felt it.
His hand was trembling.
I looked down at our hands.
Then back at him.
“Matt.”
He kept his eyes fixed on the doors ahead of us.
“You sure you want me, Jo?”
The question hit me harder than it should have.
Because I knew where it came from.
Matthew hadn’t suddenly become insecure.
My future in-laws had made him feel that way.
And all those years of trying to protect me had taught him how to hide it.
I squeezed his hand.
“You’re the only person I ever wanted beside me.”
His eyes briefly filled with emotion.
Then the doors opened.
And suddenly, we were walking.
But to understand why that moment mattered so much, you have to understand who Matthew was to me.
I was eight years old when our parents died.
Matthew was 19.
One week, he was worrying about girls, work, and whether his ancient car would survive another winter.
The next, he was signing forms at my school.
I still remember watching him sit at our kitchen table filling out paperwork.
Under “relationship to child,” he initially wrote:
Brother.
Then he stared at the word “guardian” printed farther down the page.
He crossed out “brother.”
Then he wrote his name again.
At eight years old, I didn’t understand why he sat there staring at that form for so long.
I didn’t understand that my 19-year-old brother had suddenly been forced to become something much bigger than a brother.
He had become my guardian.
My parent.
My safety net.
I only knew that Matt suddenly worked a lot.
I knew his attempts at doing my hair were criminal.
One afternoon, he found a library book about braiding and spent nearly 40 minutes trying to follow the pictures.
When he finally finished, I looked in the mirror.
I put on a hat before going to school.
“You look great,” he insisted.
“I look electrocuted.”
“You look eight, Mojo JoJo.”
“I’m telling Mom when I see her.”
The joke came out before either of us could stop it.
The room went silent.
Then Matthew put down the hairbrush and pulled me into a hug.
He never tried to braid my hair again.
Money was another thing he tried to hide from me.
One night, I found him sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by bills.
I looked at the papers.
“Are we poor, Matt?”
He immediately turned an overdue electric bill facedown.
“Absolutely not, pumpkin.”
I pointed at it.
“What’s that?”
“We’re temporarily unpopular with the electric company.”
That was how Matthew raised me.
Nothing was allowed to stay frightening for too long if he could turn it into a joke.
Even the nights when I had to go to work with him somehow became adventures.
He called them “Hotel Matt.”
There would be crackers.
Homework.
Vending-machine hot chocolate.
And two chairs pushed together so I could sleep.
I honestly thought I was the luckiest kid in the world.
Other children had babysitters.
I had hotels.
Matthew never corrected me.
Years later, when Ryan proposed, there was never any real conversation about who would walk me down the aisle.
There didn’t need to be.
Ryan already knew.
“Of course Matt will,” he said.
His parents, Selena and Jacob, didn’t react the same way.
We were having dinner when Selena put down her wineglass.
“Wait. You’re serious?”
I frowned.
“About what?”
“Your brother is actually walking you down the aisle?”
“Yes.”
“In front of two hundred people?”
I stared at her.
“He raised me.”
Selena exchanged a glance with Jacob.
Then she laughed.
“Honey, people are going to stare.”
Ryan stopped eating.
Selena continued.
“And he’ll be in every single photograph. We’re paying for a beautiful, elegant wedding. I don’t want the entire ceremony turning into people whispering about your brother.”
I felt my face getting hot.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t want the entire ceremony turning into people whispering about your brother.”
Jacob leaned back in his chair.
“Don’t make this uglier than it is, Jodie. We’re talking about presentation.”
“No. You’re talking about Matt.”
“We’re paying a significant amount for this wedding,” Jacob said. “I think that gives us the right to make sure it doesn’t look ridiculous.”
Ryan’s chair scraped sharply against the floor.
“Then keep your money.”
Selena blinked.
“Excuse me?”
Ryan stood.
“Matt walks Jo down that aisle, or there is no wedding.”
“Ryan, sit down.”
“No, Dad.”
He looked directly at both of his parents.
“You don’t get a vote on this.”
For a while, I thought that settled everything.
It didn’t.
Selena simply became quieter about her objections.
Then I discovered that she had contacted our photographer.
She had suggested avoiding full-length photographs of Matthew.
The photographer told me.
I confronted Selena.
She called it a misunderstanding.
Then Jacob suggested having another man walk beside Matthew.
“For balance,” he said.
I asked him what exactly needed balancing.
Suddenly, his coffee became extremely interesting.
Two days before the wedding, Selena made one final suggestion.
There was a side entrance near the front of the venue.
“Maybe Matthew could come through there instead.”
“Why?”
She hesitated.
“It would just be less distracting.”
I hung up.
And now, standing behind those ballroom doors in my wedding dress, I finally understood what all those comments had done.
Matthew was trying to make himself taller.
He was standing straighter.
Lifting his chin.
Adjusting his shoulders.
Trying to somehow become less noticeable.
I squeezed his hand.
“Look at me.”
He did.
“You’re the only person I ever wanted beside me.”
His eyes became glassy.
“Even if I ruin the pictures?”
“Especially then.”
That finally made him smile.
The doors opened.
Two hundred guests rose.
Matthew glanced down the aisle.
“Ready, Jo?”
“No.”
“Excellent. Let’s ruin a wedding.”
I laughed.
And we walked.
For the first few seconds, all I could see was Ryan waiting for me at the altar.
Then I heard someone sniffle.
My best friend grinned at me from the second row.
Matthew’s steps stayed steady beside mine.
Halfway down the aisle, I heard it.
A laugh.
I turned slightly.
Selena had lifted her program in front of her mouth.
Jacob leaned toward her, grinning.
As we passed, Selena whispered:
“At least the photographer can crop it.”
Matthew’s hand tightened around mine.
