Part 1
Jonathan arrived at the hotel around 7 pm Friday night, it was the last day of a scientific conference he was attending, and he was saying goodbye to some of his friends that didn’t know Giorgio or weren’t invited to his wedding the next day.
Giorgio was Jon’s friend in graduate school and decided to get married in almost the same place and time as this annual meeting that their folks always go to. He was smart enough to conveniently use the conference to have everyone around at the same time and have his party. Jonathan made his reservation in the same hotel where the wedding was taking place, as most of their friends, since it was one of the closest to the conference. Having your friends distributed all over the country requires your creativity to make a proper reunion.
Besides the old friends, Giorgio had a small family. His mom came from Argentina to US when she was young, to marry his father in South Carolina. Giorgio’s dad met her during an exchange in Latin America, and she never went back after that. Giorgio never had contact with her part of the family but learned Spanish and English at the same time. His father passed away while him and Jonathan were in grad school, at a considerable young age, from an unexpected heart attack that kept Giorgio out of the lab for almost two weeks in a row.
He was devastated but also worried about the future; he was the oldest of four, three boys and one girl, and now he was the man of the house. Jonathan supported him as he could and when Giorgio moved to his new job and met Elisa, Jon was the first to know. Elisa, his bride, was a sweet and lovable girl, with blonde short hair and smart eyes, and so short and skinny that felt like she was going to fly away with the wind anytime if Giorgio didn’t hold her tight. But Elisa had a presence, so energic and full of life that if you knew her better, you wouldn’t see her as someone tiny at all. Giorgio was very tall and strong, to contrast his fairy bride, and he has a mediterranean kind of look, Greek maybe, but his mother couldn’t tell their ancestry because she was adopted.
Elisa herself, apparently, didn’t have many people to invite either, another small family. Jon arrived at the hotel’s patio for dinner slightly late, so the wedding guests were already dining. He looked at the main table and recognized Giorgio and Elisa, his family, a couple around their 50’s that he imagined was Elisa’s parents and three other women he didn’t know. One of them caught his attention because of the colored hair, red and violet tones over a dark brown, too vibrant to not being noticed, but made that lady look beautiful, and somehow powerful too, in Jon’s sight. He knew a lot of people there but noticed his closest friends at a table next to the bar and they waved at him to join. In the table there was Ricky, a Mexican American guy he met in the first conference he attended as an undergrad years ago, probably one of the oldest friends he had in Academia. There was also Will, Ricky’s happy hour co-worker that was sharing the room with him for the third year in a row. The other two people in the table were Cassidy and her wife Beth, and of course, their twins in the babies’ cart. Cas, Giorgio and Jon were inseparable during grad school, by the time Cas met Beth. Beth was sitting alone at the bar one night they were at a happy hour and Giorgio tried his luck with her; just to figure it out that she was actually interested in someone else: the pretty girl with braids at their table. Giorgio immediately invited Beth to join us, but didn’t bother to let Cas know that she was the lucky one, which was remarkably funny. They have been together since then, and now with a pair of two year old twin boys, adopted when they were still newborn babies. Beth was mostly dedicated to their toddlers, as she was an artist and her paintings were exhibited occasionally in a gallery, which allowed her to paint from home in her free time. Cas got a PI job faster than any of them, so she started making enough money fast and Beth was free to stay home with the kids as she wishes. While they were chatting over their pasta, Giorgio approached their table to welcome them to the wedding events, what made Cas laugh since they had been interacting for the past 5 days at the conference. Where is Elisa? Cas asked, we hadn’t seen her yet! Giorgio pointed to the main table and said she was with her parents now. Elisa hadn’t been home in a while because of work and needed to spend some time with them. It’s also their anniversary, so they are just enjoying the weekend with family, that’s why she didn’t show up in the lectures with me.
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