“I have cold feet,” you say, and it’s probably true. It’s always cold feet that call off these days, and you’ve always been so good at analyzing what should be obvious. It’s why she loves you, I think.
“You have cold feet, yes.” It’s like you’ve been standing on ice since the day you met her. And you sigh and lean back against the door, face paling and palms sweating, and say that you really want a cigarette, that you’re going to call a break mid-ceremony on-stage and smoke through a triplet of Blacks to get you through the hardest hour of your life.
“But her eyes,” you say, and goddammit, you’re right, “her eyes will make it better, I think.” I wonder, vaguely, if you can still see her eyes beneath stage lights and anxiety.
“You’ll kiss her softly because her parents are watching.”
“I’ll barely kiss her, actually,” and you dab your forehead with a handkerchief, “because God will be watching, and I can’t make her look...well--”
“--like a wedding-day slut?”
It makes you smile. “No one needs to know it’s a shotgun wedding.”
No one needs to know.
*
The wires are splayed through the attic of the church. In some places, the flooring is so soft and pliant that I can nearly fall through just by resting a palm in the dust. And the way the entire attic smells--like mold and yellowed hymnals--reminds me of how she and I first met.
It was twilight in the old church and I had my fingers pressed against those old ivory keys, learning to lay out my soul in the way my fingers moved. She walked in through the back of the church and sat down in a pew without me noticing, and she just listened. She had the nerve to listen to my heartbeat, choppy and arrhythmic, dropping the gospel blues on that old Amazing Grace piano.
When I stopped, she clapped.
Clapped.
And walked down the aisle, laying her long auburn hair over the open lips of the piano, and smiled at me, said I had beautiful music in my soul, and wanted to play a duet with me.
And God, me being the helpless romantic I’ve always been, imagined that we’d do this forever. But green eyes and blue songs can only take a friendship so far, and unfortunately for me, it took our friendship into your hands, and your hands took her back down the aisle.
I check the time on my phone. 4:27, which means I’ll have to trust in my garage-rigged devices to do their jobs.
*
She didn’t want to have a baccalaureate party, so she invited me over and told me to bring plenty of vodka. We spent the entire night watching Gene Kelly and drinking bastardized cocktails of whatever we could get our hands on. After the fourth glass of Maybe This Time, she laid her head on my shoulder and curled up to my arm, clicking her tongue every time she felt my heartbeat beneath my wrist.
“You would tell me if I were about to make a mistake, wouldn’t you?”
When it rains on Gene Kelly, it rains heavier than anywhere else in the world, but he always sings, no matter how many times you drop the clouds on his head.
But when I laid my head on her head and closed my eyes, I asked her how her song would sound if she were to just sing about her feelings.
And she said she would sing about me, and how I was a constant. An x-axis to measure the rest of her life. And she left for the kitchen and brought back a black magic marker, writing a thick x on my wrist. And she kissed it as if to seal it like a blood pact.
“Always be my constant. Always be my Maybe This Time.”
And I said yes.
*
Since I am a good x and will be x no matter what fucked equation is given to me, I am playing keys for your wedding. She asked for very specific songs, and scratched off the ones you suggested because they don’t fit the atmosphere she’s set up. Every song is in Eb because she knows it’s my favorite key to play, and when everyone grows quiet for the procession, I feel remainders of emotions flare up, cocktails in my tear ducts.
*
Two nights ago, you took me to a bar, got smashed on hard liquor, and called it Purgatory. I couldn’t figure out if you were cleaning out your past, or setting up the flames to purge the future. Both scared me, so I told you I felt sick and anxious, and you told me to go home and listen to Jack’s Mannequin until I felt better.
I left you at the bar and found you the next morning naked and on my front porch, using my doormat as a blanket. When you woke up inside and on my couch with me watching Gene Kelly on TV, you asked only if we had fucked the night before; and when I said you wish and snapped my fingers, you didn’t say anything. Just got up from the couch and went digging for clothes.
You came back and said that I had the best outlook on life, that I was passive enough to get by without getting hurt. I left the room, went to my room and cried because she had said the same thing. It’s just so easy to barrel through the equations with eyes closed.
You opened my door and sat down on the bed and asked if I needed booze. And when none of the wet mumbles answered your question, you left and went God knows where.
*
There’s a fourth pedal on the piano, slick and silver like the other three, but wired to a trigger. And, as opposed to the damper pedal, it will cut a note short of its life whenever tapped. The lights in the church are all focused on you and her, the two of you that will kiss softly in front of her parents and God and me and the minister and everyone else who showed up on a Saturday to say I know you. It’s how weddings work, and it’s why she didn’t want one.
I think it would have been best if you’d have listened to her, if there wouldn’t have been a wedding. It’s odd how one moment can change passivity into aggression. It’s even stranger how one question can change an entire life.
The minister, as it’s written in Weddings For Dummies, asks if there are any, though really he doesn’t want an answer, who have reason that the two should not be wed.
And it’s interesting how wedding vows end with till death do we part.
So when the minister asks his question and lumps form in both your throats, I, x, press the fourth pedal.
*
Young love went up in flames, charred from lip to hip in blasts of high-octane rage. The blasts began in the back of the church: a flare in the ceiling, a roar of burning fuel, a crashing chandelier, screams--even waves of heat on my face as my fingers just moved on the keys.
The last scream I heard was at the altar, the last gasp of hers in a blazing dress.
Spoiler! :
There were a couple words completely missing or misspelled (bachelorette party, I think you meant?). Style wise, it read sort of like how one tells a story in conversation. It's very conversationalist. It's a style thing, and can be very good thing. In fact, I wouldn't change it too much from it, especially considering it's in second POV. However, it's undoubtedly out of line for me to mention it, but I did find all those 
With poetry, you only have so many words, so you have to make every one count. It's less strict in prose - you can take your time, and as many words as you wish as long as you use each one effectively and further the character/plot.
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