I hold up my left hand, and my reflection holds up her right. This time, a ring is on both of our second from the left fingers, and she isn’t giving me advice. I still remember the dream of me in the mirrored hallway, but now it actually seems like a dream instead of a supposed reality.
My mother comes down the stairs, wearing a light golden dress that reaches to her knees. Her hair is straightened and clipped back on one side. She slips on shoes that give her a little height and walks over to me.
“Oh darling,” she says gasping. “You look so beautiful.”
“Thank you Mother,” I say beaming. She rests her hands on my arms and pulls me into a tight embrace. She smells like sweet spring air.
My father comes down the stairs a little later, wearing a black coat with an elegant white undershirt and bowtie. He puts on his shoes and walks over to us. “You both look amazing,” he says, giving my mother a kiss on the cheek.
Kyle follows closely behind my father, wearing a similar ensemble to him. He embraces our mother and then me. “Daniel said he’ll be down soon,” Kyle reports. “Should we leave now?”
“That’s probably a good idea,” my father says. Then he turns to me. “You’ll be with us shortly?”
“Yeah,” I say. “When Daniel gets down here. Is the aircar waiting outside?”
“Yes,” my father replies. “We’ll take the first one and you guys come when he’s ready.”
My father helps my mother put on her coat and then grabs his own. Kyle slips on his shoes and coat and they all leave the house, bounding down the stairs. I watch them pull away from the house and toward downtown. The House permits only the immediate family of both the bride and groom for weddings since the marriage room isn’t extremely big and most people don’t live with extended family anyway. The House sends out notices to extended family so they know there was a marriage in the family, and then they can get together for reunions if desired.
I hear something crash from upstairs and run to find out what the source of the noise was. It leads me to the guest room to the left of the stairs, where Daniel is getting ready. I knock on the open door to let him know I’m there. He turns around, giving me a slight smile. “Hey,” he says. His eyes wander to my dress and back to my face. “You look amazing.”
“Thank you,” I say blushing slightly. I look around the room and see that a small lamp sits sideways on the ground. He follows my gaze and then looks back at me.
“I’m sorry,” he says sheepishly. “I was trying to open the closet door and-”
“It’s okay,” I say, moving into the room. “I never really liked that lamp anyway.”
After everything that happened six months ago, my father decided we all should move into this house since our old one was falling apart. In the process of moving, I tried to get my parents to get rid of meaningless things. Or so I thought they were meaningless. My mother nearly scolded me one time after I mentioned getting rid of an old vase.
“That was your grandmother’s,” she said sternly. “How could you even think of getting rid of that?” It didn’t seem special to me but I packed it up anyway as long as it kept her happy.
“Are you almost ready to go?” I ask now.
“Yeah,” he says. “Could you help me put my jacket on?”
I walk over to him and grab his jacket that’s hanging on the back of the closet door. I help him slip it over one arm and then the second. I grab his bowtie from on top of the dresser and help him tie it.
“Thank you,” he says, taking my hand. The feel of metal against my flesh doesn’t scare me as much as it used to, but it still brings back memories.
After the announcement of Chris’s death to the public, I went to see Daniel in the emergency medical care office downtown. Everyone was still in a daze from hearing that Chris Brown was dead. That the galaxy could end the war and go back about business. A couple days after the announcement of Chris’s death, the Corps’ headquarters closed down and all of the guards and workers were left to their own devices.
I went to see Daniel to help take my mind off of things, but instead it just filled my head more. One of the nurses explained to me that he lost so much blood that they had to amputate his arm from the shoulder down. I was in such a shock that I didn’t even cry until they let me see him. He was asleep, but I could still tell he was in pain. I went to hold his hand, but it wasn’t there to hold. I touched his shoulder and moved my hand only slightly farther down before there wasn’t anything left except the bed he was laying on.
The nurse touched my shoulder as a gesture of sympathy, and I broke down crying. I hovered over his body like he was gone, as if I would never see him again.
A couple days later, I went back to the medical center. They were in the process of attaching a metal arm to his shoulder. I cried again and the same nurse from before sat next to me and explained what was happening. He was awake at this point, but the nurse said they had given him some numbing shots so he wouldn’t feel anything.
He was released a couple days later, and I took him back to my house to help him and let him rest. Once he got better, I properly introduced him to my family and they all seemed to like each other. He’s been more limited with the metal arm than before.
It used to scare me that I couldn’t feel his body heat when I held his hand. I’m more used to it now, but it’s not the same. He still has his other arm, but it’s his nondominant one, so he’s had to reteach himself basic skills. His metal arm is also not very useful, which makes it harder on him. It doesn’t grasp things well and is slow when he tries to move it.
I know he despises Chris even more now that he took something else away from him. But I also know if he had the chance to get one of them back, he would choose his mother every time. It hurts me to know how much pain he’s been through, and it hurts me even more that there’s really nothing I can do about any of it.
I put my hand on his face, moving my thumb back and forth slowly. He covers my hand with his good one and closes his eyes. I don’t want this moment to end, but my family is waiting for us at the House along with a marriage representative. “We should probably go,” I whisper.
He nods and removes his hand from mine. Then he sits on the bed and pulls his shoes out of their box. He slips them on, clumsily at first, but he masters it by the second one. He proceeds to stand up slowly, gripping the side of the bed with his good hand. It’s hard to watch him struggle, but I know he’s come a long way from six months ago.
He walks over to me and takes my hand in his good one, giving it a reassuring squeeze. We head down the hall and descend the stairs, taking it easy and slow. He stumbles a couple of times, but my arm around him gives him reassurance. We make it down to the first floor and I open the door for him. He moves with more ease this time and descends the patio stairs.
The air outside is cool, which feels nice against my skin. A gentle breeze blows through, brushing my hair around. Daniel opens the door of the aircar for me and I slip inside. I smooth my dress and push back the loose strands of hair that fell from my ponytail. After a couple of seconds, Daniel appears next to me. He takes my hand in his, and I can feel the warmth of his skin against mine. It’s so comforting, and it’s hard for me to imagine life without him.
“Did Lila and Cody go with your family?” Daniel asks me.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they did.” After the whole fiasco with Chris, I wasn’t sure what to do with them. They were so sweet, and I had grown close to both of them. Lila eventually opened up to me, and I’ve been happier ever since. I remember the day too, and the way it happened. She caught me off guard.
“How did you and Daniel meet?” she asked me. She never really talked to me, so I was taken aback.
But I gained enough composure to answer her. “He taught me how to fly a ship,” I told her. She seemed intrigued, so I told her the whole story. By the end of it, she was sitting on the edge of her seat, leaning forward, eating up every word I said. And ever since, we’ve been close. The
re have been moments where she’ll get sad at the mention of her parents. She asked me one time what Eli was like, and I told her what I knew about him. She seemed upset at the fact that she would never get to meet him, but I assured her that he loved her.
And I felt that I had grown to love both of them too. When I told Daniel this, he said he felt the same way. “It’ll be a sad day when we have to give them up,” he said.
Then a thought hit me. “Maybe we don’t have to.”
He gave me a confused look at first, but then things seemed to click into place and a smile slowly crept on his face. “Are you saying…”
I nodded happily. “After we get married, we can legally adopt them.” The House’s law on adoption is that the couple must be married first, to make it less confusing for the kids. And today is that day. By the end of today, I’ll have a husband and two children. And my parents agreed that once Daniel and I got married, we could have the house everyone is currently staying in and my parents would buy the house next to us.
Thinking about all of this makes me so excited that I almost miss seeing the House as we pull into view. The driver pulls up to the curb and gets out of the aircar. He pulls open the door for me, helps me out of the aircar, and then walks around to the other side to help Daniel. I smooth my dress again and walk to the front of the aircar and wait for him. He slowly gets out and makes his way over to me.
“Thank you,” I say to the driver. He nods and gets back in the aircar. I take Daniel’s hand in mine and we walk up the stairs that lead to the House.
It’s a really big building, three stories high and three blocks long. The stairs are outlined by trees trimmed to perfect spheres. The trees are planted in a bed of small wood carvings, making the air smell of wood and dirt. I take in a deep breath, mostly because the air smells really good but also to calm my nerves.
Daniel can sense my nervousness and he moves his hand from being intertwined with mine to the small of my back. I don’t know why I’m nervous, considering I’ve wanted this pretty much since I met him. But now that the day is here, I’m anxious.
Once we get to the top of the stairs and inside the building, my heart races even more. We walk over to the receptionist’s desk. She’s on the phone with someone and holds up her index finger to let us know she’ll be a minute. I look at Daniel and he sighs, but not from annoyance.
“You know, the first time I proposed to you I was so nervous,” he says. “I didn’t know what you were going to say and it’s not like we really dated or anything. And then after you said yes, I was relieved, until Kelton showed up.”
I tense at his name. It’s so weird, because I haven’t thought about him for a while. I don’t have many good memories associated with him, so I try my best to not focus on him.
He laughs a little. “Maybe I should’ve thanked him though.”
“Why?” I ask.
“He made me realize how much I hated life without you in it,” he says with a smile.
I smile back at him. “He helped me realize that too.”
The receptionist sets the phone back on its holder and looks at us. “Sorry about that. What can I help you with?”
“Wedding for Daniel Thomas and Zandrea Knowles,” Daniel replies. She looks at her computer, types something into the screen, and looks back at us.
“Right this way,” she says. “My assistant will show you the room.”
A young woman comes toward us from down the hall. She’s wearing a blue pencil skirt and matching blouse with a pin on the left side. “Hi,” she says in a bubbly tone. “Follow me.”
She leads us down one of the many hallways leading away from the main lobby of the building. The ceilings are one story high and outlined in a translucent glass. The area is well lit from the natural light, but a huge chandelier hangs from the ceiling, the glass bulbs staggered at perfect intervals.
She leads us down to a room on the right side of the hallway and opens the door. “Everyone is inside,” she says. “And, congratulations!”
“Thank you,” Daniel says. She walks back the same way we came and disappears around the corner. I squeeze Daniel’s real arm and we enter the room.
I’m amazed by how beautiful the room is. Trees decorated with small lights line the outside of the room. Chairs are set up in the middle of the room, with an aisle cutting through the center. A small stage sits at the opposite end of the room, a table across the length of the stage. A smaller chandelier hangs from the ceiling, giving the perfect amount of lighting to the room.
My parents, Kyle, Lila, and Cody sit in the front row of the room, closest to the stage. They turn around when they hear us enter. Soon, music fills the room and that’s our cue to walk to the stage. A man appears on the stage, waiting for us. I squeeze Daniel’s hand excitedly and walk toward the stage.
Time flies by, and before I know it, a wedding band is being slipped on my finger and Daniel kisses me. One hand is on my face, his thumb gently stroking my cheek. His metal hand is holding mine. I don’t want the moment to end, but he pulls away all too fast, and the next thing I know, I’m being ambushed with hugs from my parents.
I’m floating on a cloud, this moment being one I’ve dreamed of for so long. It almost doesn’t seem real, but I know it is. I know this is the happiest day of my life. It’s hard for me to imagine everything that happened leading up to this moment since I’ve been trying to forget it. And despite all that went on, I wouldn’t want to change any of it. It helped me realize who I truly love and need in my life.
Meeting Kelton changed my life. He helped me figure out who I loved by forcing me to be without him. I’d like to think that Kelton took Daniel away from me on purpose so I could figure out for myself that I needed him, that I wanted him.
I remember what Eli said about him marrying his best friend. It didn’t work out for him. But he also worked for the Corps, an organization that died the day Chris did. No longer a threat to the galaxy. Vulcona has been pretty dead ever since the Corps fell. Everyone who worked for them is stuck trying to find a new job, and most places won’t take an ex-Corps employee.
With Chris no longer a threat to Coreno, people have been coming back and reclaiming their homes. We’ve been getting new neighbors, old neighbors that my mother was friends with, even people from Vulcona looking for a new, safer place to live.
I don’t think there will ever be a normal, but I’m okay with that. I’m content with the way things turned out, and even though everything isn’t perfect, I’ve never felt safer than I do right now, in this room, with the people I love most.
The End
Spaced Out Page 32
