by Heather Gean
“Then don’t.”
“Well, I sort of have to.”
“You don’t really, you just think you should.”
“Either way…”
“What else?” he asked.
“That’s all, I guess…” Truthfully, I was tired of the typical day-to-day. Besides Ringo, I lived alone. I woke up alone and I went to sleep alone. It was one of the reasons I filed the marriage request in the first place. I wanted to have a greater purpose. I wanted to have someone to share my life with. He was quite possibly sitting right beside me, but I had no idea how to get from point A to point B with our situation. I kept my eyes on the road, my mouth shut, and turned up the radio. The pressure in the car suddenly changed as Van rolled down his window. Cold air whipped through the car. Before I could completely process what was going on, I saw a flash of red fly out the window. In the rearview mirror I saw the mass of red tumble to the pavement after catching the wind from another passing car. When it was out of sight, Van rolled the window back up and the atmosphere was calm was again.
“Why the hell did you do that?” I yelled over the music. My heart was racing from shock. I stammered as I tried to find more words for what I was feeling. My hair was awry and falling across my face from the force of the wind. I probably looked as frazzled as I felt.
Van shrugged as he turned the radio down. “You said you didn’t want to wear a wig in public, and now you won’t have to because you don’t have one.”
“Van, that’s insane!”
“It’s insane that you feel like you have to wear it. Who gives a shit what they print about you? Do you really care what those magazines say? Call them up and tell them about Ashley’s flings with other women first. Throw them a bone so they’ll shut up about you. Stop giving in.”
I hit the steering wheel in frustration and growled. “It’s not that easy!”
“Is it ever?”
“Ugh! Stop playing mind games with me.”
“I’m just trying to show you that what they say doesn’t matter.” My throat was tight with anger, not so much at Van as at the government and the vicious media and the whole situation, and I clenched my jaws so tightly they hurt. “It doesn’t matter what they want. What do you want? I mean, what do you really want?”
I was on the verge of tears. “I want to go somewhere that nobody knows that I’m that girl who is engaged to Ashley Schroeder. I want to go somewhere where I am just Rainy. And I know that sounds really stupid to you, but that’s what I want.”
Van’s voice softened. “It isn’t stupid.” His hand reached over to touch mine. “If it helps at all, you’ve always only been Rainy to me.”
Within another hour I was exhausted with driving. The repetitiveness of the interstate made me sleepy even though I had drank some coffee, and the emotional stress made me mentally tired. When we pulled off at the first rest stop, Van offered to drive. “No,” I argued. “You drove all night.”
“Whatever was in your so-called coffee has me wired out of my brain. I’m driving,” he said as he snatched the keys from me with a wink. He pocketed them as he began to fill the car with gas. I pulled my jacket more tightly around me and hurried for the convenience store doors. “Hey, get some snacks!” Van called after me.
I bought a bottle of water, a small bag of chips, and a few packs of various snack cakes before heading back to the car. We were back on the road in no time, and Van had already broken into the pack of Twinkies. He offered me one. “Snack cakes are couple-sized. They come in twos,” he noted. He smiled at his own wit, but his expression drooped when he realized I still looked unhappy. “Are you okay? I wasn’t trying to upset you earlier.”
“No, it’s fine,” I assured him. “I just need a break. I need this break.”
“Get some sleep,” he encouraged me. “I’ll wake you when we get there.”
I did get some sleep, and some odd hours later when I woke up we weren’t there yet. I checked the clock. “We should almost be there by now, shouldn’t we?” I checked it again and did some calculating in my head. “We should have been there already.” I sat up and looked at the landscape that whirred past the windows of the car. It didn’t look like Louisiana. “Where are we?”
“Do you want to ruin the surprise?”
“Are you trying to kidnap me… again?” I asked jokingly. He smiled. “Seriously, where are we? Are we in Louisiana?”
“Not quite. Try Texas.”
I tried to remain as calm as possible. “Why are we in Texas?”
“We’re going to the border,” he said simply.
I laughed nervously. “Van, I’m not going to jump the border with you.”
“I didn’t say over the border, I said to the border. Some little town where no one speaks English.”
“But my Spanish is terrible!”
“And my only other language is German.”
“Then why are we going there?”
“If no one there speaks English then they couldn’t very well explain to you how they know you, and it is likely they don’t watch the news in English so they won’t know you anyway. It will be a good time. If you’re going to be my sidekick you need to start figuring these things out on your own.” He gave me a mischievous smile. “I can turn around if you want.”
I settled back into my seat and thought things over. Van had a brilliant mind. While Ashley, like most people, was something of a puppet of society, Van was a dreamer. I wanted to get caught up in his dream if only for a little while. A smile lit up my face. “What about Penelope and the concert?”
“I’ll see her some other time. Maybe Christmas. She talked about coming to stay with me since our father has disowned her, and we black sheep have to herd together,” he explained. “It’s up to you. What do you want to do?”
I located the Twinkie Van had left for me and pulled it from the wrapper. I took a bite of it as thoughtfully as anyone can take a bite of a cheap snack cake. “Go faster?” Van laughed at my response and pushed his foot further down on the gas pedal. “If I go back to sleep will I wake up in Mexico?”
Van shrugged. “You can only hope.” I smiled and relaxed into the seat, satisfied with the knowledge that our adventure had only just begun.
~*~
I woke up in a dream where I understood body language more than I understood anything that came out of people’s mouths. It was easy to ignore how someone looked when you only had to listen to understand. It was easy to miss the smiles and the expression in someone’s eyes and the particular way in which they moved. When you understood nothing more than the tune of a nearby guitarist, you tuned out the noise. Everything was surreal, masked in a beautiful haze caused by the excess of tequila in the drinks and the glow from the strings of chili pepper lights bordering the tops of the walls. Happiness was simple.
It had been a while since Van and I had sat quietly together without something much heavier than the smoke from his cigarette hanging between us. He was a casual kind of smoker that only took a few puffs before letting it slowly burn out on its own. Strange, but I took comfort in all the things Van did that were just that: strange, unusual, simply complex. The smooth motion of his hand to his mouth, the curve of his lips, the slow exhales; they entranced me. Every glance with his beautiful brown eyes that lasted too long and encouraged a smile made my heart jump. He drove me crazy.
I leaned across the small table on my elbows, bringing myself so close to him that our noses nearly touched. My eyes fell across his face gingerly. Every shallow breath did nothing to relieve the tension. He gently touched his nose to mine and ran it in a line across my cheek to my ear. His slow, desperate exhale against my neck said everything he didn’t whisper into my hair. When he returned his face only a few inches in front of mine, he took one of my hands in his. He traced invisible lines across my palm and up to my fingertips. The nerves in my palm tingled, sending chills up my arms. He looked up at me again to catch my expression and grinned. His lips only grazed mine before he stood up, my
hand still in his, and tugged me to my feet. It didn’t matter that no one else was dancing to the guitarist’s music or that everyone else in the comfortably crowded bar would likely be talking about us. We couldn’t understand them anyway.
Van pressed me to him and brought his face close to mine again. He said something to me in German, and I giggled without knowing why. My rhythm was horrible, a side effect of the tequila, and he moved me in time with a hand in mine and another on my lower back. His eyes said I was beautiful. His smile told me that he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. His body said he wanted me. Finally, I was standing in front of someone who wasn’t impossible to read.
I’m not sure when we ended up in the cheap hotel on the Gulf coast where Texas meets Mexico. It may have been nearly four when the waiter mumbled something in Spanish and wrote our total on a napkin. They locked the doors behind us, and we walked arm-in-arm through the chill in the morning air down a badly paved road to the nearest hotel. I’m pretty sure we left the car in the parking lot of the bar. It could only have been a few hours since we checked in and sought refuge in a warm shower and the even warmer bed. We were wrapped up in coarse sheets with morning sunlight coming through the crack in the curtains we never pulled completely together. The bed was so close to the ground that it felt as if we were lying on the floor, and a strip of sunlight fell across my shoulder and onto Van’s chest. I was using his shoulder as a pillow, cuddled up against him so that I rose and fell with his breaths.
“I don’t want to wake up,” I whispered. Van’s chin was against my forehead, and I felt him smile. He twisted some of my curls around his fingers.
“We never went to sleep.” His words vibrated against my ear.
“I’m afraid this whole night has been a dream and that if I fall asleep I’ll actually be waking up,” I said softly. “I’d rather stay forever.” I was fighting to keep my eyes open, and the lids heavily opened and closed. “Can we stay forever?”
“Forever doesn’t exist. I like to take things day by day.”
“What?” My body was sleepily sinking against his.
“It doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as forever.”
I stirred a bit at his odd statement. “You aren’t making any sense,” I said groggily. “Stop playing mind games with me.” My head was foggy. “You’re saying you wouldn’t be with me forever?”
“If I told you that I would it would be a lie. Anyone who could tell you that they’d be with you for any given amount of time isn’t telling the truth.”
I roused myself enough to prop on my elbow and look down at him. “What sort of commitment is that?”
“A realistic one.”
“Since when are you realistic? You’re an artist for God sakes.”
Van gave me an uncertain look. “I don’t have any trouble with reality. Art is a reflection of reality. Don’t act like you don’t know that.” He closed his eyes again and ran a hand down my arm to encourage me to lie down.
“What am I to you, Van?”
“You’re Rainy,” he replied drowsily.
“No, I mean what. Am I your girlfriend? Am I just a fling? I don’t understand.” The tone of my voice caused him to open his eyes again.
“What am I to you?” he returned. Like every serious conversation we tried to have, it went in circles. I collapsed back to the bed, this time further away from him. The sheets were cold against me. I was too tired to comprehend anything. His hand snaked over to rest on my stomach. “What’s the matter?” He was almost asleep.
I closed my eyes tightly. “I’m awake.”
Chapter 20
I had put in extra hours at work the entire week before the wedding, and the effects of this came in the form of exhaustion. My coffee Thermos had become an extension of my hand. It took twice as long every morning to cover up the purple crescents that hung underneath my eyes. My wrist ached with a hint of Carpal tunnel. The marriage exhibit had been an overwhelming success, which had seemingly doubled the amount of paperwork required. I was so sick of paperwork that I was almost looking forward to the time off for the wedding.
Catherine, my museum nemesis, stopped by my cubicle thirty minutes before my shift ended. I only had to glance over at the mug in her hand, embossed with her name, to know it was her and then stare back down at the papers. “Aren’t you getting married in a week?” she asked. “I read in Celebrity magazine that it was next week.”
“Yup,” I said without looking up. She tried to be coy as if she thought Wes hadn’t been telling me all the criticisms she’d been giving the exhibit and my personal life in the break room.
“What on earth are you still doing here working? You should take some time off. We could handle things just fine without you.”
I signed off on the bottom of another form and spun around in my chair to file it. As I flipped through the manila folders, Catherine’s heels clicked as she began to retreat from the cubicle. Before she’d gone very far, she stopped.
“I suppose you’ll be leaving the museum for New York after you get married?”
“I don’t really like to talk about my personal life at work as much as you do,” I said, spinning back around. She rolled her eyes, giving her school marm exterior the annoying fluidity of a high school cheerleader. I wanted to tell her that expression of disgust accentuated her wrinkles, but I needed to avoid a tiff. I seemed to be involving myself in too many of those lately. “Did you have anything of importance to discuss with me? Because I’m really busy.”
“I just wondered if I could have your office after you move to New York.”
I looked up from the papers I’d returned my attention to. “I’m not moving to New York, and why would you want my cubicle?” The four, five-feet tall walls covered in a material similar to burlap that surrounded me were exactly like those in her cubicle down the hall. I had the same standard desk, chair, and industrial stapler. My brow furrowed in confusion.
Catherine rolled her eyes. “They’re giving you an office, you idiot. Kenny’s retiring.”
An office? My own office? How had I missed that memo? I hadn’t checked my email in a while, but usually anything important that was sent through email could be relayed to me by Wes. Why hadn’t he informed me I was getting an office? I broke into a huge smile. Finally my aversion to the wedding had paid off in some way. “Wow,” I thought aloud.
“Don’t get too excited. Oh, and I heard LUCC is going to protest your wedding.” With the sour face of a cat that’d just been dumped in the toilet, Catherine skulked away. I laughed to myself, knowing that she hadn’t realized how her intended criticism pleased me.
“Thank you, Catherine!” I called after her. In the hallway my cheerful voice echoed back to me.
~*~
Liz pinned a white sash to hang diagonally across my body like a beauty queen winner. In silver, glittery letters it read Bride to Be. The Clarke-Schroeder wedding was in three days, and I was a nervous wreck for all the wrong reasons. Liz groaned as she fumbled with the pin. “It doesn’t have to be perfect,” I said. She muttered a few things to herself and eventually gave up trying to make the edges match flawlessly. “We have to hurry or we’ll miss our spa appointments.”
“You aren’t supposed to be worrying right now. As Maid of Honor, I am in charge of your worrying from here on out.”
“I am not to be held responsible for any serious injury that occurs from your taking on that burden,” I said as I slid on my coat.
“Careful with the sash!”
I quickly ushered the two of us out to the car. The rest of the bridal party plus my mother was going to meet us in less than thirty minutes at a local spa. Liz had scheduled it to help relax me as the wedding neared, but if she’d actually wanted be to relax she wouldn’t have invited my mother. She also added that it was to help me look extra fabulous for the night of my bachelorette party so as to hook up with as many men as possible before I walked down the aisle. If Liz were my conscience, she would be the one holding the
pitchfork and wearing horns atop her head.
December was the most miserable month to choose for a wedding. If I thought it was freezing in Memphis then it would be sub zero in New York. The only redeeming factor was that it made all the warm things they slathered on and wrapped around my body incredibly amazing. The saunas and the mud baths and fluffy robes were exactly what I needed, and to make even better it was on Ashley’s tab. It’s amazing how much a day at the spa can relax you when it is coming out of someone else’s pocket. Within the first few hours I was sure I had sweated out and washed away almost every ounce of anxiety, and what of it I couldn’t I discussed with my Maid of Honor.
Liz lay on the table beside mine, both of us stomach-down with our faces turned towards one another. White cloths covered us from the waist down and some sort of hot, muddy mixture coated our backs and arms. I felt like a pile of jelly just sinking right into the cushy tabletop. “Are you planning to break off your love affair with the best man before the ceremony?” she asked with one side of her face smushed against a hot towel.
“I dunno. We haven’t discussed the status of our relationship. I don’t think it’s going to come up.”
“How the hell could it not come up?”
“We just haven’t been talking.”
Liz blinked at me as if she didn’t understand. “So you’re breaking it off?”
“Well, no, I mean, I’m not the one who decided we weren’t going to talk.”
“So he’s breaking it off?”
“Can we just assume that no one is breaking anything off? Things have just been a little hectic lately - the wedding and all.” I knew that was a lame excuse. Honestly, I had ignored a few of Van’s calls over the past week, and between that and him doing the same, we’d only spoken a handful of times, and briefly. We both had questions the other didn’t want to answer: I wanted to know where we stood and he wanted to know what I planned to do about the wedding. It was becoming an emotional chore whenever we talked.
