by Piper Lennox
“Oh, we wouldn’t miss this for anything,” Tillie says. Betty nods. They reach for more tissues.
“She says she’s not nervous,” Betty whispers to her, and they roll their eyes.
“I admitted I was a little nervous,” I protest. I hear Collin start another song, something I don’t know. “And it’s not real nerves. It’s more like, I can’t believe this is really happening, so I’m not sure how to feel.” I look at myself again, just a glance. Even with the big white dress, I feel more like a kid playing dress-up than a bride.
“No matter how many times I tell myself, ‘You’re getting married,’” I add, “it still feels like a dream or something. Like my brain just...can’t accept it.”
“I’ve never been a bride,” Tillie says, pulling my veil down over my face as Uncle Wayne knocks twice, the signal that everything is about to begin, “but I imagine that’s normal.” She kisses my cheek lightly, minding my makeup, and steps back to grab another handful of tissues from her supply. “Maybe this is just one of those things you can’t make yourself accept, until it’s in the moment.”
“Maybe,” I offer, doubtful.
I think she’s onto something, though. Because when the music pauses and starts again, and the French doors of the kitchen open, I find myself blind to the runner of flower petals at my feet, or the small crowd around us, all eyes on me, packets of tissues crinkling as I take that first step.
All I see is Shepherd, waiting for me. He’s about to be your husband, I think.
And suddenly, right in this moment, I believe it.
Also by Piper Lennox
Teach Me
Turn the page for a preview of Piper’s upcoming
standalone, second-chance romance,
All Mine
Sneak Peek
All Mine
Blake
She shows up at my house soaking wet.
It’s not entirely surprising, since she’s got no car and has to bike everywhere—but it is pouring down rain, so all I can say when I open the door is, “Are you insane?”
“Move, I’m cold!” Mel pushes past me and heads straight for the stairs. “I’m gonna take a shower,” she announces, kicking off her sneakers as she goes.
I shake my head and shut the door. “You can borrow some of my clothes till yours dry,” I call up to her. She calls back that she was going to, anyway.
Back in the living room, where I’ve basically been living for the last two days while Dad’s out of town, I silently thank God she didn’t notice the porn on the big screen. I muted it when I got up to answer the door, figuring it was our neighbor. His dog tends to go missing during thunderstorms, hiding out under people’s porches.
I put on MTV. Mel’s going to change it to that anyway, so I might as well.
“God, that feels so much better,” she sighs when she comes back. “Cozy.” She falls onto the couch with me, our feet tangling together under the blanket. “Thanks for the clothes,” she says, kicking me gently.
“Why did you bike here? I could have picked you up.”
Mel shrugs and picks some lint off my sweatshirt, which is huge on her. It’s actually pretty big on me, too: I’m lanky and tall, the kid everyone calls a beanpole. Dad said he bulked up his senior year of high school, but I’ve yet to see much change, even with high school an entire month behind us.
“Just thought it would be nice,” Mel says, already sucked into whatever crap is on TV. “You know, biking in the rain. It sounds like such a good idea until you actually do it.”
“Like crack,” I add.
“Sky-diving.”
“Sixty-nining.” She laughs really hard at that one, kicking me again.
We’re both full of it, of course, which makes it even funnier. We’ve never tried a drug stronger than weed, never jumped out of planes or off bridges, or done anything particularly daring in our lives.
We’re both total virgins, too. At least, I am. Mel dated her prom date for a few weeks afterwards, but I’m not sure if anything really happened with them. I do know they made out a lot, because I had to watch that shit at my graduation party and pretend I didn’t care.
“So,” she says, tucking her feet under my butt, “how’s it been? Having the house to yourself, I mean.”
“Boring,” I tell her. It’s the truth. I thought a weekend alone would be full of awesome, cool stuff: takeout every night, giant bowls of cereal whenever I deigned to wake, late nights of video games and porn right here in the living room.
Okay, it’s actually been kind of cool. But it’s also been lonely, not much different than when my dad is here. I realize I’ve missed Mel more than I let myself admit.
“When’s he get back?” she asks.
“Tomorrow night.”
“Cool. Can I stay over?”
I nod. The rain isn’t supposed to let up until tomorrow, anyway, so unless I feel like driving her home in a tsunami, it just makes sense for her to crash here.
The other factor: I never say no to Mel spending the night. She’s been doing it—and lying to her folks about where she really is—since middle school. Nothing ever happens, even when she sleeps in my bed beside me, but I like the opportunity. Too bad I’m always too chicken to take it.
“We should get drunk,” she whispers, wiggling her toes under me. She doesn’t even realize what she’s doing to me, shifting around like that.
“Nah. Dad noticed the Bacardi missing last time and made me weed the whole backyard by hand.”
“Well, look, I’ll pick something he hasn’t even opened yet, and then I’ll get my brother to replace it before he gets back, okay?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. She usually doesn’t.
I listen to her clanking in the kitchen, raiding Dad’s bar cart while I try to tame my erection. It’s gone when she comes back and sets two shot glasses on the coffee table, but seeing her in my clothes gets it going again.
“You pour.”
I pull the blanket with me and lean forward, pouring the tequila into our glasses. We toast, tap them to the table, and drink.
“Fuck,” she croaks, eyes watering. “That’s rough.”
I feel like coughing up a lung, but Dad always says this stuff has a good bite, so I say it too. I’m hoping to impress her, which is stupid, because Mel’s known me practically my entire life and never thinks I’m smooth, even when I am.
She gives me a look like I’m crazy. At least I didn’t bike two miles through a thunderstorm.
Melanie
Blake and I met when we were four, the day he got lost in the mall and ran up to my mom, brother, and me, crying his eyes out.
Mom has a voice like simple syrup being poured into tea. Thick but easy, the kind of voice and touch on your arm that makes you fold into her like a trust fall. I remember when Blake sputtered, “I—I’m lost and m-my dad always says to f-find a mom with k-kids,” only he didn’t really finish the last word, because he looked at me and my brother and just burst into a wail that echoed down the mall.
Then Mom touched his arm and got to his level, the way she talked to us all the time, and said in her syrupy voice, “It’s all right, sweetheart. Let’s go find him.”
I don’t remember how the play dates started. I think my parents felt bad for Blake and his dad. Blake’s mom had just died of cancer. He needed a friend.
At first, they tried forcing my brother to hang out with him, because they were boys and it just made sense. Boys like trucks. Boys like dirt.
Blake didn’t like trucks, though, or getting dirty, or baseball. He was three years younger than Josh, but the same age as me. We both liked art and scary stories and small, quiet spaces, like coat closets with flashlights. We were used to people jumping when we walked up beside them. “Oh, honey, you scared the daylights out of me! I didn’t even see you.”
So then, we were friends. We got teased in school all the time for it; boys and girls can’t be best friends. Just wait till puberty, old ladies clucked at my mom in church,
their painted-on eyebrows furrowing with disapproval as Blake and I played Rock, Paper, Scissors and scuffed the backs of the pews with our feet.
I’m actually thinking about Rock, Paper, Scissors right now, because both our hands are clenched in fists after the second shot of tequila. Double-rock. A tie.
“Remember the last time we got drunk?” I ask, sucking in a sharp breath of air to cool my throat. “Really drunk, I mean?”
He laughs. “God, I wish I didn’t. That was a long night.”
I laugh, too. “That party out at Elliot Gull’s house,” I say, even though we both remember, and I don’t have to say it. “They had that dented-up keg of shitty beer. Never again.”
“It wasn’t the beer.” He nudges me with his foot. “It was because we drank that moonshine Gull’s brother made before the—”
“It was the beer,” I interrupt, my voice way louder than his, our norm. We argue about this a lot. He’s probably right—in fact, I’m positive he’s right—but it was my idea to drink the moonshine that night, sipping it straight from the jars and catching the fruit on our tongues. I had blackberry. Blake had strawberry. When we threw up together behind the Gulls’ carport later, it looked like pancake toppings and smelled like cough medicine.
“Never again,” we both said afterwards. We chewed a pack of gum and slept on Elliot’s sofa in the basement until dawn. Blake drove us home while I puked into the Target bag he handed me.
There’s a part we don’t talk about, ever, even in our blow-by-blow retellings to each other, out of our parents’ earshot. Behind the carport, when I knelt down in the gravel and felt it digging into my knees as I coughed up all that sugar and alcohol, Blake knelt behind me and held my hair back.
It could have been nothing, just a best-friend gesture: I’d have done the same for him, wouldn’t I? If his hair was long, or if he were a girl. Point is, it wasn’t a big deal.
But there was something about his touch that made it different from what a friend would do. His fingertips lingered on my neck. When I finally stopped, he hooked his chin over my shoulder and slurred, “It’s okay, Mellie. That’s it, you’re okay.”
I looked at him. We were in a dirty pool of light from the floodlight on the carport, like thieves crouching against their next mark.
And I was sure he was about to kiss me. I’m still sure. Even though I’d just thrown up twenty-four hours’ worth of food and drink, he was leaning into me, his eyes closing.
Then it hit him. He shot to his feet and stumbled to the other side of the carport. I heard his puke splash onto the siding.
We don’t talk about it, but I think about it a lot. Did he mean to do it? Was he just wasted? Does he even remember, or is he embarrassed?
Would I have let him do it?
I mean, aside from the totally disgusting factor of having just been sick, it’s not like the thought of kissing Blake repulses me. But there’s a line we don’t cross, pacing the friend zone where we belong, where we’ve always been.
I’ve never looked at him that way. He’s just...Blake. My best friend.
“It wasn’t the beer,” he says again, shifting on the couch like he can’t get comfortable. I shake my head and throw a paperclip at him, while we channel-surf and listen to the storm flail against the house.
Out loud, that’s the end of the story. We don’t say the rest. Maybe I’m the only one of us that even remembers. Who knows?
Blake
I remember.
I’m not sure if Mel does, but I think about it plenty. Even after puking her brains out, she was still so beautiful, and I was just drunk enough to not care about germs or bad breath or even rejection. Just gone enough to be brave.
It’s the closest I’ve ever come to kissing her. Which, after fourteen years of friendship and at least six of this secret crush, is pathetic.
We flip channels for a while. I think I’m doing a good job of ignoring her feet under me, or how cute she looks in my clothes, but no dice: when I try to scroll the channel guide, distracted, she laughs and points out I’ve been turning the DVD player on and off.
“Here,” I say, sliding her the remote. “You pick.”
She starts scrolling, and I hate myself for handing it over, because she’s pausing at all these chick-flick channels and sappy made-for-TV movies. She hits Info to read each one’s description.
Then, I hate myself even more: she’s in the porn section. Big Busty Sluts VII. MILFs Get Torn Up. Virgins in Vegas.
“Look at this shit,” she giggles. “Who watches this?”
Me, I think, my heart racing, face filling with blood. I watch this shit. I was watching it and touching myself when you rang my doorbell.
She gives me this look, the kind she gets when she has a terrible idea that could be a lot of fun, or a total disaster. Like sneaking into a movie, or stealing Dad’s booze, or chugging homemade moonshine in somebody’s basement before chugging their cheap beer.
“We should rent one,” she laughs, “just to make fun of it. Yeah? You want to?”
What can I say? I just sit there and shrug, praying to God she doesn’t pick Busty Sluts VII, because it’s mighty suspicious if pay-per-view gives you a “Resume” button instead of “Order.”
She scrolls through more titles. “Do you ever watch this stuff?” she asks suddenly, like it just occurred to her.
I shake my head, silent.
“But you watch porn, right? I mean, all guys watch porn. That’s what I hear, at least.”
“Yeah,” I manage, fumbling for the soda I left on the side table, “I watch porn.”
Mel studies me a minute. “Weird question,” she says slowly, “but what do you watch, exactly? Like, what are you into?”
Jesus, my face is on fire. Actual fire.
“I don’t know,” I stammer, spreading my free hand before choking down cola to stall. “Normal porn, I guess. Why?”
“Just curious. I’ve never seen any. I don’t know what it’s like.”
“It’s sex,” I mutter, as I sink into the couch again. “That’s it.”
She settles on Spring Break Slut Fest, laughing as she hits Order. “You think your dad will notice?”
“No.” That’s how I get away with ordering porn in the first place: the old man gets a few titles a month but can’t remember all of them, and probably doesn’t want to call the company to quibble over Busty Sluts I-VI or Bondage Babes, anyway. So either he doesn’t notice the occasional purchase on my part, or pretends not to.
“Oh, my God,” she says, about ten minutes in. It’s still building backstory, everyone spreading suntan lotion on each other, poolside. “Is the acting always this bad?”
“Pretty much. But, I mean...people aren’t paying them for their acting.”
“True,” she smirks.
This whole situation sucks. I’ve fantasized about watching porn with Mel, but not like this, where it’s just a big joke to her and I’m hiding my rager under a blanket, sweating from tequila while she giggles at the other end of the sofa.
In my fantasies, we’re a couple, watching it together in my bedroom on my laptop. Something kinky, involving role-play or toys, and we’re spooning half-naked as it plays, until she rolls over and says, “Let’s try that.”
Not this. Not some awkward, drunken afternoon in a storm, with her laughing at things that turn me on: girls oiling up other girls’ breasts, pool boys getting serviced on deck chairs.
By the time they’re into the actual sex—four girls and four guys, everyone’s swimsuit tossed casually into the water—I’m so horny that I’m almost numb, partially because I never got to finish earlier, but mostly because I don’t want to be horny. Not in front of Mel, and especially not when I can’t do a damn thing about it.
I realize she’s looking at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She looks back at the television. She’s stopped laughing.
“It’s just,” she says, a minute later, “I feel like you don’t thin
k it’s funny. Do you...like this stuff?”
I’m at a loss, now that she’s got me on the spot like this. “I don’t know.” On screen, a pool boy makes a bad pun about pH balances. “It’s porn. Guys like porn. People like porn, you know?” I take a breath to stop rambling. “It’s sex, so yeah, I like it. But I’m not into it, into it. I don’t go around imagining gang bangs by the pool.”
Mel laughs, but it’s different than before. Softer, through her nose.
“What about you?” I ask, almost a challenge, like I want to embarrass her as revenge. Maybe I do. “What do you like?”
It’s rare to see Mel blush, but she does now. I forgot how much I liked it.
“I don’t watch porn,” she mutters.
“Right, but like, what do you fantasize about? And don’t say you don’t think about it, because everyone does. Even nuns.”
She reaches for the tequila, but instead of pouring herself another shot, she tightens the lid and slides it under the couch. “I’ve never even, like, done that.”
“Done what?” I ask, nodding to the girls on screen, one of whom is screaming her way through an orgasm. “Had sex? Not even with Felix?”
She glares at the way I say his name, like I’m spitting food on her face. “No.”
“Carl Linkheart?”
Another glare. “No.”
“Bastian Dubois,” I say, because I just can’t believe, of all the guys Mel’s dated the last couple years, she hasn’t hooked up with a single one beyond making out. Especially Bastian, the exchange student from Strasbourg. Mel fawned over him for weeks before he asked her out, much to the jealousy of every other girl in our school, but they’d broken up just two weeks later.
Still: Mel is beautiful, so I know guys must have pressured her. And she seemed to let them get pretty far during the makeout sessions I was forced to witness, playing pathetic chauffeur to her carless dates.
