Silas (38 page)

“
Why?”

“
Because I can’t do what
you’re saying, Silas, and if I curl up with you in bed I’m leading
you on.”

I felt defeated. “You don’t
want to stay here. You don’t want to be with me.”

She shook her head. “I’m
sorry. I like you. I’ll miss you. But I
don’t
want to be with
you.”

That hurt worse than I thought it was
going to. I actually winced.

She paced in front of me.
“Look, it wouldn’t work for so many reasons, Silas. I’d be
uprooted, and I wouldn’t know anyone, and I’d be clingy, and you’d
hate it.”

“
I don’t think I would,” I
said. “I think I could definitely be down with you clinging to me a
little bit.”

She smiled at me sadly,
still pacing. “Well, I wouldn’t be. I don’t want to cling. I’m not
that kind of girl.”

“
What kind of girl are you?
The kind that has sex to feel powerful?”

“
I might be marginally
fucked up.” She pointed at me. “Not any more fucked up than you
are, Mr. I-Was-a-Prostitute.”

Well. She had a point. But I
guessed she didn’t see that as a reason that we were perfect for
each other, the way I did.

“
Anyway, I don’t think
there’s going to be a lot of sex in my near future. I think you
were right. Maybe we both have too much sex.”

“
But you’re
leaving.”

“
I have to.” She stopped
pacing. “I can’t be with you. You remind me of what happened. If I
was with you, I’d never get away from it.”

That stung. My nostrils
flared.

“
I’m sorry. I know that’s
not fair,” she said. “But it’s true.”

“
You can’t sleep without
me,” I said. “How are you going to not be with me?”

“
I can sleep without you,”
she said. “I’m only afraid to. But I’m going to have to face that
fear. Probably tonight.”

“
No,” I said. “You can at
least stay with me tonight.”

“
I can’t.” She took another
drink of Jameson’s. “You know, we talked about this. The night you
told me about Sylvia. You told me you didn’t believe in
love.”

“
That was then,” I said. “I
think I do now.” I cringed, realizing what I’d just admitted to
her.

But if she understood my
implied meaning, she didn’t let on. “I said that Griffin and Leigh
seemed so close. And you said it was only because they’d killed
together.”

“
I didn’t know what I was
talking about.”

“
No, I think you did.” She
bit her lip. “That’s what we have, Silas. We don’t know each other
very well, not really. We went through this really harrowing
experience, and we killed people, and it bonded us. But that’s all
it is.”

“
It’s not,” I
said.

She hugged the bottle close.
“It is.” She turned and went to the door. “I’m going back to my
bed.”

“
Christa, you don’t have to
do that. You could stay. It would be nice to be close.”

“
It would be confusing,” she
said. And she ducked out of the door.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

I stood next to Griffin. I
was wearing suit over a white t-shirt. Griffin was fidgeting. His
friend Oliver was the other groomsman, and he stood next to me. I
barely remembered Oliver from the bachelor/bachelorette
party.

Our backyard had been
groomed and cleaned, but it wasn’t overly adorned. We stood in
front of the flower garden that Sloane tended. There was a little
stone walkway that would serve as the aisle for the bride. It was
flanked by rows of white chairs, which had been filled with people.
I didn’t recognize most of them. Griffin’s mother was in the front
row. I thought her name was Beverly, but we hadn’t spoken much. The
other guests were various friends of Griffin and Leigh. There
wasn’t much in the way of family, however. Leigh’s parents were
both deceased. Neither she nor Griffin seemed to have extended
families. Overall, it was a fairly small gathering. Maybe thirty
people total.

There was an iPod plugged
into some speakers near the house, so as to take advantage of the
electricity there. It was pelting out music by some band I hadn’t
heard of before called Yeasayer. Apparently, Leigh liked them, and
they provided the ambiance she wanted for the wedding. They had a
sort of folky, airy sound to them, but it was also a little funky.
I thought it was okay.

As far as weddings went, it was pretty
low key.

I guess I’d known that it
was going to be. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to Sloane when
she’d been blabbing about how Leigh wanted an anti-wedding that
wouldn’t be very stressful.

Funny thing was, it had seemed fairly
stressful to me.

Anyway, I guessed it was
typical for Leigh to want an anti-wedding. She wasn’t your typical
kind of girl. She was a brash individual. She definitely marched to
the beat of her own drum.

Honestly, I’d been spending
so much time thinking of hers and Griffin’s relationship as
traditional that I hadn’t noticed how far off center they were. We
all were, really. I supposed that living through the shit we lived
through tended to do that to people.

The music switched to a
different song. I remembered it from the rehearsal dinner. It had a
sort of tribal drum beat and a lot of swelling synthesizer. This
was the song that kicked the whole thing off.

Sure enough, the door opened, and my
sister came out. She was wearing a white dress and carrying a
bouquet of roses.

So… the bridesmaids were in
white?

Interesting choice. I
grinned.

Christa followed her in a
few minutes, wearing the same dress. It was short, came down to her
calves, and sleeveless. Her dark hair was pulled up into a casual
knot on top her head, careless strands falling in her face. She was
smiling. The wound on her forehead was healing—barely visible. She
looked fresh and happy and so beautiful it made my chest
hurt.

I looked away.

She’d been avoiding me since
our Thursday night conversation.

I guessed she was serious
about not wanting to see me.

It was funny, because I
didn’t think I’d ever asked a girl to be with me like that. Even my
high school girlfriend and I had seemed to sort of fall together
without a lot of effort. We’d assumed we were together. It was
funny, because there had been lots of girls since then who’d tried
to get me to commit to something—anything—and I’d blown them all
off.

This was probably my punishment or
something.

Sloane and Christa took their places on
the opposite side of the flower garden. Christa was directly across
from me.

I caught her eye.

Her gaze darted from mine.

And then everyone stood up.

Because the bride was
coming.

But since everyone was
standing, I couldn’t see Leigh until she got around the crowd and
started down the stone-walkway aisle.

She
wasn’t wearing white.

She had a burgundy dress. It had short
sleeves. It swept her ankles. It was covered in layers of dark red
lace.

The roses she was carrying
were white, though.

Her blonde hair was gathered
up on her head in a similarly careless style to Christa’s. She
gazed nervously around at everyone as she walked slowly
forward.

And then she saw Griffin, and her face
lit up.

It stunned me, the change
that went over her. It was as if seeing Griffin there was the best
thing that ever happened to her. He made her so happy. I didn’t
think a girl had ever looked at me that way.

Griffin grinned at her. His
features relaxed, as if her presence had soothed everything that
bothered him. He stopped fidgeting.

The two of them locked gazes, and she
continued her slow movement towards us. It was like she was
suddenly floating, moving forward like liquid.

Griffin stepped forward to intercept
her.

I could finally see the back
of her dress, and I saw that it dipped elegantly low in the
back.

She joined hands with
Griffin.

The two of them kissed.

Then they turned around and faced all
the people that were sitting and watching.

Leigh waved. “Hi,
everyone.”

Griffin cleared his
throat.

They waited for a second while the song
that was playing finished. Then it was quiet.

“
So, um,” said Leigh, “you
might have noticed that we don’t have an officiant or whatever,
cause we’re doing the legal stuff at the courthouse, and we’re
not…” She grinned at Griffin. “We don’t care, right, because it’s
just supposed to be really informal.”

He couldn’t take his eyes
off of her.

She nudged him. “You’re
supposed to say something.”

“
I agree with what you
said,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and laughed.
Everyone else gathered did too.

He took her hand.

They gazed at each other again for
several quiet minutes, both of them grinning like
idiots.

Then Leigh shook herself and
looked back at everybody. “Okay, so, the first thing in a wedding
is usually giving the bride away, but I don’t like belong to
anybody except myself, so I’m sort of giving myself away or
whatever, but, um…” She gestured to Beverly. “Griffin’s mom is
here, and so, we wanted to get her formal blessing.”

Beverly stood up.

Griffin smiled at her. “What
do you think, Ma?”

Beverly wiped at her eyes.
She was crying. “I just wanted to say that you’re both beautiful,
and I couldn’t be happier for you.”

Leigh looked like she was
going to tear up too. “Thank you.”

Beverly nodded and sat back
down.

Leigh sniffled. “Um… then
we’re supposed to… what do we do next?”

“
Vows, right?” said
Griffin.

She giggled. “Right.” She
made a face. “Duh.”

Everyone laughed.

“
I’m sorry,” she said. “I
was going to have this piece of paper to keep track, but I decided
it looked tacky.”

“
We, uh, didn’t really want
to get too crazy into big, long vows,” said Griffin.

“
Right, because this is
really informal,” said Leigh.

“
And we all just want to
start drinking,” said Griffin.

Everyone laughed
again.

Leigh rolled her eyes.
“Whatever, I’ve seen Griffin drunk like two times in his
life.”

Griffin looked at the ground,
chuckling.

“
So, anyway, basically…” She
swung their bound hands and sought his gaze.

He lifted his eyes.

“
I want to be with you,” she
said. “Through anything that the world can throw at us. We’ve been
through so much together already. You’ve seen me at my worst and at
my best. And I don’t trust anyone the way I trust you. I love you,
and I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

He caressed her
face.

She closed her eyes.

“
Yeah,” he said.
“Ditto.”

More laughter from the
guests.

Her jaw dropped. “Oh come
on, you can’t just say that. You have to say
something
.”

He laughed.

“
Seriously, I’m doing all
the talking.”

“
You’re much better at
talking than me, doll,” he said.

She fixed him with an annoyed
glare.

“
Hey, I’m kidding,” he said.
He cleared his throat again. He licked his lips. And he looked
deeply into her eyes. “Um… I guess, I don’t really know if I’d be
anything without you. Before I knew you, I was lost. I was closed
in. I was afraid. And you showed me that life meant something. You
woke me up. You’re literally the best thing that ever happened to
me, and I’ve tried being without you, and I much prefer being with
you, so, as long as it’s okay with you, I want you near me. All the
time.”

Leigh did start crying then.

He wiped her tears away with his
thumb.

They did another of those
frozen moments, where they seemed like they were drowning in each
other’s gazes, like the whole world had faded away, and they could
only see each other.

It was powerful. It was unsettling. And
it made me wish…

“
Rings.” Leigh held out her
hand, still staring at Griffin.

Oh, that was me. I fumbled
to find the ring in my suit pocket and moved forward.

I handed it to Griffin.

Sloane was handing a ring to
Leigh.

Leigh held up her ring and
grabbed Griffin’s hand. “With this ring… I claim you so that no one
else can touch you.”