No Weddings (No Weddings #1)(58)

I grinned as Hannah dumped her dress into the fire pit. With the humidity in the air, no ash flew up, but as the material settled, black soot marred the white fabric.

She glanced at me and began bouncing with energetic excitement.

I followed suit, dumping my pants onto her dress. Leaning over, I tucked the list into a folded area of material on the top, leaving three-quarters of the paper sticking out. The sadist in me wanted to see the damned thing burn.

“I’ll be right back.” Hannah tore off toward the house in a full run, waves of hair flying behind her.

Dark cloud cover hid the sun from view, but it seemed like twilight instead of early afternoon. All the neighboring houses and those across the water had their porch lights turned on, shining yellow beacons marking their presence through the foggy haze.

I turned when I heard Hannah running back. She now wore a jacket and had a blue blanket folded over her arms. She gripped the neck of a Champagne bottle in one hand.

She held it up toward me. “To celebrate.”

“Fuck, yeah. This is great cause for celebration.”

I took the bottle, and she spread the blanket over two chairs. On one of the chairs, she left extra fabric on the end. She sat in the other, placing a Sunday paper in her lap. As I peeled the wrapper off the Champagne cork and worked the wiring loose, I glanced over to see the front-page story was from several weeks ago. She began crumpling pages into loose balls and tossed them onto our pile.

Other than an occasional car driving down her street, or the cry of a gull flying overhead, the only sound filling the silence around us was the tearing and crumpling of old news. How fitting.

Tucking the bottle into the crook of the chair, I took my seat and held out an open hand toward the paper. She handed me the USA Today Life section. I tore and crumpled, tossing page after page onto our pile. Inside, I’m sure, were wedding and engagement announcements.

Crumple.

Toss.

None of it mattered anymore.

All that mattered was the girl beside me who’d had her heart ripped to shreds.

Realizing the extra amount of blanket she’d left on the end was meant for jacketless me, I pulled it around me, appreciating the small gesture as we crumpled and tossed in companionable silence.

Once we’d amassed a paper mountain in the fire ring, I got up and grabbed a broken branch dangling from a neighbor’s tree and ripped it loose. I returned to poke the papers around, tucking some into the folds, thinking there would need to be a lot more oxygen to burn our dense pile of fabric.

The list remained on the top, daring me. I glared at it. My dick didn’t rule my life. Neither did those women. Nor my ex. I refused to lose myself in the addiction of numbing pleasure anymore.

It was time I felt again, even if feeling sometimes meant pain.

Ready, I turned toward Hannah. “How are we gonna light this thing?”

A gleam flickered in her eye. She seemed as eager as I was to light it up. Leaning to the side, she fished her hand around in her jacket pocket, then pulled out a metal cylinder: waterproof matches.

After burning through half a dozen matches and lighting the pile in various places, enough flames burned and started to merge. When the layered fabric of her dress caught fire, dark smoke furled too close to Hannah for my comfort. I grabbed the arm of her chair and dragged it flush beside mine. Then I altered the angle of my chair to match hers.

I took my seat again, pulling the extra fabric back over my lap. I grabbed the chilled bottle and gripped the cork with my left hand while I palmed the bottom of the bottle with my right. “You always have chilled Champagne on hand?”

She shook her head, staring into our growing blaze. “It was mine and…”

“Dumbf*ck’s?”

A slow nod followed, then a hard swallow as she gazed into the fire. “When I grabbed the matches, I remembered I’d buried it in the back of my fridge. We were supposed to drink it on our wedding night, before we left for our honeymoon the next day.”

On that lovely note, I gave the bottle a hard twist and popped the cork. “What happened to the honeymoon?”

She glanced at me, grinning. “I turned the tickets to ash in that same SCANPAN.”

I barked out a laugh. “Good. This Champagne will be all the sweeter today.”

I lifted the bottle between us, and she wrapped her hands around mine, staring at me with absolute confidence in her gaze.

“To finding closure,” I began.

“Saying good-bye to bitter endings,” she added.

“And hello to new beginnings,” I finished.

We raised the bottle in a toast, then I pushed it toward her. She took a sip before passing it to me, her face scrunching.

I took a mouthful and swallowed. “Uck.” I nearly spit it out.

We both laughed.

I shook my head. “Not all Champagne is created equal.”

Narrowing her eyes, she took another sip. “I’m still gonna drink it.”

“Then so will I.”

We continued to swallow down our medicine as we watched the fire burn. Noxious fumes rose up, but thankfully, the wind shifted to take the smoke away from us. We watched as my pants ignited. Layers of her dress peeled back one by one, the edges curling in the heat before bursting into flames.

The list on top singed on the edges, blackening in stages before it too caught fire. Without a single emotion, absent of any thought in my head, I stared at the list as it disintegrated into an orange flame.