Erasing Faith(55)

“So...” I asked in a tentative voice. “What do you think? Because, honestly, any insight would be helpful right about now.”

Margot looked deeply into my eyes. “Let me get this straight…” Her voice was more serious than I’d ever heard it. “You married a guy without even sleeping with him first? What are you, Amish?!”

I snorted into my wine glass.

***

Late that night, I lay in bed thinking about Wes and staring down at the thin white cord wrapped firmly around my left ring finger.

Obviously, the marriage wasn’t legally binding. It wouldn’t hold up in the eyes of the courts. Neither the U.S. nor the Hungarian government would regard the union as a valid contract. They’d laugh it off, much in the way Wes and I had done earlier that afternoon, after we realized what had happened.

He’d teased me about not even bothering to wear white to our ceremony.

I’d joked back that he could’ve at least carried me over the threshold of the tent.

We’d made light of the entire thing. On the surface I’d been full of smiles, rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of the situation. Giggling as we’d climbed onto his bike and headed back to the city.

Inside, though… I was a mess.

I’d always believed that marriage was more than words on a piece of paper. Tying your life to someone else’s wasn’t a consequence of legal jargon or an agreement of terms between partners and a justice of the peace.

It was an alignment of souls.

A fusion of spirits.

So, no — lawfully I wasn’t Wes Adams wife.

But spiritually? I wasn’t so sure.

I spun the white cord in a circle around my finger. A handful of old words muttered by a witch-woman shouldn’t have meant anything. So why couldn’t I shake the sensation that I was now somehow bound to Wes in an unbreakable, indisputable way?

It was as if my entire stratosphere had snapped into focus as soon as I’d stepped from the smoky darkness of that tent and met Wes’ eyes in the full light of day. I looked at him and everything seemed to shift, as though I’d been walking around my whole life looking at the ground beneath my feet, and someone had finally tilted my head back and introduced my eyes to the sky.

Nothing was different; and yet, everything had changed. Whether we wanted to admit it or not, something ancient, something sacred, had transpired today. We could cover it up with teasing words, downplay it with jokes and jabs, belittle it with laughter — but, really, I think we both knew that the carefree no-labels, no-commitment attitude we’d both embraced up until this point was no longer relevant.

Maybe that’s why, when he’d dropped me off, Wes had made his excuses and disappeared without so much as a kiss goodnight. I’d tried not to be too disappointed as I watched him ride away. Tried not to let it bother me that we’d turned something special into nothing more than a punchline. Assured myself that he’d come around, that he’d come back to me when he’d sorted out his head.

I knew he was freaked out.

So was I.

But I did notice, in spite of all our teasing, neither of us had removed our rings.

***

The sound woke me from a deep sleep.

Tap, tap, tap.

My heart began to pound and my disbelieving eyes flew to the window, my barely-conscious mind consumed by thoughts of the axe-wielding murderer who was likely climbing through the portal into my bedroom. To my great relief, the dark pane was still firmly closed. My apartment was on the first floor, elevated by a ground-level basement — it would be damn near impossible to climb through the window without standing on a dumpster or somehow scaling the ten-foot wall barehanded. No one was coming inside. I’d probably heard a gust of wind or a distant crack of lightning. Maybe I’d simply imagined the noise.

Tap, tap.

Nope, definitely not a figment of my imagination. I pushed back the covers and scurried out of bed, edging toward the window with my back against the wall like a secret-agent-spy-extraordinaire. When I reached the sill, I fell to my knees with my chin propped on the cushion of the window seat and craned my neck to peer through the pane.

At this angle I couldn’t see much except the granite wall of the building across the alley. My startled eyes rounded like saucers when I saw a small projectile fly through the air and bounce off the glass like a tiny stone boomerang. A pebble.

A freaking pebble.

Thrown against my windowpane like I was some princess in a 16th century castle.

Before I could stop myself, I was climbing onto the narrow window seat, pressing my hands flat against the glass, and staring down into the dark alleyway, looking for a figure in the shadows. When I spotted a familiar leather jacket, I hurried to slide open the window.

“Wes?” I whisper-yelled down to the street, my eyes straining to meet his in the black night. “It’s three in the morning. What the hell are you doing down there?”

I saw a flash of white teeth in the darkness as he grinned. “I had to tell you something.”

“Who do you think you are, Romeo?” I rolled my eyes. “A text would’ve sufficed.”

“Cut me some slack, I’m trying to be romantic.” His words floated up to my ears, and I could hear the amusement in his tone.

“I told you I’m not a princess. This is definitely crossing the line into fairytale territory.”