Purple Hearts(24)

“As you embark on this marriage— Wait, y’all gonna look at each other, or hold hands, or what?”

Frankie nodded, encouraging us with a wave from behind his phone.

I took Luke’s hands. I smiled at him like in-love couples do, with my eyes, a serene upturn of my lips, as if I had never been more sure of anything. He smiled back. It frightened me, how easy that was. As if all love was just fooling oneself until it was real.

The officiant ahemmed, making a big show of closing the Bible and reopening it, as if he were starting from the very beginning.

“As you embark on this marriage, God grant you both the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“Can’t disagree with that,” I said quietly.

Luke squeezed my hands. I couldn’t tell if it was a friendly squeeze or a warning squeeze.

“Do you, Cassie, take Luke to be your partner for life? Do you promise to walk by his side forever, and to love, help, and encourage him in all he does?”

I opened my mouth to say “I do,” but the officiant kept going.

“Do you promise to take time to talk with him, to listen to him, and to care for him? Will you share his laughter, and his tears, as his partner, lover, and best friend?”

I lifted my chin, waiting. That sounded like a lot of jobs for one person. If the real thing ever came along, I think I could be good at two, at best.

“Do you take him as your lawfully wedded husband for now and forevermore?” The officiant looked at me expectantly.

“I do,” I said.

As the officiant asked Luke the same questions, I watched Luke listen, his eyes down, eyelashes brushing his cheek.

“I do,” Luke said when the officiant finished.

“By the power vested in me by the state of Texas, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

For a thick second we stared into each other’s eyes, as we had done in the Lexus, but this time we knew what the other was thinking. Shit.

“Go on and kiss her, son!”

The officiant was directing Luke to kiss me, as if I were his property now. Screw that. I took Luke’s face in my hands and brought his mouth to mine, hoping he would take it from there. Long peck or actual make out? Open mouth?

Somewhere in between, it turned out. His lips were quite soft, yielding.

After a long moment, he tried to pull away, but my hair had snaked its way around one of his suit buttons. The result was a painful yank of my entire head.

“Ow!” I yelled. “Fuck!”

“What happened?” Luke said, touching me in a genuine way for the first time that day.

“That’s hair! That’s attached to my head!” I cried.

“Wait, hold still,” he said, trying to disentangle the strand but pulling too hard.

“Careful,” I scolded.

“Sorry!” he snapped.

Frankie put down the camera with a sigh. The next couple and their friends gathered near the entrance of the ceremony room, their made-up faces expectant and curious. I heard titters and frowned.

This was a sign, I was pretty sure. Our marriage was doomed. Either that, or it was time to cut off all my hair.





Luke


We walked out of the city hall chapel, onto the elevator smelling like everyone’s perfume, and out the doors to the sidewalk. The wind was whipping hard through the buildings of downtown Austin, smacking my tie into my face, and Cassie’s hair was billowing up, catching her earrings. No one said a word. There must have been a storm coming.

Cassie and I kept glancing at each other, not hostile but not nice, either, more like we were checking to see if the other was still there.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this neighbor kid I knew growing up. I couldn’t remember his name because it seemed like there was always some neighbor kid Jake and I were running around with in the summer while Dad was at the garage, Mitch or Mark or whoever, but he was the kid you always had to watch your mouth around. He’d pick up any word and poke at it until it seemed like the dumbest thing anyone had ever said. Jake and I could never say we loved anything, like Power Rangers or our dad or Ritz crackers, without the neighbor kid spitting, “Oh, yeah? If you love it so much then why don’t you marry it?”

It wasn’t like that, Jake and I would always tell him. We didn’t love crackers in the same way we loved people we would marry.

And yet there I was, married, and when it came time for the sake of the marriage to tell Cassie I “loved” her, even though I didn’t, there would still be a part of me that choked on the words, waiting to be taunted for them.

And there would also be another ounce of little kid logic that would want to point to someone as beautiful as she was right then, pushing the wild hair out of her face, and answer the taunts back. Well, I did marry her, motherfuckers. See? I did.





Cassie


Nothing in the Florien house needed cleaning, but here we were. Mom worked for Green Team, which meant she used tea tree oil and Dr. Bronner’s and vinegar on the tables and toilets of executives at Dell and IBM who decided their offspring should not inhale Lysol fumes. I had come here to talk to my mother about Luke, but there seemed to be no good time for that. How would I tell my mom I was married while I knelt next to a toilet bowl?