Eleven
Cara and I fielded some more questions about our wedding from friends over the next few days and had to tell them that we wanted it to be private. I didn’t even want to tell them what time it was in case they decided to show up.
“You know they’re probably going to show up. Ansel will tell them,” Cara said as we ate pizza in her apartment. The place was even more filled with boxes. We were getting the money next week and she was going to move in on Friday.
“Yeah, he will. He’s not the best at keeping secrets. That asshole.” Cara handed me a paper towel to wipe pizza sauce off my chin.
“Yes, but we love him.”
“Yes. Yes we do.”
“So we should have an unpacking party next week, I think. Invite everyone over. Feed them pizza.” She held up a slice.
“Sounds great. Use our friends for cheap labor.” Cara smacked me with a paper plate.
“They love us. And we would do the same for them.” I chomped on a piece of crust.
“We have done the same for them.” I couldn’t count how many friends I’d help move, sometimes multiple times. That was just what happened in the city. People moved apartments, sometimes every year. I swear, I didn’t go six months without moving at least one friend.
“Exactly.”
I stole her crusts and looked around.
“It’s weird seeing everything in boxes. Do you feel sad at all, leaving this place?” She shook her head.
“Definitely not. This was a place to live. Not a home. I’m looking forward to making a home with you, Lo. It’s going to be so fun. I hope I don’t bug you when I go and get snacks in the middle of the night. I wake up hungry all the time.” I gave her a look.
“Yeah, Care, I know. It’s not like I haven’t been with you. Remember all those family vacations you took with us?” My parents would get a hotel room and Cara and I would get our own room and we thought we were just the most mature. We’d stay up and watch TV late into the night and order room service in the mornings and rack up a huge bill, but my parents never minded. I think they knew that things were tough for Cara at home, so they wanted to try and give her what she couldn’t get there.
“Remember the time you got your period?” she said and I hid my face behind a pillow. That was one of those memories I would rather forget, and was glad only Cara and my parents knew about.
“I thought I was dying,” I said. The first time I’d gotten my period had been on a trip to Disneyworld, and I had woken up with blood in my underwear and freaked Cara out by screaming and running to the bathroom. I thought I’d wounded myself or had internal bleeding. It hadn’t occurred to my twelve-year-old brain that it could be my monthly cycle until Cara practically broke down the bathroom door and found me sobbing on the floor.
Once she’d explained things to me, and my mom had reminded me that we had talked about this happening plenty of times, I calmed down and then put in my first tampon and had a great day at the Magic Kingdom.
To this day, I couldn’t think about how dramatic I’d been without wanting to fall through the floor.
“But you lived,” Cara said, finishing her pizza and sitting next to me on the couch.
I snuggled into her shoulder.
“Somehow I did. Thanks to you.” She reached over and started playing with my hair.
“We should get a bigger couch,” she said. Right now I didn’t have one. I’d gotten rid of the one I’d purchased at a thrift store in college when I’d moved in with Lisa. I guess I thought that since hers was better, I didn’t need mine. And that by the time I needed a new couch, I was going to have enough money to buy one. I guess it wasn’t a totally outlandish idea, because now I would have enough money to get a fancy couch.
“What color do you think?” she asked. I closed my eyes as she softly scratched my scalp. I was going to ask her to braid my hair before I left. Cara had a gift for doing intricate braids and it meant I didn’t have to fuss with my hair for a few days.
“I’m not sure,” I said, starting to get drowsy. “What do you think? I’ve never really decorated before. Not in an intentional way. I just pick stuff I like, even if it doesn’t go together.” Cara snorted.
“Yeah, I know. Do you mind if I do a little decorating? Even if you buy the stuff, I can help arrange it in the right way.” I opened my eyes.
“There is a right way to decorate?” I asked. I wasn’t aware of this.
“Yes, there is.” She seemed really sure about that.
“Have I been decorating the wrong way?” I already knew the answer. Cara looked at the ceiling and sighed heavily.
“Okay, that’s it,” I said, going for that ticklish spot on her ribs. “There is no wrong way to decorate, say it!”
“Never!” Cara screamed through giggles. She tried to get away and only succeed in getting both of us onto the floor in the midst of all the boxes. Thankfully she had a thick carpet on the floor, or we might have had injuries.
She thrashed from side to side.
“Say it,” said, ducking out of the way of her flailing limbs.
“You’ll have to kill me,” she said, and I gave up.
“Fine. Maybe you have better decorating sense than me,” I said, laying on my back as she caught her breath.
“That was mean.”
“It’s not my fault I’m not ticklish at all. My tickle button is broken.” Cara snorted. Our sides were pressed together and I wanted to reach out and take her hand. It seemed like the right thing to do, so I did. She flinched for a second, but wrapped her fingers in between mine and held my hand.
My heart did a slow happy roll, like a cat basking in a bit of sun on the floor.
“How are you going to do your hair?” she asked.
“Huh?” I said. I was too distracted by the feel of her hand in mine.
“How are you going to do your hair? I could braid it for you.” she said, letting go of my hand and turning on her side to look down at me.
“Yeah, that would be great,” I said, trying not to think about the way her letting go of my hand made me feel hollow inside.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Not sure. Probably loose. And I kind of ordered something online. One for each of us.” She blushed a little.
“What is it?” I asked, and she got up and pulled out a box that was hidden behind a stack of other boxes. It was as if the boxes had mated and kept multiplying.
“It’s probably silly, but I couldn’t resist. And they won’t die, so we can keep them forever.” She pulled out two identical bouquets, each with pink and cream flowers. They sincerely looked real. I couldn’t stop myself from smelling them. Plastic.
“They’re so pretty,” I said, taking mine.
“I thought so. And they were on sale, so there’s that.” Pretty and cheap? Hell yes.
“How are we going to do this, exactly? Like, do we walk down the aisle together? Is there an aisle?” Cara blushed again.
“What?”
“So I might have looked up the courthouse and what it looks like. There is an aisle. So what do you want to do with that?” I thought about it for a few moments.
“What if we walked toward each other at the back, and then both walked down together? Then it’s not like one of us is waiting for the other. We’re already together when we get there.” Cara beamed.
“I hoped you would say that. That’s what I want. Should we practice?” I looked around, but there wasn’t a whole lot of room until Cara started shoving boxes out of the way to make a small path from the living room to the kitchen.
“We need music,” she said, picking up her bouquet.
“Are they going to play music?” I asked. I was sure that was on the site.
“We can. We just have to bring it with us. They can hook it up to the speakers if we have it on one of our phones. Let me know what song you might want. I can’t pick. But for now, I’ll just play something traditional.” She fiddled with her phone and put on the traditional wedding song.
“Come here,” she said, taking my arm. “Now we walk.” I started forward, but she yanked me back.
“No, you have to step slow. Like this.” She took one step and put her feet together and then did it again.
“Is that how we have to do it?” This was getting more complicated than I wanted it to be.
“Yes, now walk with me.” I didn’t feel like it, but I wanted to humor her, so I let her drag me down and then go back and then do it about ten more times.
“You know that there will be no pictures of this. And no one is going to see it but whoever is marrying us, Mom, Dad, and Ansel? And that this isn’t a real wedding?” The lines kept getting blurrier and blurrier. We shouldn’t have gotten dresses, probably. Or let my parents plan us a pretend reception. We should have just gotten it done and not told anyone. The rings had been the first step into making this feel more like a legit wedding and I was regretting how impulsive I’d been when I’d made us get them.
“I don’t care. I want it to be right,” she said, and her grip on my arm tightened. She wanted this. Walking down the aisle the way she wanted would make her happy, so I was going to fucking suck it up and do cartwheels down the aisle if that was what she wanted. I’d do anything for her. We had already sort of crossed the line of real and fake wedding, so we might as well let it ride until we got through it. Afterward, we could go back to remembering this was not a real wedding, not a real marriage, and swim in our pool full of money.
At last I walked “correctly” and Cara was happy.
“Do you want to choose a song?” I asked. Now that was something that I particularly wanted to be right. I didn’t want it to just be another song like other people had. We couldn’t be generic when it came to the music. I wouldn’t let it happen.
“I pulled up lists, but they all seemed too traditional. This isn’t traditional, so why should our song be?” she said. I scanned through a few lists, but nothing jumped out at me, so I went through my giant database of music. Nothing really said ‘wedding’ but did that matter? We only had to have a song that was us, and that was slow enough to walk to.
I made a quick list of five songs and made Cara listen to them.
“This one,” she said as the second song started to play.
“Don’t you want to hear the others?” I asked, but she shook her head.
“No, this one.” It was Halsey’s cover of I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash. A little melancholy, but it was one of my favorites.
“You want to practice?”
“No. I want to save it for the day,” she said as the song finished.
“Sounds good,” I said with a yawn. “Hey, you want to come over and stay? Lisa’s gone so we can do whatever we want.” I was still getting used to the fact that I was living by myself for a few days until Cara moved in. I still poked my head out of my door before I went out into the kitchen to make sure Lisa wasn’t there. And then I remembered she was gone and did a little shimmy of joy. That girl really had poisoned the atmosphere in the apartment. She’d been a malignant black cloud and now she was gone, I was free and happy. It was going to be even better when Cara moved in. Everything was going to be perfect. My best friend was going to be taken care of and I wouldn’t have to reuse dryer sheets. What more could you ask for?