No Weddings (25 page)

Her gaze fell to my pants overflowing from her pan. She stared at them, blinking.

I waited, remaining patient, knowing that we walked this path together. My anguish was hers; her pain, mine. I hoped to relive this one last time, then banish it forever, finally moving on with our lives.

“Yeah.” Her voice was quiet, but strong. “I have something.”

Hannah turned and left the kitchen. I followed her into her spare front room where she disappeared behind the half-opened door of a walk-in closet. When she emerged, a large black garment bag was in her arms. She crossed the room and laid it flat across an empty table that was pushed against the wall beneath the window.

She took a deep breath. Then with slow movements, she proceeded to unzip it from top to bottom. A mass of frothy white material billowed out. The more it spilled out on its own, the faster she pulled, until a giant heap of silk and lace covered her table.

“That’s it?” Staring at the dress, I tried to make light of the heavy tension in the room.

She nodded. “It’s all I have.”

When I glanced at her, she sighed. “I threw away everything of his and ours too. There were so many things, I had to stack five large trash bags and a chair out by the curb. I stripped the sheets, bared the walls, got rid of the big screen that he’d bought for the living room. All of it.”

“But not the dress.”

She shook her head.

“That you kept a dress and I kept pants should say something ridiculous about us, but I can’t for the life of me figure it out right now.”

I stared at the pile of white fluff—her wedding dress. The ultimate symbol of most girls’ dreams and hopes for her future lay in a heap, once cherished, now discarded.

Gauging her mood as she stared at the pile with me, I said the first thing that came to mind. “A pan on the stove ain’t gonna cut it. We’re gonna need a bonfire.”

She didn’t even laugh. In a lunging movement, she scooped up the mass. Then she spun around and left the room. I followed her down the hall, watching as the outside edges of the bundle in her arms dragged along the walls, tiny beads scraping where they made contact with the smooth plaster.

Not wanting her to have any permanent marks to deal with after this, I reached behind her and held the fabric away from the walls.

When we made it back to the kitchen, Hannah nodded to the stove. “Grab the pan.”

I obeyed and followed her to her back door. While she slipped her socked feet into a worn pair of sneakers, she blindly fumbled with the latch, which was hidden by the mountain of material, until she turned the knob and pushed the door open.

A cold, damp breeze hit our faces. The mineral scent on the air felt cleansing, renewing, as if the universe conspired with us to set things right again.

We crossed her patio decking, then went down three steps and out into a sloping yard. Near the water, a grouping of teak Adirondack chairs surrounded a brick pit filled with ash.

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…”

“Dumbfuck’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.

Floodlights kicked on from her neighbor’s roofline. A door opened and banged shut behind a large figure who stared at us. He was downwind from the smoke.

Hannah took another swig from the bottle, then passed it to me while she watched her gawking neighbor. “We won’t get arrested for this, will we?”

I snorted. “They can haul me away with a grin on my face. No way in hell I’m stopping now. We’ll tell them I coerced you.”

She shook her head hard. “Uh-uh. We do the crime together? We do the time together.”

I ruffled her hair. “Thanks for the solidarity, Bonnie.”

“Anytime, Clyde.”

The flames faded as the fire ran out of fuel to burn. Hannah’s gaze grew pensive. All I could think about was how we’d taken another giant step toward each other.

I kicked a foot up onto the top of the brick wall rimming the pit and leaned back, grinning. “Good. I like us rulebreaking together.”

A
s the fire died down into glowing embers, our past vanishing into nothing but ash and smoke, the air grew heavy between us. What used to be a comfortable silence among friends now carried a thread of tension.

I knew where mine came from. Thoughts about how to move forward from here rattled inside my head. With no road map, I didn’t have a clear direction on how to proceed. But the woman sitting next to me deserved careful consideration about every brave step we took.

Hannah broke the silence with soft-spoken words. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Dread filled me. I hoped she hadn’t read my mind and I hadn’t frightened her with the seriousness of my thoughts. I glanced at her, diving off the cliff. “Do what?”

She sighed, staring straight ahead into the smoldering pit. “Do…us.”

Breathe.
I closed my eyes, forcing air into my lungs. I’d already fallen too deep into whatever was between me and Hannah to come out of this unscathed. “How do you know until you try?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know if I’m even capable of trying. One shock from the past and I had a total meltdown. I…I think I’m broken, Cade.”

My heart lurched, and I opened my eyes, twisting toward her. A lone tear tracked down her cheek. Her pain was a thousand times more devastating in person. It burned through my chest, and still, I preferred being here over the alternative. There was nowhere I’d rather be, even if it meant getting hurt again.

Setting my jaw, determined to break through to her, I slid my palm over her freezing hand that gripped the arm of her chair. I pried her fingers loose and turned her hand over, tangling my fingers with hers.

“You are not broken. Neither am I. Damaged? Yeah, we’re damaged. We’re survivors, though.”

When several seconds passed with no response from her, I pointed dramatically toward the fire. In the best theatrical impersonation I could manage with absolutely no stage experience whatsoever, I gave it my all to lighten the mood while delivering a message. “Be a phoenix with me. From the ash at our feet, let’s rise up, reborn.”

“That’s so corny.” She glanced at me, a tiny smile breaking through the serious expression that had darkened her face.

I chuckled. “That’s what you’re gonna get with me. Corny.”

She wrinkled her brow, pulling her hand away. Her hesitancy underscored how hard her foundation had been rocked. The road ahead was going to be a long and arduous one.

“I just…I can’t.” Pinching her eyes shut, she shook her head, dropping her chin to her chest.

“Can’t? Or won’t?” I reached over, tucking a finger under her chin, gently lifting until she faced me again and opened her eyes. “You’re scared. We can deal with scared. I’m scared too.”

Her face softened. “You are?”

“Yeah. I’m scared to death. I don’t want to get crushed again. I’ve been there before. It nearly killed me, and I’m not sure I could survive going there again. You want to know what gives me courage?”

“What?” Her eyes were locked onto mine, widening, full of hope and curiosity.

“You. You give me the courage to take the chance. Not only because of where you’ve been, but more importantly, who you’ve become in spite of it—the amazing woman I’m just getting to know. Out of all the women out there in the world, you’re the only one I’ve wanted to burn the list for. You’re the first person to make me feel alive again. You make me brave.”

She took a deep breath. “What if I can’t commit? I’m so scared right now, I’m not sure I can let myself go again, truly fall for someone and enjoy it without flashes from the past tainting it.” She shook her head. “God, listen to me.” Tearing her gaze away, she focused off into the distance. “I sound like a pathetic wreck.”

Needing her closer to me, I pushed out of the chair and crouched in front of her. With my hands on either armrest, I caged her in, forcing her attention on me. “You are
my
pathetic wreck. And I’m yours. Fractured and flawed, beautiful and kind, you are mine, Hannah. I’m laying claim now. I don’t care how long it takes us to get there. This is our journey, and we make it together.”