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roosterbruiser · 2 years

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𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞 ☾☽ 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 𝐈𝐈𝐈.𝐈

☾☽ 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐲 "𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫" 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐰 𝐱 𝐅𝐚𝐲𝐞 "𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫" 𝐋𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐫

☾☽ 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: It’s been almost three years since the accident that took half of her, and Faye “Clover” Ledger seems fine, really. She loves her old house, she has a perpetually expanding vinyl collection, she’s got a job she likes on base, and she is only a short drive from the beach. She’s grounded--literally. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw feels like he’s been homesick his entire life. He’s always on the move; jumping from one squadron to another, living one mission to the next. Somewhere in between losing both his parents and carving a successful career as a Naval aviator, he’s never found himself a home. When a call to serve on a high-priority mission with an elite squadron brings Rooster back to Miramar, he finds that home. Except it’s not a house that he finds--it’s the former backseater that observes and records the mission for the Official Navy Record.

☾☽ 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

☾☽ 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

☾☽ 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞.𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐅𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝟏𝟐𝐭𝐡 & 𝟏𝟑𝐭𝐡, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏

I wish my sister was here. That’s all I can think right now; a thought that first swept past me beneath the palm trees outside The Hard Deck’s front doors, drifting its fingers lazily across my eyelids before returning to consume me after my second glass of champagne--pressing me against its wet tongue and swallowing me deep down into the crux of its hollow belly. I’m here now--suddenly sitting in a shallow pool of cold water, blinking at the dark, thinking about Maggie.

If she was here now she would be wearing a vintage dress--one that I didn’t even know she owned, one that she somehow found at the bottom of a barrel for free somewhere in New Mexico, one that was well-fitting and tasteful--and her hair would be wild and her earrings would be big and she would smell like velvety amber and nondescript citrus. She would have her arm looped through mine all night and she would pay for all my shots and take every bathroom break with me, giggling as she stuffed a strip of spearmint gum between my teeth and dried her hands on her dress. She would ask me how I felt, slyly encasing my hands in hers under the guise of closeness--though really because it was her way of assessing my nerves by gauging the temperature, the flexibility, of my fingers. She wouldn’t let any uniform dance with me, forming a makeshift barrier around me with her own body as a velvet-clad shield. She would slip Bob a caffeine pill when his eyes would inevitably start to droop after eleven, coaxing him into chasing it with a shot of tequila.

“And why do we drink tequila?” She would’ve purred, grinning, leaning into Bob.

And Bob, ever-exhausted but ever-loyal to Maggie Palmer Ledger, would answer begrudgingly, “Because tequila is an upper.”

She would pet Bob, pressing a lewd-sounding wet-lipped kiss to his cheek, praising him as he tilted the shot glass back and swallowed with a grimace. She would be sweet, though, pressing a lime to his lips.

When he would open his twisted mouth to explain that tequila is actually a depressant, that the myth that it is a stimulant is just that--a myth--she would quickly usher another shot glass to his lips.

“Quiet now,” she would say, “drink the kool aid, baby boy.”

I think her and Phoenix would have been fast friends, too. They were similar in many capacities, so similar that sometimes Phoenix felt more familiar to me than she really should. The both of them always going toe-to-toe with cocksure pilots, except Maggie would wither them down and end the night with them pressed beneath the soft pad of her thumb. Phoenix is whip-smart and lethal when she flies--just like Maggie was. Even their drinks of choice and the order in which they desire them--which goes tequila shots, then bloody Mary’s, then margaritas--are identical. They would have been the kind of friends that indulge each other’s confrontational nature and enable each other’s short tempers. They would have been the kind of friends that sat together on one end of every spectrum, leaving no room for middleground, never meeting each other--or anyone else--halfway on anything.

But Maggie is not here now.

She is somewhere else, much farther away, just out of reach.

Sometimes I dream that she is on the other side of the unopened door that connects our childhood rooms, just waiting for me to be brave enough to turn the handle--waiting for me to come home.

But really, truly, I know that she is buried in Topeka Cemetery, flanked by the empty plots my parents will one day lie in. I know that it’s cold in Topeka now and probably cloudy as the nighttime draws nearer. I know that the minuscule weather-resistant American flag staked by her headstone is probably flapping in the icy wind, maybe even tilted from the sideways sleet or unflappable snow.

She is there, parts of her at least, and I am here in this bar in Fightertown on the eve of my wedding that she did not get to plan and will not get to attend.

It’s still early in the evening now, early enough so The Hard Deck’s usual Friday-night clientele is still trickling in, gaggles of uniforms sporadically standing around the dartboard and pool table with glasses of scotch and bottles of beer. It’s not very loud yet--the jukebox isn’t humming, the pool balls aren’t clacking thunderously under the forceful nudge of Hangman or Coyote, there is no strapping young man pounding at the piano keys, or peanut shells crunching under lug-sole boots. There are glasses clinking smally, the sound muted by the low voices of men.

Outside, in the nippy air, the sun is sinking slowly into the teal ocean. It is painting the bar the color of a chrysanthemum, the kind I buy at the farmer’s market when they’re in season and set in the middle of the breakfast table, the kind Rooster has come home with on random Tuesday’s. Yes, it feels like a familiar color, one that has been in my home for a long time in repurposed measuring cups and brown paper tied with twine.

I’m standing at the bar, the ledge digging into my belly as I rest my forearms on the damp wooden surface, finishing my glass at the insistence of Phoenix. She’s standing on my left side, her hair long and pushed behind her ears and down her back. Her eyes are crinkled, dusted the same baby blue hue of her dress, and she’s laughing as she nudges me.

“We’re getting Faye drunk,” she sings, wrinkling her nose at Penny, who’s standing before me with her own cheeky grin.

The bubbles from the champagne are bursting in my nostrils, peppering the back of my throat. It makes my spine tingle as it settles in the middle of my chest, a bundle of vibrating, ticklish nerves.

Warmth is blooming over my entire being; my tongue, my throat, my chest, my belly, between my thighs. It’s the way pink champagne always makes me feel, especially after three glasses. Fizzy --that’s how I feel, which is better than sad. It sits at the bottom of my belly, cascading down my thighs and calves and into my toes; but it also reaches up into my chest and stretches across my shoulders and blushes my throat. It holds me there in quivering hands, overtaking me, overwhelming me.

“One down,” Penny exclaims gleefully, setting the empty champagne bottle beside us, biting her lip, “few more to go.”

“How’re you feeling? What’re you at?”

Bob, who’s glowing in the radiance of this February dusk with his scruffy cheeks and overgrown hair, leans against the bar to search my face with his baby blues slightly narrowed.

He’s talking about the ranking system he insists we use tonight. We are to gauge our drunkenness on a scale from 1-10, reporting back to him as often as he sees fit. He had told us this on the drive over, gesturing and nodding as he spoke, San Diego flashing past the tinted windows of the Uber in frames of yellow and blue. And even though Phoenix and I had shared a private glance, a discreet pinch, we agreed to Bob’s terms on account of our unyielding affection for him.

“Three,” I tell him, smiling, exhaling as I climb out of the belly of grief and back into my barstool, “y’all?”

I point at Bob and Phoenix alike.

“I think I hear a little Tahpekah in there,” Phoenix teases, nudging me.

Bob’s laughing, eyes crinkling.

Phoenix shrugs then, considering for a moment, still smiling a teasing smile.

“Two and a half,” she says.

Bob nods.

“Yeah, that’s where I’m at, too,” he agrees.

“You’ve got all night,” Penny interjects, already uncorking another bottle of identical champagne, dropping her eye in a sly wink, “we’ll get you all nice and hungover for the ceremony tomorrow.”

The ceremony tomorrow.

It makes my tongue quiver in my mouth, between my teeth. Yes, I am getting married tomorrow--somewhere between four and five o’clock, somewhere between dusk and sunset. There’s a cream-colored silk dress zipped into a velvet garment bag in my closet, freshly steamed and wrinkle-free. There’s a gold band, a thin and round one, the width of Rooster’s fourth finger in the satin-lined jewelry box on our bathroom counter. My fingernails are long and painted the color of a pearl, my cuticles trimmed and unusually tear-free. There is a permanent ache at the base of my spine from the tireless months we’ve spent working on our backyard; laying bricks, power washing the patio, repainting the house, planting blue witch and Indian mallow flowers.

It does feel like I am getting married tomorrow; it does feel like this is the night before it happens, the night before I become a wife. And that makes the warmth pulsing through my body feel infinite--like I am just radiating heat, inspiring perspiration on the hairlines of my bridal party.

“Oh, I’ve got hangovers covered,” Bob insists coolly, pushing his wire-framed glasses back up his nose, “an old Floyd-family secret.”

Phoenix snorts--leaning forward to grin at Bob, a teasing tint glimmering in her glassy eyes.

“Tell Penny what the family recipe is,” she encourages, tickled, “g’head, tell her.”

Penny leans forward, refilling our champagne flutes. I’m smiling, too, watching the bubbles rise to the brim of my glass before I bring the flute to my lips and swallow. Fizzy.

Bob’s blushing now, shoulders drooping a smidgen.

“Well,” Bob starts, “it’s just a cup of black coffee with a shot of--well, a shot of whatever gave you the hangover. So, like, for us it’ll probably be tequila.”

Penny grimaces. I bite my lip.

“Oh, just wait. He’s not done yet,” Phoenix tells Penny, chuckling, “continue, Floyd.”

Bob is smiling now, shrugging in a small way, moving to let one of his hands rest in the middle of my back. His hand is warm, just like mine, but I know the bare skin of my back is warmer. He absently rolls his fingers over the soft edge of my dress, his touch gentle and non-presumptuous.

“Well, the real beauty of the recipe is the vitamins,” he explains, cheeks blooming the same ballet-slipper color of my dress, “it’s two crushed up zinc pills, three crushed up ibuprofen, and one vitamin B-12. And one allergy pill for me because the pollen count is supposed to be high tomorrow.”

Penny’s nose is wrinkled, her mouth slightly ajar and frowning, her eyebrows quirked. Phoenix is laughing, the sound melodious and soft.

“And then?” I prompt.

“Yeah,” Phoenix agrees, “take us home, Floyd.”

Bob is really grinning now.

“Bagel and lox. Extra capers,” he says, eyes twinkling, “That’s the holy hangover cure! You’ve got caffeine, hair of the dog, vitamins, carbs, fatty acids, and electrolytes. The recipe’s been in the Floyd family for generations.”

Penny’s face is unchanging.

“I hate to say this,” I interject softly, pulling my brows together as Penny finds my eyes, “but it works. It’s remarkable. Like, Bob could open up a store that only sells those two things and become a very, very rich man. He’d be like a medicine man.”

Phoenix sighs beside me when Penny’s gaze falls to her.

“It’s true,” Phoenix confirms, “we’re talking Forbes 40 Under 40 material here.”

Bob laughs, palm still flat against my spine.

I know he’s happy that we’re validating him, know that he’s happy that we have trusted him with our unsettled guts and pulsing skulls and been genuinely remedied by his formula. We are his best friends, his closest friends--I know he likes sharing these things with us, likes it very much when we take his outstretched palm or fall back into his awaiting arms. He likes it the best when the common ground between me and Phoenix broadens, when there’s more room for us to stretch out and towards each other.

Penny tops our glasses off, shaking her head, blinking rapidly.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Penny finally says, winking at us again before she turns to wipe the counters on the other side of the bar, still shaking her head.

Phoenix is grinning at me, still biting her lip as she tucks a piece of loose hair behind her ear. Her veil, the short tulle one that Bob doled out on the ride over, is secured evenly and carefully in her dark locks. It is pristine and white, a stark contrast from her dark hair and tanned skin, both of which have been kissed by the Florida sun.

“Finish your drink,” she encourages again, nodding to my glass, “then we’ll hit the jukebox.”

“That’s an order, lieutenant,” Bob says coolly from behind me, reaching up to smooth his own veil that persists in sliding from its place in his fine, sun-streaked locks, “Phoenix, is my veil lopsided?”

Phoenix cranes her neck to look at Bob as I tilt my head back and finish my glass. The bubbles are racing up my nostrils and straight to the throbbing vein that crosses the bridge of my nose. Phoenix shakes her head, slinking out of her stool.

“Let’s roll,” Phoenix grins, nodding in the direction of the jukebox.

We all stand, muscles unfolding beneath our skin, perfumed with the sweet scent of cinnamon gum and Nivea and clean baby. Phoenix is grinning, looking out across the barren dance floor, holding one of my hands in hers.

“Bride-to-be coming through,” Phoenix calls, despite precisely nobody being in our way, “make way!”

Bob laughs from behind, moving his hands to rest on my shoulders.

“Bridal train,” Bob calls, “and we have precious cargo!”

At their outbursts, a series of laughter and good-natured whistling elicites from the gathering crowd. A few people raise their drinks, grinning. Others give a few claps of recognition. Some give an ow-ow! or slight cheer, which makes the tips of my ears redden. I think I’m too tipsy to care all that much, though--can’t contain my grin, my pink cheeks.

But then suddenly, Phoenix stops dead in her tracks, her swinging hair stilling with a final thwack and her veil stuttering in its place, slightly askew. Her hands move to hold high on her hips, and even though I can’t see her face, I know her lips are pouting.

“Looks like we’ve got company,” she says finally, glancing over her shoulder at me and Bob as we move to step beside her.

Maverick has just walked into The Hard Deck, the door still swinging behind him. He’s tan and his hair is gelled and he’s wearing his leather bomber, sunglasses still on.

He sees us the exact moment we see him--grin stammering before dissipating entirely. And it’s when I squint, tilting my head, that I notice that he has a stick-on mustache above his top lip--the kind that kid’s buy for a quarter in Mexican restaurants.

“Well, shit,” he mumbles, sucking a sharp breath in through his teeth, moving to place his hands on his hips too.

“Well, shit is right, Captain,” Phoenix says, though she’s crossing the wide-plank floors with a smile adorning her face, “you’re in enemy territory.”

Maverick smiles, sighing, opening his mouth to speak before the door swings wide open and reveals Hangman and Rooster. They saunter through the doors with identical grins, chuckles dying in their throats when they see all of us there seemingly waiting for them.

Rooster and I find each other’s eyes instantaneously, like we are always looking for each other, like we knew this would happen, like we’ve planned this. And when we see each other, when his brown eyes find mine, it makes me want to lay down on the floor there and wait to be held. It makes me want to kneel before him and repent, his name falling off my lips hotly, uttering it like a little private prayer.

It’s silly, really, because we only saw each other two hours ago when he loaded all of us in the Uber and waved us off at the end of the driveway. But now any amount of time without him beside me, fingers against the slope of my shoulder or foot laying sweetly beneath mine, feels gargantuan.

His face is beautiful--that is something undeniable, indisputable. The scars across his cheek and chin, the sunkissed skin, the strong nose and pouted lips--these are all things that make my knees buckle.

But more than that, when I see his face, it feels like walking into a place that is almost-forgotten, but treasured. It feels like I just walked into my kindergarten classroom as an adult woman and it still smells the way I remember it. It feels like I just walked into Maggie’s old apartment, the one that I cleaned out with Bob, and all her stuff is still there waiting for her to come back to. It’s a feeling that consumes me each time I look at him--when his joyous profile is backlit by the California sun on the patio, when I walk upstairs with brown paper bags against my chest and he’s sleeping on the couch with his mouth wet and wide, when we meet in the hallway of our shared offices at the end of a long Thursday--and I know that it is a feeling that I will always submit to.

“If it ain’t our darlin’ Faye,” Hangman starts, grin molding around the faux-furry sticker beneath his nose, “and Phoenix and Bob.”

I glance at him--he winks in that way he does sometimes, when it’s lightning-fast, when I know I’m the only one that’s seen it.

“Didn’t think to ask the ladies where we’re having the bachelorette party?” Phoenix asks Maverick, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Yeah,” Bob agrees, voice thin, “should’ve asked us.”

Maverick sheepishly combs his fingers through his hair before letting his hands fall to his thighs, sighing.

“My wife owns this bar,” he defends defeatedly.

Bob scoffs.

“Get a new line, buddy,” Bob says with a chuckle.

Phoenix nods sharply.

Maverick sighs, glancing back at Hangman and Rooster, biting his lip before he meets my eyes. His gaze feels like a sorry, kid.

“We could go--!”

I shake my head, the vein over my nose throbbing.

But I’m smiling, moving closer to Bradley as he moves closer to me with that loved-up glaze over his eyes.

“No,” I say, “crash my bachelorette party, I don’t mind. Really!”

Hangman grins, moving closer to me so he can pat me on the shoulder. He lets his hand linger there so he can squeeze me, fingers expanding over my bare skin. His touch is different than Bob’s--it is tighter, closer, more broad. His index finger draws a few lazy circles on my skin.

I look up at him and he’s looking down at me, green eyes shining.

“There’s a joke in there somewhere about hen parties and roosters,” he says, coming forward to press a hasty kiss to my temple, which he does every time he sees me now, “good to see you, sugar plum.”

“You, too,” I say back pertly, smiling.

“You wanna impede on Faye’s last night as a free woman, Rooster?”

Maverick says this with a teasing lilt in his voice, cocking his head as Rooster presses Phoenix into a one-armed hug, a grin tugging at his lips.

Hangman is still standing with his hands on my shoulders, his fingers dancing over my skin. I pretend not to notice it, pretend like this is something he’s doing absently because he considers me a very close friend. I’m pretending like I can’t feel the tightness of his chest or the perspiration cupping in his palms.

“That’s a little regressive,” Bob says, moving in to hug Bradley, too--a short, quick hug.

A sound of agreement vibrates from Hangman’s chest.

“Yeah, he’s not holding her hostage,” he agrees, quirking a brow at Bradley, who’s smiling down at me, “unless you two aren’t telling us something.”

Bob turns, still standing beside Rooster, his veil somehow more lopsided now than it was only a moment ago.

He tilts his head, eyebrows coming together, as he lets his eyes wash over Jake.

“Hangman’s a purveyor of women’s rights,” I say softly, glancing at Hangman through my lashes, “at least he considers himself to be.”

Jake laughs--it’s a throaty, saran-wrapped laugh.

His hands move from the tops of my shoulders to the sides of my arms as he falls in-step behind me. Each time he breathes, his chest grazes my bare back. It is not an unwelcome touch, not even an unfamiliar touch--but one that makes my throat tight. His hands are much softer than Bradley’s, but not softer than Bob’s.

The vein over my nose pulses again.

“Alright, kids,” Maverick chuckles, patting Bradley’s shoulder, “if you’d please excuse me, I’m gonna go get chewed out by my wife.”

“See you on the other side, Mav,” Bob calls, nodding.

That’s when I notice that Rooster isn’t playing along--he’s not jibing, quipping, retorting, laughing. No, he’s just standing there, a few steps farther from me than Jake and he’s watching me. His eyes are swimming as he gazes at me, the color of amber. He’s looking at the low cut of my dress, the way the material presses into my skin. He’s looking at my collarbones and the freckles on my throat. It’s when his eyes wash over my bare shoulders, at the valley of my breasts, that I think he registers that I’m not wearing a bra.

He stiffens, grin broadening, but doesn’t say anything yet.

“Y’look gorgeous, sugar plum,” Jake says from above me, chest vibrating against the column of my spine, “pink’s your color.”

“It’s that whole blushing bride thing,” I say politely, but I don’t move my eyes from Rooster, “now, be a doll and get me another glass of champagne.”

Jake tuts, squeezing me again.

“Yes, ma’am!”

I’m moving towards Bradley not a moment after Jake’s hands fall from my shoulders, feet pointing the direction of home as Rooster and I near each other. I can smell him from here--freshly showered and lathered in ginger soap, radiating that sweet sharp scent that is naturally occurring in his being--and it makes all the muscles in my shoulders slacken.

Our wedding party falls into each other around us as they argue good-naturedly about roles and regulations and communication, about what the fuck that is on your lip, Bagman and about wedding traditions. They melt into the floor, into the walls, into the sunset until their voices are indiscernible from the crowd surrounding us.

“Hey, tramp,” I whisper, crossing one foot in front of the other, “couldn’t stay away, huh?”

He’s finally close enough to touch me. He licks his lips, reaching up suddenly to smooth his fingers over the tulle pinned in my hair. Then he’s beaming, eyes drifting over my nose and mouth and finally to the top of my head where the short, white veil is perched.

“This,” he comments quietly, only loud enough for me to hear, “will be the death of me.”

It makes heat bloom between my legs, makes me press my thighs together, makes my throat flush with want.

“The veil?”

As if I really need to ask.

He nods, pink tongue darting out to lick his lips again, fingers still delicately petting my veil and the hair it's nestled in.

“Getting hot and bothered at bridal headwear,” I tease, “that’s so you.”

And I’m smiling and he’s chuckling, but it’s true.

He likes me to wear my ring--only my ring--when we make love. He dutifully unclasps my moon earrings and my necklace, flaking kisses over my blushed skin, then carefully strips me until I am entirely bare except for the fourth finger on my left hand. And when we are chest to chest and he’s rocking his hips into mine, our fingers tightly entwined, he’ll sometimes kiss my ring finger--his lips wet, a groan caught in his throat.

I press my thighs together so tightly that they start to ache.

He sighs, tugging on the ends of my hair before his eyes finally fall to mine. He holds me there in his gaze before he presses himself against me. We’re so close that our chests are kissing, his thigh slotted between my own. He’s holding my hips and I’m carefully twirling the sandy curls at the nape of his neck, smiling up at him despite how hard it feels to breathe suddenly.

“Y’look fuckin’ perfect,” he whispers, breath fanning over my the apples of my cheeks and the end of my nose, “what’re you wearing under that dress, baby?”

Heat is pooling again, pooling in a big, bad way. My throat is tight, getting tighter, as I press his thigh between mine.

“Nothing,” I whisper back, pressing a soft kiss to his chin.

His lips are parted, the corners still turned up. His pupils grow as he brings a calloused hand up to my face, stroking gently over my cheek before grazing the veil again.

He kisses my cheek, lips familiar and sweet. He kisses a line all the way to my ear, which he very softly takes between his teeth before whispering, “The veil stays on tonight.”

Oh, fuck.

And before I can respond, before I can even take a moment to compose myself and lengthen my breathing, he pulls back with a lopsided grin. Now he’s holding my shoulders like Jake was before, thumbs stroking identically on either arm.

“Gimme some sugar,” he all but purrs, pressing his lips to mine, fingers curling into my flesh.

The kiss is sweet, short. Just his solid skin beneath my hands is enough to make me feel like I’ve finished a few bottles of champagne entirely on my own, enough to make me feel like my steps are fluttering.

“Hangman’s staring at you,” he mumbles against my lips, chuckling, sighing.

It isn’t that he is jealous--because he is not, could never be, would never be. There is that string between us, attached to our bodies and skin, that tethers us together everywhere we go. We know, know without having an explicit discussion about it, that we are it for each other. That everything else around us will wither with time like the petals of a cut flower, wilting in muddled water.

I pull back, clearing my throat, pretending like I suddenly don’t feel like I’m at a full-blown, sloppy 10 right now.

“Isn’t he always?”

“C’mon,” Hangman calls across the bar, like he can hear us, “time for shots!”

“S’cuse us, bride and groom coming through,” Rooster announces as we navigate the bodies busying the bar, “pardon us, just trying to get back to our wedding party!”

People are clapping Rooster on the back now, shaking his hand, and he’s all grins from his spot behind me. He is squeezing my hips and nodding his head, voice raspy as he makes several more unnecessary announcements about our nuptials.

Feel free to stop by, we’ll have an open bar! I know what you’re thinking--yes, I am a lucky guy! Knew I wanted to marry her the first time I saw her! You know, I actually proposed in my childhood h0me--!

“Rooster,” I warn, biting a grin, “you’ve gotta stop inviting strangers to the wedding!”

He looks as giddy as a child on Christmas morning, a big toothy grin spread across his face and pressing into his rosy cheeks.

“Just can’t help myself, honey,” he whines, “I’ve gotta show you off!”

My heart is swelling. But I still raise my brow, biting down hard on my lip.

Fuck, that dopey, lovely, gooey grin on his lips is melting me.

My lungs feel like dough, malleable and soft, full of fingerprints and dusted with flour. Someone could pull my lungs out of my chest and roll them out on a counter with ease.

“Always knew I’d be some old man’s arm candy,” I tease, sighing.

He pinches my hips and I have to stifle a squeak.

“You’re gonna get yourself in trouble, little lady,” he grins, pressing a quick kiss to the back of my head, against my veil.

There’s that heat again--pooling, pooling between my bare thighs.

He loves to tell people that we are engaged, that we are getting married on the Saturday before Valentine’s Day--a date he picked, marking it on every paper calendar with a crudely-drawn heart. He bought two paper calendars to keep at home, just for the sake of a physical reminder: one hanging in our bathroom and one hanging on our fridge--each adorned with vintage-style portraits of cats.

He’s told every person that runs our most frequented stands at the farmer’s market, holding cucumbers in one hand and mine in the other as he shows my ring to the elderly women, pointing out which pieces were his mother’s and which pieces he picked himself. Proudly, he tells the swooning women that he knew he was going to marry me from the start of it all--letting them pinch his cheeks and tell me how darn-right lucky I am to have him.

Every barista in the tri-state area knows the story of his proposal, Rooster telling the story with an admirable reverence each and every time--tireless, excitable. Sometimes, I will walk into a coffee shop and the barista will recognize me. It’s usually a show of furrowed eyebrows and chin-tapping before they ask me if my fiancee is t hat guy with a pornstache who orders his lattes breve with extra sweetener? And then I’ll blush and say yes and they’ll ask me if my name is Faye and we’ll have a good-hearted laugh as they tell me about my fiance’s most adorable exuberance.

Late last September, I was sitting in my office when he knocked, his face broken out in an all-consuming grin. There, trailing behind him like a row of misguided ducklings, was the Top Gun class he instructed. Rooster had simply held his hand out towards me and I gave in immediately, leaning against the doorframe, trying not to blush as he had every member individually come on over and take a gander at this ring, everybody. Say hello to the pretty lieutenant wearing it, too!

I’m flushed under everyone’s delighted gaze when we fall into place at the bar. My face is impossibly warmer now, a blush creeping up through my chest and staining my cheeks. It still makes me flush to think about tomorrow--about walking down the aisle, kissing beneath the San Diego sun, slow-dancing on the brick patio, about toasting with all of our friends.

Now I’m flanked by Hangman and Rooster and they’re both grinning below their mustaches, both offering to order me shots simultaneously then glancing at each other over my head.

“Leave me out of this,” I quietly tell them, smiling sweetly.

“So, how is the lady of the hour?”

It’s Maverick that asks from his spot by Bob, his mustache lopsided, his grin on the verge of shit-eating. He’s looking at me now, pushing his aviators up into his inky hair.

“Cool as a cucumber,” Bob answers for me, distributing champagne flutes while Phoenix doles out shots of tequila, “have you ever seen a more relaxed bride?”

Rooster squeezes my hip, then leaves his hand there, his palm warm against the fabric of my dress.

I wonder what I must feel like in this dress, under his touch--my skin plush and pressed against the thin satin. It’s thin enough that he must feel the warmth of my hip blooming against his palm, he must feel the nakedness of my skin.

We are so very near touching skin-to-skin that I’m starting to ache--a deep ache that makes my legs hurt.

“That’s a good sign, right?” Maverick asks.

I nod.

Hangman makes a show of shrugging, twisting the stem of his champagne flute between his index finger and thumb, frowning.

“Yes,” Hangman says, “or she’s been trained to remain calm under pressure. Like for a career or somethin’ like that.”

I tut and Hangman grins.

Another squeeze on my hip from Rooster, but his chest is rumbling with a chuckle as he brings the champagne to his lips.

“Oh, she’s totally smitten,” Penny says, winking at me, “aren’t you?”

“How could I not be?”

“Let’s get drunk now, yeah?” Hangman says suddenly and severely, already tipping his champagne flute backwards and down, down, down his throat.

“Should we toast?”

It’s Phoenix who asks, her sculpted brow perched, her lip curled. She’s already holding her flute in the air around us, glancing around at all of our flaxen faces, at our veils, at the faux staches.

Rooster’s thumb is methodically stroking my hip, never stuttering or snagging on panties. That makes me flush, too. No panties to get snagged on. It’s just a smooth, fluid movement as he holds me against him, his chest solid against my shoulder and his arm tight around me.

“To the bride and groom,” Penny offers, her smile soft and sweet.

Maverick smoothes his fingers over his stache and then holds his own glass up.

“To Rooster and his hen,” Maverick echoes, grinning.

“Oh, Pete,” Penny chastises, “I might ring the bell for that one.”

He shrugs, grinning.

“I’ve had that in the chamber for months,” he admits.

I wish I could roll my eyes, I do. But I can’t. I am just grinning, my cheeks round and pink, my wet lips curled around my teeth, my eyes crinkled.

When Rooster laughs, it puffs my veil in a gust of hot breath. The skin on the back of my neck gooses.

“To Faye and her fella,” Bob says with his eyebrows raised, his veil is lopsided again.

Penny nods, winking at Bob, holding her glass up towards him.

“Now, that’s more like it,” she grins at Bob.

I am suddenly so giddy all over again. My heart is sitting in my throat, warm and safe, pulsing.

Rooster squeezes my hip and I fall back into him, leaning my head back ever-so-lightly against his shoulder.

Being held by him feels like raking a pile of leaves in the front yard of my childhood home, laboring and scurrying with an oversized rake, then jumping into them in the frigid air--hands up, mouth wide open. It’s that split second when all I can smell is that damp rankness of decayed leaves, that sharp peppery smell of earth and death and everything in between. It’s like being held there, the sun shining high and bright in an endless autumn sky. It’s like staying there, the light breaking through the muddled leaves, my gloves handmade and my coat too big and my hair ratty. Being held by him feels like that--all abandonment, all hard work, all blind trust in the solid ground and flimsy barrier between me and the earth.

“To true love,” Phoenix adds, smiling sweetly, batting her lashes mockingly.

If anyone is able to soften her, it is the people closest to her, the people she loves so severely and thoroughly. She is plush in certain places, the places that she keeps her friends. I know she keeps me and Rooster there, tucking us close, tucking us in.

“Aw, Phoenix,” Bob grins, elbowing her softly, “you’ve gone gooey!”

I’m laughing, still leaning into Bradley, tickled.

But then I see it. Hangman is still beside us, his eyes untrained and distant as he gazes past the bar, his mustache perched above his lip, his glass still resting on the bartop as he pinches the stem lazily.

Fuck.

If the champagne isn’t already making my face hot--my face is fiery now.

Being engaged hadn’t changed very much for Hangman--not really, no. We’d seen him--really, seen the whole squadron--only sparsely since getting engaged. The first time he saw us, he shook Rooster’s hand, whistled at my ring, congratulated us--did all the things that he was supposed to do. But still, he’d texted me a few times at random intervals, sometimes after midnight and sometimes in the middle of the day, asking me to talk him out of it. That was the phrase he used--ambiguous to any outsider in the conversation, something only we understood, our accidental secret language. I always sent something back, a few sentences. I don’t like red wine. I think zero-sugar soda tastes better. I could eat a tomato like an apple. I truly dislike every film adaptation of Wuthering Heights. And he would usually send the same response each time: Futile. One word, that’s all.

But we are friends--we are good friends. I am someone he calls when he has a question about flowers or baking. He calls me when he needs a rom-com recommendation for a date or when he can’t remember the name of the book with that guy who does that thing and that lady that can’t get there. He calls me when he’s had a very bad day, usually between his second and third bourbon. When he’s had these days, I know not to ask about it because he doesn’t want to talk about it--doesn’t care to. His tell, besides the bourbon-induced enhancement of his Southern drawl, is that he always asks all about my day during these calls on his very bad days.

“Tell me ‘bout your day, sugar plum,” he’ll say, slightly inebriated and severely Texan, “and tell it to me straight. I can handle it.”

Subsequently, I call him sometimes, too. I call him whenever the Longhorns win to congratulate him personally. I call him whenever Die Hard is playing on TV so I can tell him what channel it’s on. I call him whenever I have a question about Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash, which is more often than I ever thought possible. I call him when I want to buy Bradley a nice alcohol and don’t know where to start. Sometimes I will call him and ask for a Crimson and Clover story--and that is usually when I’m between my second and third tequila lavender limeade and Rooster is busy beating all his students in pool.

Now, we are all waiting for him to say something, to add something--anything at all.

But it isn’t until Phoenix nudges him, her eyebrows pulled together slightly, that he sucks in a breath and comes back into his body.

When he angles his face towards me, all gold-tinted shadows and creases and unblemished skin, he smiles a very charming smile. But his eyes are swimming, the shade of a strawberry stem, and the skin beside his eyes is smooth and uncrinkled--joyless.

There is just one moment when I’m watching him and he’s watching me, one moment where I see him and he knows that I see him. And then he’s bringing his glass up, letting his eyes fall to Rooster and his body against mine.

“To the happy couple,” he says, his voice thick and deep.

And then we all lift our champagne in the air and it is suspended for a long moment, all our pink bubbles racing to the top, all our hearts swollen and our faces smiling. Then we clink and it’s all so sweet-sounding, my love for Rooster being toasted so carefully by the people here that matter the most.

Our jaws flex, our throats open, our bellies slosh as we empty our flutes.

Hangman, wiping the back of his hand against his damp mustache, grins. Then he points at Bob, who is settling his empty glass down on the bartop beside Maverick’s.

“Bob, your veil is crooked,” he laughs.

Bob, cheeks suddenly rosy, sighs and blindly reaches up to grab at the mess of tulle haphazardly nestled in his hair.

“How embarrassing,” he mutters.

Phoenix cackles, hair fanning out over her thin straps, before she carefully reaches over to Bob. Bob submits instantaneously, hand falling onto the bartop uselessly as Phoenix tuts and reattaches the stubborn headpiece.

“Beauty is pain,” Bob sighs again, glancing between Penny, Phoenix, and I, “right, ladies?”

It makes me laugh--the kind of laugh that vibrates my chest and makes my lips stretch. It springs from my throat and falls out of my mouth easily. It is a laugh that I didn’t laugh for a very long time after my sister died, a laugh that I had forgotten all about until it was coaxed from me between screaming jets and fistfuls of quarters.

Everyone else is laughing, too. Penny’s already pouring more champagne. Phoenix is rolling her eyes good-naturedly, her hand resting in the middle of Bob’s back. Hangman has his arms crossed now, shaking his head softly. And Rooster’s chest is rumbling against my shoulder, his grip on my hip lazy and sweet, but wholly intoxicating.

It hurts very suddenly--my chest tightening, heart squeezed in a fist, palms aching. Maggie would have loved that joke-- she loved anything Bob did, loved it when he finally grew comfortable enough to quip and lip.

I can see her now, tucked between me and Hangman, her veil glowing against her dirty-blonde hair and her perpetually-tanned skin. She would have been corralling the crowd right alongside Rooster, announcing my marriage, happily and hastily indulging stranger’s offers of free drinks. But Maggie was better at planning things than sweet Bob--she would’ve laid out a plan for Maverick, telling him to stay far away from The Hard Deck. As much as she would have loved Rooster, she would make entirely sure that the night before my wedding was spent alone with her and our friends. We would’ve danced between games of pool and darts, between stepping out front to catch a breath, between tip-toed trips to the bar.

It would be at the end of the night, when we would be all nice and liquored up, that she would get emotional. She would make sure that Bob and Phoenix were too drunk to notice, all of us crammed into the back of a noiseless Uber with the windows down, our veils billowing in the breeze as our sweat-slicked skin dried in the nighttime air. She would gaze at me with that sweet, sad look; the one that made her bottom lip quiver and her eyes widen, the one that made her cheeks pale and her throat flush. And then she would smile and it would be a wet smile, one that accompanied tears in the corners of her big eyes. She would tell me quietly, blinking rapidly and swallowing thickly, that there would not be a her without a me. And I would be drunk, maybe too drunk to lift my head, but I would lay against her shoulder and just stay there and pretend like she wasn’t wetting my veil with her tears. And she would let me lay there, pretending like she wasn’t crying.

If Maggie were here, if she never died, then we would even sleep in the same bed tonight. We would snuggle in my bed, and she would complain that it smells like Rooster and I would grin. And then we would fall asleep at the same time, the way we used to when we were little enough to be carried to bed together in our father’s arms, curled into ourselves and facing each other. And maybe Rooster would stumble in very late, blinking through the dark, squinting at his side of the bed that would be occupied with my older sister. He would be good about it, would just pepper a sweet kiss to the side of my face before he would move to sleep on the couch.

Rooster kisses the side of my head again, breath warm, pulling me closer to him. I think he wants to settle the wrinkle between my brows, understands that I am faraway, wants to bring me back to him.

“Y’make me so happy,” Rooster suddenly whispers, kissing the side of my head, pulling me against him tighter, “can’t wait to marry you, baby.”

The bar is alive all around us. Our glasses are full and paid for three times over. Our friends are laughing, their teeth barring as they tilt their heads back and clap each other’s shoulders. The doors swing open every few minutes as more Navymen waltz in, eliciting good-natured chiding and grinning from the gathering crowd. Pool balls clack beneath the insistence of some subpar, tipsy uniforms. My sister is not here, her chipped teeth on display, the freckles dusting her nose glowing in the dim lighting.

But it’s okay--it’s okay. I can do these things without her, can keep breathing this air that never touched her, love this man that she never met. I can laugh at jokes she would have liked and I can be friends with women that remind me of her. I can have a bachelorette party without her and drink this champagne, can dance without her taking polaroids of me. I can walk down the aisle tomorrow, a lone speck of flowing white dress and flowered hair, and get married. I can do these things, can keep pushing forward, because it is what she would fervently insist on.

“Not much longer now,” I whisper back, craning my neck to look up at him.

He’s already looking down at me, eyes soft and warm, smile wide but serene. His hand leaves my hip, comes to cup my cheek, rough thumb gingerly ghosting over my bottom lip. A tingle, one that curls my toes and flutters my lashes, tickles my spine.

The vein over my nose pulses. I love him I love him I love him I love him.

“Cold feet?”

I bite my lip, sighing softly, my chest expanding.

I take a long look at his face painted the color between yellow and gold--just his soft gaze makes me feel drunk. Like bubbles are tickling my tongue, coating my throat, sinking down to my toes. I wiggle them inside my heels--just for good measure. No, not cold. Toasty warm.

“Not even a little,” I return, kissing his thumb softly.

Hangman’s familiar gaze is burning my blushed cheek. He’s looking at Rooster when I face the bar again, mind still humming, reeling just from Bradley’s thumb on my lips, from just looking at him painted in the dying light.

“What about you, Rooster,” he asks softly, pressing down on his wayward mustache again, “nervous?”

Phoenix is eyeing Hangman, her lips pursed tightly. She finds my eyes and I shrug in a small way, rolling my eyes. It’s fine, I’m saying without really saying, Hangman will be Hangman. And she nods, mirroring my eyeroll, taking a long sip of champagne as Bob watches us with a small smile .

Common ground. His girls.

Bob can’t contain himself--he puts a friendly arm over Phoenix’s shoulders, throws a delighted grin in my direction.

Bob still evokes a distinct maternal feeling from deep within my chest whenever we look at each other. It’s the same feeling I had on the carrier, saying goodbye to him before the Uranium detachment, when I told him to come back to me. He is the closest I have ever had to a brother, the closest friend I had during undergraduate and the Academy. And now, now even though he looks like a more full version of himself with wider shoulders and scruffier cheeks--he’s still my baby. He’s still my best friend.

I can feel Rooster’s smile above me, can feel his blissful breaths, can feel the warmth spreading through his limbs. He locks an arm around my waist again, burying his nose in my hair as he kisses my head through my veil again. His lips are soft and wet, his breath hot.

He shakes his head, squeezing my belly gently.

“Look at her,” Rooster remarks, gesturing to me, “how could I be?”

Hangman is already looking at me, his smile one that is beginning to falter. He is looking at me much too softly, much too carefully, eyes falling from my own to my lips and nose and chin and throat and the flat part of my chest where my necklace is a dot of gold and opal against my bare skin. Maybe he’s thinking about how perfectly it rests there, thinking about how it’s a marker for the exact spot where his palm sat as he guided my rapid breaths. Maybe he’s wondering if I’m wondering about it.

“You’d have to be an idiot,” Hangman says, shrugging, eyes lingering on my pendant, “and blind. Profoundly blind.”

My belly aches. My spit feels thick as honey as I swallow, carefully moving to hold my pendant between my fingers. That’s when Jake looks up finally--when he gives me a small grin.

Friends, I’m telling him with my measured gaze, friends, only friends, just friends.

But maybe we aren’t close enough to share that unspoken language between friends, that one I’ve adapted between quirked brows and bitten bottom lips.

“You two flatter me,” I say primly, sighing.

Another squeeze from Rooster.

That invisible string tightens, pulls me closer to him, to his solidness between my shoulderblades.

Maverick holds his shot glass up and tips it towards Rooster and I again before downing it swiftly.

“Hold your horses, old man,” Rooster chuckles, scrambling to press a tequila shot into my palm.

Once we are all warm with champagne and tequila, when we are all catching our breaths and sucking lime pulp from our teeth, it is suddenly too quiet within our group. Rooster is holding me close to him, chin resting on my head. Hangman is fingering the rim of his beer bottle, eyes glazed.

Bob breaks the silence.

“What’s everyone at?”

“Six,” I say, blood rushing to my cheeks, “close to seven, maybe.”

Bob’s smiling.

“Five,” Phoenix answers decidedly, eyes narrowed.

“I’m with Faye this time,” Bob says, sighing, taking another sip from his glass.

Hangman and Rooster seem to register what we’re doing. Rooster nudges Hangman very softly and from below, I can feel his grin. It’s very wide and warm--his breath smells like limes now.

“Gotta play catch-up,” he says, “can’t let the ladies have all the fun.”

Bob doesn’t correct Rooster--instead he takes the title with grace, smiling with his nose in the air, his chin tilted proudly. Bob likes nothing more than to be included.

Hangman grins again, the glaze dissipating across his eyes.

“Sure thing, Bradshaw,” he agrees, signaling another round of shots for the groom's party, “let’s get to it.”

Phoenix finds my eyes, biting a grin, cheeks rosy. She’s good at doing this--reading the room, finding my face, good at pulling me away from the boys and into her. We’re friends now--good enough friends to text almost everyday, sending each other pictures of new ice cream flavors at the supermarket and songs that remind us of each other. Only last week, before she came to town, she sent me Heaven or Las Vegas by The Cocteau Twins after I sent her Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel.

“Let’s dance,” she calls out to me, grinning.

Rooster, as if on cue, pulls a palmful of quarters from his pocket and drops them into my palm. He presses another long kiss to the side of my head, gripping my hips. He pats my rear slyly, cupping me as I step forward.

“Give ‘em Hell, baby,” he grins.

“Yes, sir,” I wink, saluting, taking Bob’s hand in mine as we start towards the floor.

Maverick, Hangman, Rooster, and Penny are watching us as we slink towards the jukebox again, smiles lingering on their lips, faces friendly and slacked. We leave them there to catch up and I catch Rooster’s eyes one more time, sending him a fleeting wink, as Bob guides my stuttering feet to Phoenix.

We dance for a long, long while as our veils skew in our flailing hair. We are fielding congratulatory shoulder pats from overly-friendly locals, creatively shimmying past anybody that accompanies us on the dance floor. Bob’s pockets are housing the quarters and he escorts me to the jukebox between trips to the bar, catching his breath as I select songs. Once the men join us, the energy shifts from excited to downright giddy--the men singing crudely under their wet mustaches, hands large on our waists, hair mussed.

The champagne flows freely and beer and cherry wine slosh onto the pool table, empty glasses towering higher and higher with each hour that passes us. Perspiration gathers on our hairlines, especially when the dance floor clogs with passersby and patrons sharing in our glee.

And all night, as I steadily climb from a six to an eight, I am just blindingly happy. It is the kind of happy that is indiscernible from that sweet spot between wasted and blackout drunk, when my limbs are numb but my chest is warm and my belly is full. It’s when my vision is blurry and my speech is slurring and I’m hiccupping, when I’m being twirled from one pair of aviator’s arms to the other, that I really truly realize how indisputably happy I am.

We are all giddy--on the cusp of a great change. Come tomorrow, I will be a married woman. I will make Rooster a husband. He will make me a wife. My name will be lengthened in a most ceremonious way. I will be Faye Leona Ledger-Bradshaw. There will be another Bradshaw in the world tomorrow --or when my paperwork is finalized.

“Faye Bradshaw,” Phoenix grins in my arms, chewing the name with her nose scrunched and her hair flailing around her in strains of dark ribbon, “sounds like you’re about to drop the hottest country album of the year!”

Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind, and Fire is pulsing through the bar.

Everybody is singing along, elongating notes, stomping offbeat and tumbling over each other, spilling their drinks and throwing their jackets to the side--it’s so loud that Phoenix has to shout, lips attached to the shell of my ear.

“Ha-ha,” I grin back, “I’m stuck on the title. Any suggestions?”

Phoenix thinks so hard that one of her eyes drops in an involuntary wink, her mouth puckered, her cheeks flushed. All around us, we are being danced on and around--a sea of sweaty bodies holding us in place clutching each other. She’s warm pressed against me.

“Flea-bitten Faye’s Folk Songs,” she finally answers, laughing with her mouth wide open and pressed to my ear.

“Hey, that’s good,” I call back, feeling drunker than before as giggles fall from my parted lips, “you came up with that just now?”

“Yeah!”

“Color me impressed, Nix!”

She grins and I take her warm hands in mine and spin her around a few times, her velvet reflecting the lights above us with a blue reverence, the crowd around us hardly parting as she throws her open arms around her.

When I pull her into me again, we accidentally fall into each other, chests colliding. And then we’re giggling all over again, sweaty hands still clasped as we try to half-heartedly fix each other’s veils.

“You two are a mess,” Bob suddenly calls from beside us, his very own sloppy grin eating his face as he breaks through the crowd to stand beside us, “drunken skunks!”

Phoenix shakes her head at Bob, stumbling to her tip-toes to put a faux-indignant finger in the middle of his chest.

“Oh , wizzo,” she starts with a chuckle, “if I was drunk--could I do this?”

We wait for a moment--she doesn’t move, stays in her spot with her pointer finger buried in Bob’s chest, her lips puckered, her eyes glossy, her cheeks red, her hair messy.

“I think so?” Bob says, eyebrows furrowing, “You didn’t do anything.”

She shrugs, falling back on her heels with mild difficulty.

“Exactly,” she grins, crossing her arms, “you’ve been Traced, bitch!”

“Phoenix!”

It falls out of my mouth before I can stop it--I sound like a bewildered mother who’s just heard her toddler curse for the first time, all breath and pitch and red cheeks.

Bob glances at me with a knowing grin, putting a hand on Phoenix’s shoulder to steady her in her place before him.

“She gets like this when she’s drunk,” he tells me, “this ain’t my first time being Traced.”

She pats his chest, cocking her head, smirking.

“Or your last!”

And all night, as I am passed from Bob to Hangman to Rooster and to Maverick, my feet never even so much as catch a breeze. I am most sure about Rooster, more sure about him than I’ve been about anything in my life. Even as I glance at him from Maverick’s arms during I Say A Little Prayer , even as I watch him dance with his shirt unbuttoned and his aviators low on his nose, even just watching the blush across his cheeks as he twirls Phoenix--I am very, very sure about him.

“He’s a good man,” Maverick says, smiling softly as he follows my gaze, “wish I could take credit for some of that.”

He is holding me very softly, only secure enough to keep me from tripping over my own feet. He smells of leather and cigar smoke and gasoline, which I think is permanently his scent--diffusing from his body at all times.

I smile at him, too, dragging my eyes away from Rooster.

Maverick’s mustache is crooked above his lip, his t-shirt clinging to his shoulder where Bob accidentally spilled beer on him. He’s holding my hands politely as we dance. He’s sober--his hands are my guide, the solid ground I’m standing on.

“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” I tell him, teasing, “just most of it.”

Maverick’s chest rumbles as he chuckles--it feels deep and loud. He finds my eyes again and I know that I must look very drunk, very happy.

Everything is bleary. Everything feels good.

I’ve been Traced three times to Bob’s four.

Maverick nods softly and my heart pulses.

“You’re the best thing that’s happened to him in a long time,” he tells me, suddenly somber, “you two are good for each other. You make him happy.”

I hiccup--a bubble of emotion bursting in my chest suddenly. It makes me feel tipsier, the love that pulses through me--Maverick’s words ringing inside my buzzing skull with Aretha Franklin.

“Thank you,” I say, my voice thin, “I really love him.”

As if it wasn’t already apparent--wildly apparent--to every person in the room.

“Oh, I know,” Maverick grins, swiftly swiping an accidental tear from my cheek, “everybody does.”

“People keep telling me that,” I whisper, smiling softly.

Maverick laughs again, smile bright.

“Goose and Carole would’ve been in love with you,” he tells me, keeping his tone light and airy as we spin together, “especially Carole. God, she wouldn’t be able to get enough of you.”

That makes my throat ache. I understand it, understand how utterly gutting it is to know something so intrinsically but be unable to prove it because of the thin veil between the living and the dead. I believe Maverick--I do. I know that he believes it as firmly as I believe that Maggie would have adored Bradley, very thoroughly and completely.

And that makes my eyes water again.

“Well, I can’t get enough of their son,” I say and my voice cracks because I want to weep, “he’s the best person I’ve ever met.”

Maverick quietly rids my cheeks of a few more tears, not making a fuss, not making light of it. He’s smiling, his own eyes watery, his cheeks flushed. He squeezes my hands softly.

“Funny,” he says, glancing at Rooster again, “he says the same thing about you, sweetheart.”

It’s after midnight--after Rooster beckoned me to him in the middle of the crowded bar by playing The Bridal March loudly, head tilted as he laughed, fingers skillfully thrusting the keys despite his intoxication--when Bob, Phoenix, Rooster, Hangman, and I tumble through the front door of my home. We are all giggles and crooked mustaches and veils, wet lips and flushed chests.

The house is quiet and dark, but we all sigh in unison as we step onto the entryway tiles. It still smells like the perfume I spritzed on my skin before I left, like pink pepper and raspberry. And I know we all smell like The Hard Deck now--our skin stained with beer and champagne and sweat.

Rooster is the first to slip his shoes off, the first to turn and smile at everyone else in the mostly-dark entryway.

Him and I are the only ones that can navigate in the dark--the only ones that will be able to venture up the steps to the living room. This is his way of saying I’ve got it, baby. I’ve got it.

“Shoes off,” Rooster instructs, slurring lightly, “I’ll hit the lights.”

“These boots might never come off,” Phoenix warns, half-moaning, half-laughing, “I had to suck my calves in to get them on.”

“What,” Hangman sputters, laughing, “how did you do that?”

Bob groans.

“Bagman, you don’t know the first thing about womanhood,” he sighs, “you beautiful, stupid man.”

“You think I’m beautiful?” Hangman asks sweetly.

I’m pressed against the front door, grinning, holding myself steady when Rooster finds me in the dark. He presses a short kiss to the crown of my hair before smoothing my veil again, his touch less focused and lazier now that he’s at an 8.9--which he announced to us just as we climbed out of the Uber.

“Happy wedding day, sweet thing,” he whispers to me, kissing the shell of my ear, “my gorgeous girl.”

I lock my hands around his neck for a moment, thumbs carefully stroking the edge of his curls. His skin is warm beneath my fingers and when I start to hoist myself up on my tip-toes, he ducks down and meets me halfway, wrapping his arms around my waist.

It’s a sweet, sweet kiss--lazy and hungry and happy.

We are getting married today.

“Happy wedding day,” I mumble softly against his lips, biting a grin as his mustache lightly scratches my Cupid’s bow, “I love you.”

Then he leaves all of us hiccupping and giggling as we struggle with laces and zippers. It isn’t until Rooster successfully stumbles upstairs and flickers the living room lamps on that I can finally survey the lot of us, holding my heels in my hands.

Bob and Hangman are resting with their backs against the other’s, their leather shoes discarded haphazardly before them, their socked feet stuttering as they sway lightly. They are most definitely drunk--especially Hangman, who was just drunk enough to offer me his lap when we found there were not enough seats in the Uber.

Phoenix is falling onto the stairs, butt-first, before she extends her legs with a frown. She grips the wooden steps for leverage and then finds my eyes, hers distant and glossy, her smile wet.

“Help,” she laughs, kicking her boots lightly, “I’m stuck.”

Distantly, there is the small scratching sound of a match striking and I know Rooster is lighting candles while Bob and I kneel before Phoenix, each tugging a leather boot as she throws her head back laughing, knuckles white as she holds on.

“I think I’ve had a dream like this,” Hangman said, “but there was less clothing.”

Bob grins at Hangman over his shoulder.

“You dream about me?” Bob teases, smiling sweetly.

Rooster guffaws upstairs.

The tile is cold against my knees but I press myself into the floor further, knuckles white as I grip Phoenix’s thick heel. I can feel how warm her skin is even through the leather--her cheeks are flushed.

“Hangman, come pick a record,” Rooster says, leaning over the landing to watch as Bob and I try again to tug off Phoenix's merciless boot.

My sides are starting to ache from all that laughter--all that throat-vibrating, chest-hollowing laughter. And my cheeks are sore from grinning, my lips still stained with lavender syrup and pink bubbly.

Hangman steps over and around Phoenix, staggering slightly and nearly tripping over her extended ankle before I reach out hastily and steady him, gripping his elbow with one hand while I hold Phoenix’s boot in my other.

“Y’alright?” I ask, furrowing my brow, swallowing hard.

He throws me a grin, winking, regaining his posture.

“Right as rain, sugar plum,” he moans, slinking his arm away, grasping my hand, “you?”

Then he brings my hand to his lips and presses a sloppy kiss to my knuckles--his lips are too hot, too wet. Yes, he kisses my forehead in greeting when he sees me, but it is still a measured kind of kiss--polite enough. It is the kind of kiss that wouldn’t make me bat an eye if someone other than Hangman insisted upon doing it each time. But this kiss now, as he’s standing in the stairwell, looking down at me--it feels different. It feels like the barrier that is between us has suddenly been seized and he’s taking advantage of the empty air around us now.

I drop his hand, shaking my head softly, the vein across my nose beginning to throb.

“I’m good, Jake,” I laugh, “now, pick something jaunty so we can pop a bottle of prosecco.”

Another fleeting glance thrown over his shoulder, one where his smile is bright and his eyes are shining, one where his cheeks are pink and his gaze is broad. Then he is climbing the steps, gripping the handrail.

Bob is doubled over, giggling, his glasses falling down his nose as he attempts to pull the boot again. Phoenix is groaning, eyes clamped shut, limbs much looser than usual as she grasps for purchase.

The boot will not budge.

The sight makes my heart swell. I love them so much--have missed them entirely too much since they’ve been gone. Want so badly to keep them here in my house, close to me, close to Rooster.

I sigh, grinning, hands on my hips.

“These just might be your feet now, honey,” I tell her, tapping her heel.

“No,” she moans, “my bridesmaid dress won’t match!”

Bob releases her heel and straightens his back, his hands finding his hips identically.

“We might have to amputate,” he sighs, wiping his brow.

“Put your back into it, Floyd,” Phoenix groans, “and pull your weight, Ledger! Can’t just stand there!”

“Sounds like someone’s gettin’ Traced down there,” Rooster calls from upstairs.

I can hear that dopey grin, that chuckle sitting smoothly in his throat.

And it’s such a stupid thing to say, such a stupid joke to make, but we are all grinning--even Phoenix, who’s sputtering through her ground teeth. Yes, I want to marry Rooster--I want to marry the idiot who calls down the stairs like this.

It is less than an hour later when Rooster drags one of our kitchen chairs away from the table and into the living room, its worn legs groaning under its own weight, the sound nearly drowned out by the laughter echoing off the picture frames clogging the walls. This room is alive with love--lamplit and painted pink and orange. There are candles lit; green and blue taper candles dripping down to their brass holders and iris-scented candles in expensive clay-molded vessels. It’s warm in here--warm enough that Phoenix finally cracked a window, sighing when the nighttime air slid into the living room.

Got To Give It Up by Marvin Gaye is thumping through the speakers--Jake’s pick.

“Who’s first?”

I ask this very softly, my cheeks flooded with warmth. I am holding a hair of kitchen scissors in one hand and an almost-empty glass of prosecco in the other. I don’t remember who first brought up the idea of me cutting everyone’s hair--but I know that it was born from Jake’s complaint about not having time to get a trim before leaving North Carolina.

Phoenix is stretched out on the couch, her feet resting in Bob’s lap as he lounges against the cushions. Hangman is sprawled on the floor before the sofa, leaning his head on Phoenix’s hip. Rooster is standing beside me, eyes heavy and lips wet.

We’re all smiling, still drunk, limbs heavy.

“Me,” Bob decides, carefully slinking out from under Phoenix’s feet, settling them on the couch as he stands, “nothing we haven’t done before, right?”

“It’ll be just like old times,” I whisper, handing Rooster my glass as he presses his lips to the side of my face shortly.

Bob’s smiling in that friendly way, his eyes nearly disappearing as his closed lips curl, his cheeks pink. He smooths a hand through his locks as he falls into the kitchen chair, leaning back.

“Just a trim,” I whisper to Bob, patting his shoulder.

Bob nods, head heavy as he leans back.

“You ‘member how I like it?”

I hum, carefully raking my fingers through his silky locks after I disengage his veil. It’s still the longest I’ve seen his hair, curling by his ears. He groans very quietly, skull even heavier as he leans into my touch.

“‘Course,” I whisper, “you were my best customer at Temple.”

He sighs, lips twitching.

“Only customer,” he adds.

“Don’t forget that I’m holding scissors right now,” I mumble to him, smiling softly, chomping the scissors a few measly times to get my point across.

Rooster and Hangman laugh from their spots on the floor.

This is what Bob and I used to do in Philly, when he was too poor to afford a haircut and I loved him too much to say no. We would drag a chair into my kitchen--the only room in my apartment with tile--and lay ratty beach towels on the floor. He would pick a record--Elton John or Etta James or Dion--and then he would sit very still as I carefully trimmed his hair with dull kitchen scissors. He would lean into my touch when I compared symmetry and I would laugh and he would throw in an extra few dollars if I played with his hair.

And now I’m doing it again, very early in the morning of my wedding, the night sky still wrapped around us. We are both older now, settled into our careers, settled into our friendships, living in different states. He can definitely afford a haircut now--could even go to a nice salon if he wanted to. Now the kitchen chair sits in my living room, which is not the only room in my house with hardwood floors, but the room with all my records. He didn’t get to pick the record, but our friend did. My kitchen scissors are sharp this time, probably double the price of the ones I owned during undergrad.

Carefully, I begin to trim his hair, my chest very warm and heavy, my eyes still bleary and soft. The light in here is golden and low, but it’s enough for me to navigate his familiar locks.

“Isn’t this a full-circle moment,” Bob muses, eyes falling shut beneath his glasses, “you, me, a kitchen chair, and a pair of scissors?”

A fist wraps around my heart.

“That’s the name of your porno,” Hangman quips.

I tut, shooting him an amused glance as Rooster shakes his head. Hangman grins at me, his mustache finally discarded. Phoenix, who is half-asleep now, thumps Hangman in the back of the head.

“Now you’re my man-of-honor,” I smile, pulling his hair between my fingers before I cut very carefully.

“And you’re marrying my best friend,” Phoenix mumbles from her spot, muffled by the velvet sofa.

Rooster pats her back gently and she smiles sleepily, eyes half-shut.

“I think we’re losing her,” Hangman grins, “she’s calling Rooster her best friend.”

“Hey,” Phoenix whines, “he is my best friend. Chicken guy.”

“Ah,” Rooster chuckles, “there she is.”

I nod, scissors still gliding through Bob’s hair gently.

He doesn’t move an inch, but I know he’s grinning, too.

“You sober enough to cut my hair next?” Jake asks softly.

I nod again without breaking my gaze from Bob’s locks.

“Then me,” Phoenix adds, voice low, “can’t forget ‘bout me.”

“Couldn’t forget about you,” I grin, shaking my head, “you, too, Bradley? Taming the mane?”

He’s looking at me from his spot on the floor, Stevie curled into his lap as he carefully scratches her head. She’s purring beneath the spinning record, leaning into Rooster’s touch. Bitch. Rooster’s eyes are hot on my cheek, watching as my expression glides from gleeful to serious while I gently cut.

“Thought that was implied,” Rooster teases, “you know, saving the best for last and all that.”

Blindly, Phoenix reaches out and thumps Rooster on the back of the head.

“Sap,” she insists, sighing deeply.

There’s a beat where no one talks.

Rooster rubs the back of his head with a smile still gracing his lips, Phoenix’s hand falling onto his shoulder good-naturedly. Hangman is watching us, still--watching the fragments of Bob’s hair fall onto the shoulders of Bob’s shirt.

“So,” Hangman grins, turning to Phoenix, “tell me more about Flea-bitten Faye.”

“Well,” Phoenix sighs, eyes half-shut, “she’s only the fastest gunslinger in all of the West.”

And then the three of them are laughing, humming, chuckling.

Phoenix is half-asleep in her spot, all her sentences muffled by her mouthful of couch. Rooster is nodding and Hangman is smirking.

Phoenix is so much like Maggie right now--the main source of entertainment, the life of the party even when she’s half asleep. Even after coming home from the bar, Maggie would still read people’s palms and tell them their fortunes, pulling a pack of tarot out of her purse. She was the kind of person people would look to when they needed a laugh--needed something, anything to be reminded of the good nature of humans.

“She’s just like Maggie sometimes,” I whisper to Bob, pink dusting my cheeks, “it’s uncanny.”

“Wish Maggie was here,” Bob whispers to me softly, suddenly.

I’m the only one that hears him.

I know he does. I do, too. She would’ve liked to have been here right now.

She used to sit on the kitchen counter and watch me cut his hair, sometimes ripping a gasp from her chest to scare poor Bob. She used to beg to cut his hair too and he would never let her, somehow evading her cowering bottom lip and big, wet eyes.

“Faye’s the only hairdresser in my life,” he would say calmly, “end of discussion!”

She would’ve done a terrible job if he ever let her cut his hair. The kind of terrible that is really, truly only remedied by a buzzcut and an apology.

If she was here right now, she would be next in line. Maybe she even would’ve been drunk enough to let me cut a lot of hair off--maybe she would let me cut it to her shoulders or her chin. And instead of regretting it when she woke up, like any normal person, she would’ve leaned into it entirely--snipping a few stray hairs in the bathroom mirror and smoothing it with oil. She would look beautiful, too--a reckless, stupid, apathetic kind of beautiful.

I’m too drunk to cry right now, though. So I just keep trimming, smiling. I’m trying to hold these thoughts of her, this grief in my chest, with grace--not only for myself but for Bob, who loved her as much as I did, who lost her as much as I did.

“Me too,” I return quietly, “you know she would’ve been reading everyone’s tarot right now.”

Bob smiles--his face is slack, serene.

“And antagonizing Bagman.”

Yes, she would have. She would have been making up her own meanings for the cards, quietly cursing under her breath when she revealed them, grimacing as Hangman watched her carefully. She would’ve really put on a show for him.

“Well, I’m sure there’s another meaning here,” she would’ve mumbled to herself, biting a smirk, “the Death card doesn’t have to mean Death. I think...”

When Bob is pleased with my work, his grin pink and wide in the bathroom mirror, he thumps Hangman softly on the back to replace him before he settles on the couch again. Rooster ambles to the record player at the same time, kissing my nose and squeezing the curve of my waist before he flicks through the records.

Jake sinks deeply into the wooden chair, which groans under his weight. He’s still in his jeans and button-down, except now it’s almost entirely unbuttoned and leaves little to the imagination. He sits with his legs spread apart wide, hands resting on his denim-clad thighs.

“Hey, cowboy,” I whisper, softly skimming against his scalp, vein across my nose throbbing, “what’re you in for?”

He has almost the exact same reaction to my touch as Bob--his head is very heavy beneath my fingers, his eyes slipped shut blissfully, his lips parted. A small groan falls from his lips, even. I think it is pride that I feel deep in my gut, a strange sense of pride that stems from my ability to dismantle brick-walled guards.

“Trust you, sugar plum,” he whispers, “couldn’t steer me wrong if you tried.”

I want to scoff--really, I do. But I am too fond of him to scoff, even if he’s smirking lightly, even if he’s cracked an eye open and he’s peering at me through his lashes.

“Right,” I whisper, shaking my head, “we’ll just clean you up, then.”

Rooster carefully lifts the record player’s needle and places it on his choice. Sound floods the room--at first that static that makes me think of my sister’s laugh, but then a familiar song.

Suzanne by Leonard Cohen is playing now.

“Are you calling me a dirty boy?” Hangman asks, grinning.

I sigh, shaking my head.

“We’ve gotta start a jar or something,” Bob groans from the couch, “he can’t keep getting away with this.”

“Hangman’s Horny Jar,” Phoenix suggests.

I don’t look, but I know that Rooster is nodding, know that Phoenix and Bob are pressing their knuckles together.

Carefully, I begin to trim Hangman’s blonde hair, his head heavy, his face slack. His hair is smooth like Bob’s, but thinner and finer. It is different than Rooster’s, which is thick and coarse and much darker. It’s soft in my grip, beneath the pads of my fingers.

He’s humming along to the song, lashes fluttering, Adam’s apple bobbing. He looks nice like this, head tipped back and jaw flexed. He looks relaxed--looks very kind, very soft. This is the Jake that I like, the one that sits in kitchen chairs and doesn’t micromanage haircuts.

“We get married in about fifteen hours,” Rooster announces as I bite my lip hard.

There’s that flush again, spreading from my chest to my belly, that tight grip around my pulsing heart.

Bob and Phoenix cheer quietly, whistling, clapping. Not a moment later, they both stand at the insistence of Rooster and meander down the hallway to get ready for bed. And not a moment after that, Rooster comes around to kiss my cheek and tell me he’s going to take a quick shower before his haircut.

Then it’s just me and Hangman, my hands in his hair and his throat hot.

I know he’s going to say something before I even really know--I can feel it sitting thickly on his tongue, can feel it between his cheeks, crunched under his molars. I think about announcing another unsavory fact, but wonder if I’m jumping the gun--I am drunk after all, very drunk.

“Fifteen hours,” he echoes quietly, eyes still shut.

That’s all he says at first. I just hum in response, sighing.

“That’s what they tell me,” I say.

He nods, eyebrows slightly furrowed. A beat passes--just the sound of Leonard Cohen and scissors slicing hair surround us.

“This song is about someone else’s wife,” I whisper and I don’t know why I say it, but I do because it’s true and the song is too soft and it is too quiet here.

Hangman’s eyebrows pinch.

Fuck.

“Always thought this was a love song,” he muses quietly, his voice tinging on ragged.

I swallow, eyes heavy.

“It is,” I respond.

The silence almost swallows us whole--we are almost in the belly of the beast.

And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind

“Rooster’s like a brother to me, you know,” he starts, voice soft.

His breath is bated. I know he wants to say more, needs to say more.

Please don’t say anything else. Please let that be the end of it. I am begging him silently, desperately. Please be quiet.

But he still hasn’t learned this secret, silent language. He is not like Bob and Phoenix, doesn’t absorb the fire in my eyes, the twist in my lips. He can’t look at my face and know exactly what I’m going to say the way they can.

He inhales sharply and my belly flips. My fingers are steady, though.

“But I would do anything to have met you before him,” he whispers, “terrible, demented things.”

He cracks an eye open when my fingers fall from his hair. He wants me to laugh--I know this. But I can’t laugh right now. My throat is too dry. I can’t laugh because I know that he is mostly serious--I know that he wants to be with me. And I do not want to be with him.

This sobers him in a small way.

He clears his throat, eyes slipping shut again.

“In another life, I guess,” he mumbles quietly.

I nod, finding his hair again.

“Maybe,” I whisper to him and it feels like the only thing I can say.

Another beat.

“If I had met you before,” he starts, licking his lips, “do you think you could’ve loved me like you love him?”

My fingers are suddenly cold. Fuck.

I sigh deeply, a sigh that touches the innermost parts of my belly and chest.

“God, Jake,” I say softly, “can’t you just be quiet and let me cut your hair?”

He shakes his head. No, he can’t just be quiet and let me cut his hair.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I tell him, snipping here and there gently, “really, I don’t.”

He inhales deeply, chest expanding below me. He leans back, too, in a measured way so the top of his head is nestled against my ribs. It is a touch light enough to be innocent, an accident; except that I know it is not. I know he’s drunk. I know he’s drunk enough to stumble and maybe drunk enough to throw up, even. But he is not drunk enough to touch me in these small ways accidentally, not drunk enough to forget about this thing that lies between us and swallows him, only him.

He swallows thickly, eyes still closed.

“Maybe I should get it out of my system before you’re someone else’s wife,” he muses, “you don’t even have to say anything. I’ll just talk.”

Someone else’s wife.

I want to yank him back by his hair and tell him that he needs to get his shit together. I know it’s what my sister would have done for me. But it is not in my nature--I cannot do that. So I just sigh. I don’t say yes and I don’t say no, the same response I had for the ten months after my sister died, the same response that got me into trouble.

“I think ‘bout you all the time,” he admits softly, “when I’m tired, when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m drunk--’specially when I’m drunk.”

It’s my turn to take a bated breath. My fingers are frigid, but I’m still able to keep my grip on the scissors and trim gently. His eyes are still closed.

“Wish I would’ve met you a long time ago,” he continues, “like, way before the mission. When you were still flying. Think I could’ve charmed you, sugar plum. Think I could’ve loved you right.”

This is when he finally opens his eyes--they are very deep, his pupils blown. He’s just looking up at me and I’m looking down at him, scissors still moving through his hair. He’s searching my face, eyebrows knit.

My belly is aching, my spine prickling.

“I have to say it,” he tells me, his voice strained.

I know what he is going to say--wish fervently that I didn’t.

“You don’t,” I return just as quietly.

He blinks, cringes like he’s in pain. He sucks in a breath, lips parting.

“I do love you,” he tells me.

A lightning bolt strikes my chest and sizzles my skin, burns my hair.

It is what we’ve been dancing around since we first met--what I’ve been able to dismantle and dodge. But I am too drunk to dismantle it, to dodge it. Now it is sitting in the air around us and we are alone in here. An admission, a big one, one bigger than both of us.

“Stop it,” I whisper, hands falling from his hair as my brows come together.

He continues, though, licking his lips.

“I would never try anything with you ‘cause I respect you too much, Faye. I respect you more than anyone, kid,” he tells me, coming up to grasp my wrist, “I think you’re my favorite person. I do love you. I do.”

Swallowing thickly, I just shake my head. I don’t know what to say to him and my throat is tight and my chest is tighter. So I just look down at him, at his gaze, and shake my head.

“You’re drunk,” I try.

He nods. Fuck.

“So are you,” he says, “and I mean what I said.”

I do not love him like he loves me. Not even a fraction of myself does--not a particle of skin or a follicle of hair or a fallen eyelash or the toenail on my pinky toe. Top to bottom, side to side, head to toe; I love Rooster. Only Rooster.

“Why can’t you just be my friend?” I whisper.

He swallows, shaking his head softly. His grip on my wrist tightens slightly, not enough to hurt me, but enough to keep me close to him.

“I am your friend,” he says, “of course I’m your friend.”

A long beat passes. Somewhere else in the house, the shower turns off, the constant hum abruptly pausing. Rooster will be back soon.

“But it’s not enough for you?”

He stares up at me--his gaze is earnest, frightened. It makes me want to go outside and drink up all the air out there. It makes me want to stand beneath the star-sprinkled sky, skin goosing in the nippy winter air.

“It can be,” he insists softly.

I sigh.

Another beat passes.

“It’s enough for me,” I nod, “you know that I think you’re a good man. Be a good friend.”

This makes him close his eyes in that unintentional way, when he just can’t look at me anymore, when they seem to flutter shut in a sharp, pained way. He turns his cheek, chin tilted towards the floor.

“I’m trying,” he says.

I swallow thickly.

“Try harder, Jake.”

And I’m pushing him right now, I can feel it. I’m pushing him because I love him so much, love that he calls me on his bad days, love that he watches whatever Meg Ryan movie I tell him about and never brings his dates carnations.

He nods one time, a slow and sad kind of nod.

“You say it like it’s easy,” he whispers and then he sucks in a big breath, “and you know what? Maybe being your friend isn’t enough for me, Faye. Maybe it’s just not.”

And my chest feels like it’s been blown wide open suddenly. Because as much as I know that there are feelings in his chest reserved specifically for me, that there is a place between his ribs where pieces of me reside perpetually, as much as everyone can chide about it, as much as we all laugh about it--I did not think he would ever say it. We have done this dance since we’ve met; he spins me out and I let go of his hand, he pulls me close and I turn my cheek, he dips me and I slip from his grip. He has never said it--never explicitly said the words, even if they were implied. But now my chest is open and wide because he is my friend--a good friend, a close one. One that I need, one that I want. It feels like that’s slipping away suddenly--like I am losing him.

“Don’t do this to me the night before my wedding,” I beg, “please, Jake.”

He sighs and brings one of his hands to his face, rubbing his eyes.

“I’m not tryin’ to do anything, kid,” he says softly, “I had to say it.”

There’s that insistence again; he had to. He had to.

“So, what now?” I ask softly, “you say that and I don’t say it back and now we’re supposed to move forward, keep going?”

He groans softly and it’s muffled by his palm.

“Dunno,” he mumbles, “didn’t think that far.”

He’s still rubbing his face. He still sounds drunk.

“You’re one of my best friends--!”

“--Yeah, I get it, Faye. Friends,” he says curtly, staring at the floor, leaning forward in the chair, “you don’t have to twist the knife, darlin’.”

For a moment, I’m speechless. I wonder, just for a second, if I have stepped into some alternate timeline. One where he has admitted his feelings and we are both too drunk to do anything about it and he will not be my friend anymore after this.

“Well, that’s not fair,” I whisper finally.

He groans quietly into his palms, still not meeting my gaze.

“Do you think this is fair to me,” he whispers, “because it’s not. This has never been fair to me.”

The house feels very still, very quiet. I feel like we are the only ones here--like everyone else left and we are entirely alone.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I tell him, my voice thin, “what can I do?”

And I’m being entirely truthful now--of course I don’t want to lose him. We are friends now, have been friends since the beginning of it all, even if we really weren’t friends. I am soft with him and he’s even softer with me. His oozing ego staunches when he is alone with me--a facade dissipates, a mask unties and falls. I know that he is himself in front of me, know that he trusts me to see these parts of himself that other people don’t.

He groans louder now, shaking his head. His voice is dripping with exhaustion, frustration.

“Nothing,” he tells me, “not a damn thing, Faye.”

That makes me feel like I’ve just dove into a pool of rusty nails. Like I need to be stitched and bandaged, like I need a tetanus injection. I feel like I should be in a hospital bed, blinking up at a white ceiling.

I’m still standing here in my dress from earlier, the one that is a thin sheath between my bare body and the rest of the world. It is the ballet-slipper pink dress that Jake likes so much, the dress Bradley will take off me soon. I still have my veil on, a genuine marker that I am a bride--the only bride now that Bob and Phoenix are out of the room. My makeup is surely messy, melted by sweat and laughter and small tears. He’s the only one in his clothes from earlier, too--his jeans tight on his legs and his shirt loose around his chest. Here we are, alone, dressed with nowhere to go right now.

All I can see from here, with my soft-edged vision in this lamplit room, is the back of his head and his neck, his back. He’s breathing evenly, trying to compose himself I think.

I wonder, fleetingly, if he’s as good at soothing himself as he is at soothing me.

“Don’t leave me, Jake,” I say.

It makes me feel cruel almost--saying this to him after what he’s said to me. But I mean that I need him, I really do--just in a different way that he needs me. He was the one that held me together when we thought Rooster was gone, collecting my limbs when they were clicking out of place and flailing with grief. He was the one that promised to come and get me after it all, after everything, after nothing. He was the one that told me his favorite stories of my sister and I that flirted around whatever base he was stationed at in the time before he knew me. He was the one that humiliated me so thoroughly that night on the beach, the one that truly repented, the one that crawled back into my good graces with bloody knees and broken fingernails. He was the one that wanted to be my friend. He was the one that made me care about him, leaning into my fleeting touch and telling me we would do right by my sister when I danced for the first time in The Hard Deck since she died.

Why should I be punished for being loved by him?

I’m drunk. I know I’m drunk. But when he turns in the seat, turns so his legs are facing me, I don’t move away. I should move away. And when he carefully reaches out and settles his hand in mine, I should retreat--but I can’t. It isn’t even that I want him to hold me, but that I know that he needs me to hold him, the way I knew he needed me on the carrier when he was not chosen as Maverick’s wingman. But I can’t get my fingers to curl around his.

When he looks up at me, his eyes are glimmering sadly, his lips frowning. His eyebrows are knit and his cheeks are flaxen. When he swallows, it’s with great effort. He looks anguished, entirely consumed by grief--the same way he looked when he found me in the hallway outside the control room.

I know I must not look much different--anguished, heart-wrenched, formerly beautiful. I know my eyes are watery and my brows are pulled together and the flat part of my chest is naked, my pulse throbbing. I know my hair is messy now, longer than it was last May, streaked by the winter sun. I know I must look wrecked right now--glossy and bleary. Drunk and woeful.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he begs softly, “you break my fuckin’ heart when you look at me like that.”

His hand is soft, the skin lotioned. But his grip is hard--harder than it was earlier when he was holding me in place by my wrist. This grip is tighter, more desperate. I still can’t get my fingers to move. I can’t get any part of myself to move.

“What can I do?” I ask again, quieter.

My heart is throbbing in my throat, threatening to burst out of my neck and lay on the floor in a bloody heap. He is watching me, watching my eyes. His grip is tightening--my fingertips are red and his knuckles are white.

“Love me,” he says, laughing dryly and without a smile.

I shake my head.

“I do love you, Jake.”

“Not the way I want you to,” he returns.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair at all.

Tequila pulses through my temple.

“C’mon,” I say, “please.”

I’m waiting for us to step outside of this alternate dimension again. I’m waiting for both of us to wake up, snap out of it. I’m waiting to not feel drunk anymore, but I still really do feel drunk. I’m waiting for someone to walk into the room and take us away from each other. I’m waiting for him to admit that he’s just drunk--that he won’t even remember this in the morning. I’m waiting for something, anything.

“Can’t keep pretending like I’m not in love with you,” he says decidedly.

My knees almost buckle, but I lock my hip, transferring my weight to my right side. My mouth is dry, full of sand.

I want so badly to wake the fuck up now.

“Why not?”

My cheeks are red. He laughs another humorless laugh.

“‘Cause it ain’t fair to me, you, or him.”

He’s right. I know that he’s right.

He blinks up at me, stubble suddenly wildly apparent as he lets his free hand fall down his face again, pulling his skin towards the earth.

It makes me angry, how pained he seems, how utterly dejected he is. Because he is telling me this on the eve of my wedding, looking up at me with his stubble and his green eyes, and punishing me for not being in love with him. He is telling me these things he knows that I will not say back and making my heart sink in my chest and pretending like it’s hurting him the most.

“So, that’s what you’ve been doing this whole time? Just pretending to be my friend, pretending that you’re interested in anything other than fucking me?”

Fuck. There it is--that bitterness, the unintentional cruelty--leaking out of me.

He shakes his head rapidly, scoffing.

“That’s what you got from everything I just said? Jesus Christ, Faye,” he seethes, narrowing his eyes, “I’m not a fuckin’ villain. You are one of my best friends in the world, alright? I am delighted to be your fuckin’ friend, honey. Of course I wanna fuck you--but don’t think for a minute that means I don’t care about you, about being your friend.”

I’m stuck still, my breath a pathetic gust of hot air in my throat--clinging to my trachea. Of course I wanna fuck you. I think I might be sick, I think I might just turn around and walk away and pretend like none of this is happening at all.

But I don’t think I could wrench my hand from his grip without my skin degloving.

His eyes hold me in place--narrow, green eyes that watch me like I am the only flimsy flame in a very dark room. My whole body is flushed again--I’m suddenly embarrassed and keenly aware that I am wearing a thin dress with not even the hint of a stitch on underneath it.

His face is red now--his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“You can’t say that,” I am able to whisper, my voice thin and broken, “can’t say that to me.”

He doesn’t look away from my eyes--doesn’t let go of me. But he nods. He nods just one time, a solid and short thing. He agrees. Okay. I won’t say that.

“Just stop,” I suggest defeatedly, “just stop being in love with me.”

He scoffs again, quieter now. His eyes fall to my chest and I know that he’s thinking about being on the carrier with me, holding me together, putting me on the floor, touching my skin, slowing my breathing, blowing onto my fingers. Maybe he’s thinking about it because it was the closest he has ever been to me--probably the closest he will ever be to me.

“Okay,” he says, equally as defeated, “I’ll get right on that.”

Now it’s very quiet between us. He’s still holding my hand and I’m still just looking down at his face. The clock is ticking on and on, closer to my wedding, closer to me tethering myself to Bradley officially.

He is the one that speaks next. His voice is gravely pensive. His eyebrows are unfurrowed, his eyes wide and swimming as he gazes up at me. He looks sober, painfully sober. He lets go of my hand suddenly, lips parting as his jaw flexes.

“I don’t know if I can watch you love him forever, Faye.”

It feels like a blow--an upper-cut to the chin, a gunshot to the chest, a firework pelted at my belly.

When did we get here? When did Jake and I slip into this place, this place he can’t get back from but I can? Why is this so hard? Why is he telling me this fifteen hours before I get married?

“You’re being cruel,” I say, my voice cracking, breaking.

“I’m being cruel?”

He asks this brokenly, his tone not bitter and accusatory. He asks this like he really needs me to answer him--like I really need to tell him the truth because he doesn’t know.

I have to swallow very hard before I can speak again. My hands are shaking.

“What did you expect to happen?”

He knows what I mean. He knows what I’m asking.

Did he think I was going to take his hand and walk out the front door and never look back? Did he think I would pity him enough and just give him a little bit of myself--just a quick and quiet kiss on the mouth, enough to keep him going, enough to keep quiet between the two of us? Did he think that I would suddenly open my chest to him, let him inside, hold him close to my heart? Did he think I would realize that it was him all along--that he is the one I am supposed to be with?

Or did he just want to punish me?

There’s that anguished expression on his face again--now I’m the one that closes my eyes, turns my cheek, because I cannot look at him when he looks like that. I don’t like it when he looks at me like that, so sad and broken, so eager for me to put him together again even though I cannot.

But I know then--I know what he wanted to happen. He wanted me to choose him, wanted me to sit shotgun in his truck all the way back to North Carolina, wanted to take this dress off me somewhere dark and quiet, wanted me to just forget about the wedding ticking closer and closer.

Fuck. Oh, fuck.

My heart is hammering in my chest.

“Faye…”

“You’re drunk,” I say again and he is just blinking up at me.

Really, it’s an olive branch that I’m extending to him. Really I am giving him an out so that when I wake up tomorrow, when I slip into my wedding dress and my veil, we can pretend like this only happened because of pink champagne and tequila.

I’m begging him wordlessly. My face looks like the word please.

It dawns on him very slowly, deflating every feature of his face. His chest sinks.

“Yes,” he whispers, “I’m drunk.”

I bring the scissors up and cut one final tuft of uneven hair.

He stays still, lets me, keeps quiet.

“There,” I whisper, “all done.”

He turns again, blinking up at me. His cheeks are red.

My voice is very soft, very quiet when I speak again. It is not an unkind tone that I take with him; I cannot find it in my heart to be bitter and unkind to him. Not after everything we’ve been through--not after everything we’ve done for each other, to each other.

“Get out of my chair,” I whisper gently, “and wash your face with cold water. Take an ibuprofen. Go to sleep.”

When he nods, he looks very much like a child being told what to do. He is submitting to me, to my words, letting them guide him. He’s doing as he’s told, carefully moving his eyes from mine and sitting up again, hands still on his thighs.

“So when you wake up tomorrow, you’re going to pretend like none of this happened?”

He doesn’t look at me when he says this. He just whispers it with his back turned to me, his eyes trained on the empty stairs before him. He sounds dejected--broken. He sounds like this is the one thing that he cannot handle--if I pretend like this conversation never happened, if I try to dance around all of his words and keep being friends like nothing happened.

“I never said that.”

He nods, but still doesn’t look at me.

Phoenix moves into the room as he stands up, smiling tiredly before she yawns.

But Phoenix is good at reading the room--good at reading my face, Jake’s face even when she’s drunk. I know the blush has dripped from my cheeks down to my chest, know that my eyebrows are still knit and my mouth is flat. I’m not smiling anymore--neither is Jake.

Jake is slinking towards the hallway with his cheeks hollowed, his hand raking through his trimmed hair.

“You okay?”

She asks this when it’s just her and I in the room.

Her face is clean and free of makeup now, her hair brushed and her veil disappeared. Her dress has been replaced with a Navy sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants--it makes her look soft and small.

I could lie to her--could just smile and say oh, yes, I’m fine. Just tired. Big day tomorrow! But she reminds me too much of my sister, who is the one person I wish was here, the one person who would listen to my qualms and work through them vivaciously.

When I open my mouth, though--I still feel too empty to say anything. And I suddenly feel that saying what Jake said to me is betraying his trust in me, his vulnerability. He is still my friend. I still love him--just not the way he wants me to.

My hands quiver as I set the scissors on the coffee table.

“He’s relentless sometimes,” I tell her, my voice thin, “and I’m too soft. And I’m pretty drunk.”

That’s all I have to say--she nods, registering what must have happened, perhaps thinking that one of his flirtations struck the wrong cord finally.

Carefully, she shuffles across the floor and around the tufts of hair to sit in the wooden chair. It is probably still warm from his body.

“I’ll talk to him,” she whispers, “don’t worry about it.”

I just braid Phoenix’s hair--combing my fingers through it and very carefully layering the French braid down her back as the boys file back in the room. Everyone is fresh-faced and in their pajamas, still bleary-eyed and hiccupping lightly. But now it’s mostly quiet as I band Phoenix’s hair, smoothing it with my slick palms a final time before I sigh.

When I look out to the boys, my head is throbbing smally; I don’t know if it’s because of the champagne or because of Jake or because of the hour or because of the exhaustion flooding my gut. Bob is on the couch, eyes slipping shut slowly as he watches Phoenix climb out of the chair. Hangman is sitting on the floor again, legs stretched out before him once more. But he isn’t looking at my face now--he’s watching my legs, my bare feet. Rooster is standing from his spot on the ottoman, grinning at me, oblivious to the pulsing vein in my head and the strange air between Hangman and I.

“Ready for me, honey?”

He cups my cheeks, tilting my head towards him, and kisses me a few times. His lips taste minty, his breathing very soft as it fans across my lips. And it’s not that I have to be reminded of this, but he does remind me of it when he does this: he is a good man. He is the kind of person I am ready to spend the rest of my life with. These are the lips I should be kissing, this is the body I should be pressed against.

“‘M gonna get some air,” Jake says suddenly, standing from his spot and crossing to the back door before I can even detach myself from Bradley.

The backdoor slams shut behind him, vibrates the kitchen door.

“Wedding jitters?” Bob guesses quietly from the sofa, shrugging.

“Probably,” I whisper.

And it’s when Rooster sits in the chair, when Bob and Phoenix fall asleep in tandem on the couch covered by a wool blanket, when I hear the patio chair scrape against the bricks and know that Hangman is sitting beneath the night sky by himself, that the knot in my chest comes undone. Finally, it is just Rooster and I here, everyone else just figures, just fragments.

Rooster is so tall that his head rests against my chest when I rake my fingers through his damp hair. He groans lowly, head falling into my palms, lips parting prettily. I just do that for a few moments, let my fingers brush against his scalp and through his sandy curls, carefully detangling them.

“Not long now,” he hums, peeking at me through a nearly-shut eye, “cold feet?”

I am reeling still from my conversation with Jake minutes ago, reeling from his gaze burning my ankles and feet, reeling from this sudden confession. But I am also very happy--very happy to be marrying Bradley tomorrow, very happy to be having my wedding here with all of my friends.

I am ready to be Bradley’s wife. I know that we are tied together and have been since before either of us even knew.

The wedding will be good--perfect, even.

I’m just drunk. I’m just drunk and one of my best friends broke our unspoken rule and told me that he is in love with me and I told him to wash his face and go to bed.

I swallow thickly, bringing the scissors up to his hair, grinning widely despite myself, despite my pulsing and aching.

“No,” I whisper, snipping the first curl carefully, “you?”

He chuckles, eyes slipped shut again. He is so beautiful bathed in lamplight, so beautiful when he gives me his weight and lets me hold it close to my body.

“Should’ve married you a long time ago,” he whispers.

My eyes water.

Yes, this is what I want. This is who I want.

“Rookie mistake,” I whisper to him.

He grins--it is the grin that I love so much, the one that is molded around a mustache and scars and teeth and tanned skin. It’s a grin that is on the face that I love so much. It makes me set the scissors down, makes me hold his cheeks as I tip his head back, makes me bend at the waist to give him an upside-down kiss.

“I would’ve married you the first day I saw you, baby,” I whisper into his mouth, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, “all you had to do was ask.”

☾☽

I am awake before anyone else is in the house--it feels like I’m up before anyone else in California for a fleeting few minutes as I blink at the ceiling, orienting myself. It feels like I’m awake before anyone else in this great, wide world--like my eyes are open before anyone else’s.

It’s still dark outside, the calling birds distant and hollow-sounding as they cry for the light. The house is quiet--an easy kind of quiet, a plentiful sort of quiet that accompanies sleeping bodies. The house is the kind of clean that amplifies silence, too--spotless except for the tufts of hair peppering the living room floor, the tufts that must be swept and thrown away.

The dim morning light is starting to obscure the darkness of the bedroom, the maple-scented candle having never been lit in mine and Rooster’s rump to the bedroom late last night after his haircut. The bed is warm from our unwashed skin--the skin that’s pressed deeply into the wrinkles and folds of this linen, this cotton. These sheets are tangled around us, the way they have been since July of 2019. They smell like us now--somewhere between pepper and honey--a scent that was born when we tethered ourselves to each other.

I am sure that no one in the living room is awake yet--can hear the soft sound of the air conditioner below the puffs of breath and bending limbs. It sounds like they’re dreaming in there. For just a split second, I wonder if Hangman is dreaming about me. The thought makes me pulse all over, makes my throat ache. Thinking about our conversation at all suddenly has bile rising in my throat, threatening to spew if I move too suddenly. I cannot deny the reality of it now that I am awake, blinking at my bedroom ceiling, acutely hungover, achingly sober: Jake is in love with me.

Fuck.

Filling my lungs, I hold my breath there. I measure the seconds with Rooster’s breathing. Everything’s okay. Everything’s good. I am able to hold myself there, hold myself still, for twenty-seven seconds before my lungs start to burn.

When I exhale, it’s slow and steady, my fingers colder than they were last night.

Stevie is stretched out across Rooster’s feet, more fluff than feline, far away in her dreams. Her whiskers twitch when she stretches her paws out before her, but still she doesn’t awaken. This is where she sleeps each night--careful not to drape her tail over my legs or toes. Bitch.

Rooster is sleeping beside me, stripped down to a pair of briefs, sprawled across the middle of the bed with his mouth buried in my hair in a sweet attempt to reach my throat. He’s holding me close, holding me tight, a thick hand splayed across my belly and an even thicker thigh pinning my legs to the bed. His mustache is tickling the exposed lobe of my ear and I would move if I didn’t treasure those bristly hairs pressed against my skin, if I didn’t love the chill up my spine. His eyelashes are fluttering--they’re gingerly twitching there against the side of my face in accidental butterfly kisses. He’s breathing those loud, hard breaths into my tangled locks--his breath smells like the draft beer he likes at The Hard Deck.

This is how I am going to wake up every morning after this point. Yes, just like this--us entwined on these sheets, him holding me against the bed, me waking up before him. We will not be in this house anymore come September, probably. Come May, we will be packing boxes, staking a For Sale sign in the front yard.

But not today--no, today we are getting married.

I am good at getting out of bed without waking Rooster up. I’m good at navigating our room in the mostly-dark morning, good at slipping my robe on silently. I’m even good at navigating the rest of the house in the dark, stepping over piles of hair and sleeping bodies, closing the doors soundlessly until I am on the back patio with just my phone.

It’s still cold now--colder than it was last night when I ached to be under the sky. The birds are louder now, too--swooping gracefully from one branch to the other, calling gleefully. I can still see the buttery moon hanging in the cobalt sky above; a waning crescent.

But it is beautiful out here, very beautiful. The brick patio, which used to be a humble square, has been extended beyond its original placement and covers half the backyard now. It gives way to trimmed, green grass perimetered by the tall wooden fence Bradley painted white last month. There are trees, too, dotting the corners of the yard; big, sturdy eucalyptus trees with sage-colored leaves and smoky bark.

Perhaps the most identifiable change, though, are the flowers that flood the lawn. All over, sprawling and crawling, are flowers. They’re in rows and not in rows, planted wherever we saw fit, growing in an array of colors ranging from indigo to canary to azure. There are all kinds of flowers, too; daffodils, early tulips, breath of heavens, tuscan blues, lilac vines, California poppies.

Out here, in the nippy air, the flowers emit a most consuming scent. It smells like a picnic on a Sunday morning in the park, like laying on a gingham blanket and sitting beside a wicker basket. Like flicking thick-bodies ants into the freshly cut grass and tearing pieces off a baguette with unwashed hands. Like hard ground against soft skin, like rusty swingsets and idle clouds. It smells like my grandmother’s farm--like running around the haybales with Maggie, like scaring the cows, like eating apple butter on buttermilk biscuits. It smells like hiding behind a big red barn and pulling splinters out of my sister’s palms.

It just smells like Maggie out here, I think. Like something that is inside the earth.

I know this is the place I should do it if I’m going to do it--in the backyard that we used to polish wine bottles off in, surrounded by native wildflowers, a chill in the air to offset the heat in my face. I know that this is the time to do it if I’m going to do it--everybody in the world is asleep, everybody in the world is dreaming. I know this is the day to do it--my wedding day, the day we naively spoke about under the false pretense of togetherness, brazenly unaware that we would not be together at all, naive to the delicate pendulum of death that would suddenly strike her.

So I do it.

My fingers are cold, very cold. It is hard to bend them, hard to dial the number that I still remember so very well. 619-295-9472. When I press call, her face fills my screen--all chipped-tooth smiles, rosy cheeks, wet lips, tired eyes--just below her contact name: Maggie Moo.

This grief that sits in my chest has not grown lighter since she died, but my muscles have grown around it--I have pushed forward, bearing the weight, bearing the brunt of it all. And I have not heard her voice in a very long time, not since the last time I called her, which was on the day I came home from the rehabilitation center. I will allow myself this--I will allow myself to hear my sister’s voicemail right now, in this beautiful backyard that will no longer be mine in a few months, on the day that I am going to marry the love of my life.

The line trills one time and hitches as her voicemail starts.

“Lieutenant Maggie ‘Crimson’ Ledger is busy right now, sorry! Try calling Lieutenant Faye ‘Clover’ Ledger if it’s really an emergency--or if it’s Bob. Hey, Bob! I guess Cyclone, too. Sir! Okay, so Bob and Cyclone can call Faye if it’s really an emergency--or if you just want to chat, I’m sure she’d answer right away. But if this is, like, a telemarketer or something then you can hang the fuc--”

It cuts off there.

I used to beg her to change her voicemail, endlessly worrying that she was going to miss an important professional call and find herself in an awkward situation. But now, now that I have my phone pressed against my face and her voice is so close to my ear, I’m so glad she didn’t listen to me.

She sounds so happy, so alive. She definitely recorded it in the car--I can hear the highway around her, the radio humming distantly. Maybe she was on her way to work. Maybe she was on her way home from the grocery store, ice cream melting inside a paper bag in the backseat. Maybe she was coming here to my house and we were going to watch You’ve Got Mail. I wish I knew when she recorded it, wish I knew where she was and what she was doing.

I play it again, eyes slipping shut.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard my name fall out of her mouth like that, so very easily, so very casually. It’s the name she said first, before her own name, before mama or dada. It was Faye that she uttered gleefully, grabbing a fistful of my hair as we toddled around blocks on the living room floor. And now it’s recorded for eternity in this voicemail, her voice the same scratchy-sweet tone I remember.

One day, I worry that she will start to slip away. God, it’s a thought that has crept into my skull in moments between asleep and awake--a thought that’s made a nest at the edge of my brain, nestled between pink folds, burrowing deeply in my mind. I am afraid that one day she will have been gone for so long that I will forget what her laugh sounded like, forget about what her left kneecap looked like, forget what her favorite song was, forget what her face looked like when she was annoyed. It makes tears cloud my eyes each time, makes an impossible knot tangle my gut tightly. Because I don’t want to forget any piece of her at all--even the pieces that don’t matter very much.

I play it a third time and let it finish, let the automated voice prompt me to leave a voicemail. And for some reason, when the beep sounds, my lips part.

“Hi, Maggie,” I whisper, my voice thick with sleep and tears, “God, I feel stupid doing this. But this is the closest I can get to you right now, Mags. This is all I’ve got left.”

The crackly silence rings through on the other end.

I sniffle.

“Can you believe I’m getting married today? Fuck, that’s weird. Bob’s going to wear a flower crown,” I laugh softly, palming the tears from my cheeks, “and he’s been real good to me, real sweet. Came with me to pick out my dress, helped plan the reception. He offered to walk me down the aisle, too, but I told him I need him to just be the man of honor. I can walk myself down.”

Another beat of silence. The birds call hoarsely above me.

“The backyard’s lovely,” I start again, sighing, “we fixed it up nice and pretty, planted flowers, painted the house. All that boring shit you would’ve hated. But it’s pretty. And it smells good--smells like you. And I think it’s going to be sunny today, which makes me happy. Guess rain on your wedding day isn’t necessarily common in Southern California, though, huh?”

I wish she was here, on the other end of the phone, humming along with me.

“Wish you were here now. I wish you were here right now more than I ever have before,” I whisper and my vision is blurring, my throat tightening, “because I just feel like today isn’t real without you here. I wish you were here to tell me that flower crowns aren’t going to be in style in a few years and that I should have my hair up instead. I wish you were here to drink too much champagne and make an inappropriate speech. I wish you were here to hand Bob a handkerchief--he’s gonna be a wreck. I wish you were here to just tell me what to do. Just want you to boss me around.”

I let the silence on the other end wash over me, let it carve my chest out, let it wring me dry. For a moment, I pretend like that’s her voice. That deep, staticy, hollowing silence.

“I love you,” I say quietly, “How could you leave me hanging like this, Mags? You bitch. I miss you. So much. So, so much.”

The tone cuts me off before I can continue, not that there is anything left for me to say to my dead sister’s voicemail.

I won’t listen to her voicemail again for a long time, won’t be able to hear her say my name, won’t be able to hear her tease me from beyond the grave. I won’t listen to it again until my grip starts to loosen--until I cannot remember which teeth her chipped, which ankle had that tiny butterfly tattoo, which eye she claimed was smaller than the other. Then I will let myself have it again. I’ll let her say my name. I’ll let myself pretend like the silence is her voice.

It is enough for now, though. Enough for me to stand up and tilt my head towards the rising sun, enough for me to flex against the heavy grief on my chest. I can carry it today--I can hold it in my palms, walk it down the aisle, feed it the cake in the fridge, shower it in prosecco.

The day begins as soon as I cross the threshold of the kitchen, as soon as my bare foot is flat on the tile. Everyone is suddenly awake, crowding the kitchen, their eyes bleary.

It smells like bacon and coffee, the way Saturday mornings should smell--the scent is thick and fat, wafting through the air in a cloud almost.

Rooster is standing at the stove, a tea towel slung over his shoulder as he twirls the tongs in his right hand. Phoenix and Bob are sitting at the kitchen table, running over the schedule Bob has so graciously worked out (and typed, printed, color-coded, stapled) with two glasses of orange juice perched before them. Hangman is fiddling around with the coffeemaker, five empty mugs sitting before him on the copper countertop.

Everyone has bleary eyes and stiff limbs. And everyone’s hair is shorter now--I squint against the light, making sure everyone’s ends are even.

They don’t seem to notice me for a moment, standing in the doorway with tear-streaked cheeks and my phone clutched in my cold hand. But I’m glad to rest here in the doorway, the glass-paned door cool against my skin, watching these people I love mill around this kitchen I love this early in the morning.

“Morning,” I greet after a moment.

Everybody looks up at the same time, snapping to attention like an Admiral is on deck. Their faces are all happy ones--clean, shining, smiling.

“Good morning,” Phoenix grins, “it’s wedding day!”

I’m smiling now, too--my face feels tight from saltwater, like I’ve been swimming in the ocean instead of just sitting in my backyard and crying on an empty voicemail.

“Don’t worry,” Bob echoes closely, “we’re gonna make it real easy for you, Faye. Right, Phoenix? Smooth sailing here.”

Phoenix nods rapidly, her hair still somehow braided.

“Thank you guys,” I smile softly, passing them as I walk further into the kitchen, fingers gently grazing the kitchen table.

Hangman is smiling softly at me, eyes cloudy and crusted with sleep. His hands are resting on the countertop, knuckles inching towards white as his fingers wrap themselves around his palms. It’s like he’s holding himself there, holding himself back.

“Morning,” I whisper to him, “how’re you feeling?”

I’m asking him this softly and without secrecy. When he looks into my eyes, he knows that my question extends beyond Bob’s Miracle Hangover Cure. He knows I’m testing the water. He doesn’t know, though, that seeing him makes my heart plummet to my belly like the ground has dropped out from under it.

“I’ll be okay,” he says.

And I know that he means that he will make it through today. I know that he remembers last night. I know that he remembers everything he said to me. I know the hurt must still be there, sitting between his shoulder blades in shapes that resemble the curve of my palms.

“Good. We’re gonna need you today.”

His eyes fall from mine, down to the floor.

Am I being cruel?

“Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

And then Rooster is grinning at me over his shoulder, hair soft and shorter and curly, mustache unkempt, eyes dazzling and crinkled. He hums the wedding march quietly and I pretend that I’m not elated, playfully rolling my eyes before wrapping my arms around his waist.

“Happy wedding day,” he whispers gleefully, kissing the top of my head.

“And yourself,” I mumble back, closing my eyes against his solid warmth, letting the scent of bacon consume me.

He hums, still looking down at me. I know without opening my eyes that his brows are furrowed and his eyes are soft, the way they always are when he’s concerned. Big, brown puppy-dog eyes.

“You alright?” he whispers to me softly, “saw you on the phone earlier.”

My chest tightens like someone is turning a key attached to my back, winding me up.

I can tell Rooster anything--I can tell him everything. I have given him the deepest of my secrets, the ugliest of my stories, and he has accepted them with ample grace and gratitude. He has eaten small pieces of me, devoured them, and I have sat comfortably inside his belly for over a year now.

Some things, though--they just belong to me. Some things are just mine and Maggie’s. Twin things, sister things, aviator things. And this phone call, placed very early this morning, is just mine and hers. It will be kept between us, just like the gritty details of her death.

“I was leaving a voicemail,” I whisper, “I’m alright.”

He nods.

I know that he wants more, but he doesn’t pry. He’s good like that. He doesn’t push or pull me. He lets me lean into him, lets me come to him in my own time. I love that about him, love so much that he waits for me to walk to him without beckoning me--yet wants me so voraciously that I always know. I always know that he wants me, even when he doesn’t say it. It just emanates from him like body heat.

“Good,” he sighs, “now, will you start toasting the bagels? Looks like Bagman’s gonna need two.”

“You’re a good man, Rooster,” Hangman sighs from his spot, raking his hand through his hair tiredly, “a smart one, too. Perceptive, even.”

And the day pushes forward like that--very easily.

We all eat breakfast together, just the five of us. We eat on my grandmother’s china, pristine eggshell-colored plates adorned with dainty crimson paisley, and good silverware that used to be Maggie’s. There are linen napkins strewn about, serving platters of all shapes and patterns splattered with capers and egg yolk. Everyone is drinking orange juice from mismatched glasses, cream for the steaming mugs of coffee sitting in a glass jar beside the bouquet of fresh flowers that were delivered just after eight. It smells of grease and citrus and gardenia and friends here --smells like home. The sunlight pours in through the windows now, flooding the room, painting everything bright and merry.

The house starts to fill up just after we finish washing the dishes, just as we are all breaking to wash our faces and brush our teeth. First it’s Coyote, holding a duffel over his shoulder and a cardboard box.

“Cameras?” Bob asks from the landing as Coyote steps into the house, grinning.

Coyote nods eagerly.

“All thirty of ‘em.”

Then it’s Maverick, Penny, and Amelia that show next. They’re grinning, too, each of them fresh-faced and holding their own bags. Just after them, it is Fanboy and Payback, bringing our total up to a whopping eleven guests in my cluttered house.

It’s all hugging and kissing and smiling as everyone comes up the stairs and reports to Bob for their assignments--which he doles out with a remarkable amount of gumption for a man with slick under eye masks pressed against his skin. Phoenix acts as his second in command, his muscle--she stands beside him with identical eye masks, nodding along with him, clutching her stapled schedule to her chest.

By ten in the morning, everyone is busying themselves with their assignment.

Coyote and Hangman are setting up my extensive collection of lawn chairs, dutifully unfolding them and dusting them off as they form rows on either side of the brick patio. Fanboy and Payback are moving the thrifted wooden tables outside, arranging them prettily among the wildflowers and nestled in the green grass. Maverick is dropping a disposable film camera in each seat and helping to set the tables with the china I’ve been collecting, placing silverware beneath dainty linens and colored glass goblets atop the thick wooden tables. Amelia is collecting the flowers, arranging the centerpieces carefully and neatly at the kitchen table in the abundance of makeshift vases I’ve been collecting. Penny is beside Amelia, plucking flower petals off their stems and collecting them in a wicker basket for the ceremony. Phoenix is constructing the flower crowns for the bridal party, looping chrysanthemums, carnations, baby’s breath, honeysuckles, and marigolds. Bob is overseeing it all, stepping in place whenever another pair of hands becomes necessary, and keeping the records turning.

Right now, above all the laughter and the glasses clinking and the orders and the conversations, Baby, I’m Yours by Barbara Lewis is playing the way I like it--just a little bit too loud.

The bathroom counter is cold beneath my bottom and thighs, a hardness I am braced against. I am just in a pair of white cotton underwear, my legs smooth and lotioned as they open for Rooster to step between them. He is only wearing a pair of briefs, too--his body is lean and tan, wide between my knees as they press into his hips. His hands, his rough and big hands, fall onto the tops of my thighs where he grips me.

He is close enough to me to drown me in his sweet, familiar scent, close enough for his nose to press into mine when he ghosts his lips over mine. He’s radiating warmth like a personal heater, goosing my skin. He’s smiling down at me, his eyes soft when they land on my own identical smile.

“Hold still,” I whisper.

He stills between my legs, kneading the meat of my thighs mutely.

I bring the scissors under his mustache, very carefully trimming it, narrowing my eyes and leaning forward. His breaths hit my face in short, hot bursts as he rounds his top lip over his teeth to give me more leverage.

“Doing great, baby,” I add softly.

He chuckles, squeezes my thighs. Little pieces of his sandy mustache flake onto my naked lap, over his splayed hands.

“Y’take such good care of me,” he whispers, eyes watching mine.

It makes my throat swell, swell with that love that chokes me.

I pause my trimming, carefully angling the small scissors away from his cheeks as I hold his jaw in my hands. He is so beautiful, standing here between my thighs, grinning down at me in the golden morning light. His eyes are shining, his grin spreading.

I brush a thumb over his bottom lip, press it there gently.

“You make it easy,” I tell him, a lump in my throat.

He presses his lips to mine and we kiss, his hands moving to my hips, pressing me into him. And when his tongue licks a warm line across my bottom lip, I know that I have to be the one to pull away. I do so laughing, quickly bringing the scissors back to his mustache.

“Baby, we can’t,” I whisper, “sex isn’t on Bob’s schedule.”

“S’cruel to me,” he mumbles, shaking his head.

I quirk my brow, flit my eyes to his through my lashes as he stills.

“Well, which is it?”

He pinches my hips again and I bite my lip.

“So, your heels are blue. The dress is new,” he starts, chuckling when I roll my eyes up to meet him again, lip curving around his uneven mustache, “what about something borrowed? Something old?”

He’s right--I don’t have a plan set in place for either of the customs, something that had fallen off my radar in between thrifting tables and planting flowers.

“I guess I don’t have either,” I say softly, “but I can ask someone for a quarter or something. I’m sure that works, right?”

He’s just gazing down at me now. His eyes, a deep amber hue washing over them, study my fluttering eyelashes. He’s smiling softly, mouth closed. Carefully, he inhales then moves to pepper a soft kiss to my nose. Then his hands move up from my hips to my belly, which is nearly pressed against his. His touch leaves behind a trail of rose petals, the color of an open flame, tickling my skin and swelling my throat.

He stills there, on my belly. His palm is flat against me, against my emptiness. His thumbs reach up and swipe to follow the curve of my breasts, lazily dancing under their heaviness. His touch feels good--very good, too good. Sometimes it overwhelms me to think about having this touch on tap for the rest of my life. It makes me woozy, dizzy.

“Noted,” he whispers, “trim me up nice and good, baby. Gotta look my best today.”

It’s almost four o’clock when I step outside of my bathroom again, my heels clumping softly against the emerald tiles then sinking into the carpet. The room is washed golden, the ceiling fan churning the maple-scented air around the room with an empty reverence.

I’m wearing my dress now, which Phoenix and Penny dutifully helped me slip into, my body almost entirely bare before them. They zipped and tied me, adjusting me, preening, carefully breathing so as not to disturb the delicate silk slinking down my body.

“Here comes the bride,” Penny gleefully says from before me, gesturing to me from her spot outside the bathroom, beckoning me into the bedroom and closer to her.

I have to bunch the fabric in my hands softly, pulling it up just so that it doesn’t graze against the carpet and under my heels when I walk.

Bob stands to attention suddenly from his palace at the window, his burnt umber slacks pressed and cuffed immaculately. His hair is gelled and his glasses are resting on his nose politely, not a speck on their lenses.

“Oh, Bob,” I grin, “you look so handsome!”

Something happens when Bob sees me--his breath catches in his throat, his smile fades, his eyes flutter before they narrow. And he just looks at me with his mouth ajar, watching me walk towards him, the soft dress like feathers against my skin.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” Phoenix asks from beside Penny, biting her lip.

My heart is throbbing in my chest as Bob’s eyes find mine. His are watery suddenly, searching my rouged cheeks and painted lips as I stand there before him: a bride.

And it feels like the day has blinked suddenly by us.

Bob has made everything so very easy, stepping into the room and guiding me from hair to makeup, bringing my garter to me on a small tufted pillow, showing me the rings in his pocket every half hour for the sake of his peace of mind and mine. He’s been the one to bring me granola bars every two hours, asking me an infinite amount of time if I want a smoothie or a margarita or a xanax.

My Robert from Major Authors--the one who feels like a child to me sometimes, the one whose hair I cut in college in my ugly galley kitchen, the one who has punched precisely one face in his life to defend my feelings, the one who has always loved me without taking more than I give him.

“Bob,” I whisper, “if you cry, I’ll cry.”

Bob blinks rapidly, sputtering a dry laugh, turning his cheek.

“I’m afraid to know what happens when Bob cries,” Penny says softly, nudging him teasingly.

“I think a puppy would die or something,” Phoenix adds.

I know this is Phoenix’s attempt at drying our eyes, confiscating our wet cheeks. I know that she would cry, too, if Bob cried--that is how much she loves him. That is how good of friends they are. We are connected in that way again--the common ground spreads and we step closer to each other.

“I know, I know --no crying in the Navy,” he insists, stepping towards me, running his fingers along the shoulder of my dress, “but my best friend is getting married. S’enough to make a grown man cry!”

Everyone in here is grinning, laughing. The room is still bright in the afternoon light, sunlight painting the wallpaper and duvet. It smells like expensive perfume and hairspray, like sticks of gum and watered down lattes.

“Why don’t you crown her,” Penny suggests, her voice very soft as she nods towards the flower crowns perched on my bureau, “and we’ll veil her?”

Bob nods, pulling his fingers away softly, his blue eyes big and round as he finds mine again. We just look at each other for a moment, inhaling this bedroom on this day, raising our eyebrows at the same time. You okay? Yes, I’m okay. Are you? I’m good. It’s that language of ours, the one that is all eyebrow and lip and cheek but never sound.

“Right,” Bob says, clearing his throat, “I’ve got you, Faye.”

It is all very sweet, very ceremonious. Bob places the plush crown against my clean hair, carefully pressing stray strands from my lashes and cheeks, his touch the most gentle its ever been. He is close enough for me to smell the gum between his teeth, close enough for me to press my lips against his cheek, leaving behind a print of my pink lips.

“Thank you,” I whisper to him.

And then Phoenix and Penny settle the cream-colored veil at the base of the flower crown, letting it flutter down my bare back and settle at the base of my spine in a sprawling cream-colored blanket of silk.

Then they’re all three standing before me, eyes wet, smiles wide. It makes me flush, all of them looking at me like that, like their hearts are in their throats. So I grin, just grin, because there is an overwhelming sense of pride rushing over my entire being as I look at my bridal party.

Bob and Phoenix in their corresponding colors, his dress shirt pristine and white, her dress olive-green and flowering around her calves in sheaths of velvet. Even Penny in her floral gown, her hair pinned up, her cheeks glowing. They make me a proud person to love and to be loved by them.

“Knock, knock,” Jake’s voice suddenly echoes in the bedroom as he turns the handle and raps his knuckles against the door, “y’all decent?”

My heart stutters in its place. We haven’t spoken more than a few words since breakfast. But he was happy then, laughing between bites of bagel, eyes bleary and teeth especially white for the occasion. Other than that, other than his apparent joy, we have only slid past each other in the hallway, waved through windows. He’s been busy getting Rooster ready and I’ve been busy getting myself ready, separated by a few walls and a few members of our squadron.

Jake doesn’t wait for an answer--he comes into the room with a grin, whistling lowly at the bridal party before me, smoothly waltzing towards us with a small velvet box in his hand.

“Y’all clean up nicely,” he compliments, his trimmed hair coiffed and his stubble trimmed, “where’s your veil, Bob?”

Bob rolls his eyes, not looking away from me, biting a grin. He looks very proud, very pleased.

“Gave it to the bride,” Bob teases back, breaking so Hangman can step between himself and Phoenix, “look for yourself.”

And that’s precisely when Jake sees me. He stutters in his place, expression dropping completely in a single instant. Fuck. The grin thins and dissipates as his eyebrows slope, his mouth slack. I think I even see the breath in his throat catch, even see his Adam’s apple bob like a buoy in unforgiving, stormy waters.

His eyes wash over me slowly, starting at the flower crown and ending at the velvet toes of my heels. He’s looking at me like this is what he’s been waiting for all day, like he can’t believe that this is happening, like he has to see it to believe it.

Fuck.

And when his gaze finally meets mine, his mouth is still ajar and his cheeks are pale.

I think we are close enough friends for him to understand the crinkle between my brow. Please, don’t. Just be my friend. Please be my friend. It’s practically pulsing.

He swallows thickly.

“You’re a vision,” he says, his voice ragged.

“Thank you,” I whisper, stepping towards him carefully, “everybody here?”

Phoenix is watching my face, Bob is watching Jake’s. I know they’re wondering--I know they’re trying to decipher, dismantle. I know they want to know what happened last night. But even if I did want to tell them, it makes a lump grow in my throat each time, makes me want to weep. And I am too happy to weep now--too dizzyingly excited, anxious to marry Rooster.

“Yes,” he says dryly, eyes resting on my throat, “just came ‘round to tell you guys to take your places.”

He turns his cheek carefully, glancing at Penny, Phoenix, and Bob.

“I’ll walk Faye to the door,” he adds quietly.

What he means is: leave, please.

They nod, grinning, taking sharp breaths before squeezing my arms and carefully sweeping their eyes over me to make sure nothing is out of place. It’s Bob who catches my gaze again, asking in his silent way if everything is okay, reading the crease in between my brows and the pout in my lips.

Everything’s okay. Everything’s good.

“See you out there, honey,” Bob says from the door, Phoenix and Penny already walking down the hallway, “you got this.”

Then it’s just Jake and I again.

Except now I am in a wedding dress.

The dress is, by far, the most perfect thing I’ve ever owned. It is made entirely of silk, the color of a freshwater pearl, and falls down my body in one heave of heavenly fabric. The neckline dips tastefully, a small portion of the place where my ribs meet peering through the fabric. The sleeves are billow and rouche just past my elbows. It is an elegant dress, a sweet one--one Bob helped me pick out in September, him and I sorting through yards of fabric and bustiers and bejeweled skirts until we found this dress.

“Faye, that’s the one,” Bob had said immediately when I stepped out from behind the velvet curtain, my hair pulled back with a scrunchie and my socks bunched at my ankles, “oh my, God! You look perfect.”

I know that I look beautiful right now. I know without even studying myself in the mirror that I look beautiful right now. My dress is perfect, my crown made of flowers is handmade, my veil lovely and ethereal. My cheeks are rosy and my lips are pink, my eyes dusted lightly, my jewelry dainty and golden. I am spritzed in my favorite perfume and my hair falls down my body in precious, cascading waves.

It’s the most beautiful I have ever been--I know this. And I know that if I were alone and to study myself in the mirror, at my face that is mine but also my sister’s, at my body that is twenty-eight now, then I would see her there with me. Perhaps I wouldn’t even be able to imagine her beside me if I saw how truly decadent I really look--I would just see her face staring back at me. That’s when I see her in me; when I am beautiful, very beautiful.

And Jake’s wearing a pair of brown pants with smart creases, his leather shoes worn but polished, his scent that same papery-cologne from before. He looks handsome, too--like a cowboy. He looks like last night never even happened.

His cheeks are beginning to redden, his lips beginning to part.

“You look,” he sighs, dragging his eyes up from my throat, “like a fuckin’ angel.”

There’s only a few paces separating us. He’s gripping the velvet box so hard that his knuckles are whitening.

My heart is jumping in my belly, pounding, prancing.

When he’s this close to me, all I can think about is his quiet insistence last night. All I can think about is the tequila that pulsed through my temple when he uttered his confession, when he said he wanted to fuck me, when he told me he couldn’t watch me love Bradley forever. All I can think about is him walking away and never looking back and me calling an empty voicemail every time the Cowboys win.

And I shouldn’t be thinking about these things, not right now, not when I am about to get married. But he is my friend--I do love him. I will mourn him if I lose him.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

I wish that last night never happened. I truly wish that we could just stand in here as two friends and just be in the same room without that big, nasty thing looming over us, between us. I wish that he never said anything at all. I wish that he could just flirt the way he usually does, the kind that is easy to roll off the shoulders--but it feels different now. He hasn’t even come forward to kiss my head today like he usually does when he sees me.

The air is thick with tension, with words left unuttered.

I’m not sure if I want him to say everything or nothing. I’m not sure I want him to say anything at all, really.

“S’beautiful out there,” he says, “you did a good job.”

I nod again because my throat is aching too badly to speak.

He clears his throat again, then gestures to the velvet box in his hand.

“From the groom,” he whispers, crossing the floor to press it into my palm.

I wish that things were different now. I wish that we were still the kind of friends that could sit close together when I open this, wish that I could lean on his shoulder, wish that he could wrap his arm around me without feeling like we are hurting each other.

It’s quiet. He presses the box into my hand and then doesn’t move.

So I carefully open the box--breath catching in my throat when I see the simple, gold pin resting in the box, a white pearl adorning its head. It’s cold when I press it against my fingers, shining in the dying sunlight, gleaming up at me.

“He said it was his mama’s,” Jake sighs, crossing his arms as he comes even closer to me, his shoulder brushing mine, “guess she wore it on her wedding day, too.”

I feel like I knew that as soon as I saw it--could imagine her wearing it, pinned to the frilly sleeve of a puffy dress, all grins and big hair and exuberance. And now it is mine, my something borrowed, my something old. From the mother that would’ve adored me, given to me by the son that I am completely devoted to.

It’s love that pulses through me then, love for Rooster, for what we have. It is a certainty, one that puddles in my gut, even when Jake carefully takes the pin from me and steps before me. The toes of his shoes are against mine now as he looms over me, eyebrows creased.

“Here?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer again. His eyes flicker to mine and he looks genuinely pained, being this close to me without touching me, seeing me in a wedding dress. But that doesn’t stop him--he very gingerly pinches the thin seam that connects the brassiere of my dress, careful not to pull it away from my body as he pins the brooch to me. And then his eyes rest there, just between my breasts, just above the bit of bare skin of my ribs.

“Jake,” I whisper, stepping back.

He nods, turning his cheek, biting his lip.

He inhales deeply there, just before me. And I think if his hair wasn’t gelled, he would rake his fingers there. But it is so he just wipes his palms against his pants.

The vein across my nose throbs again.

“I need you to be my friend, please,” I say softly, really meaning it, the absence of my sister growing wildly apparent with each moment that passes, “even if it’s just for today.”

He nods without looking at me again.

“You know, ‘m always gonna love you,” he says, voice flat and quiet as he slowly shakes his head, “and ‘m always gonna be your friend.”

That makes me feel rotten.

Now I am the one that sighs, that wants to run my fingers through my hair.

“Shouldn’t have said what I did last night,” he adds, letting his hands grab his hips as his eyes burn a hole in the carpet at my feet, “shouldn’t have done that to you, Faye. Wasn’t fair.”

My spit feels thick as honey.

“You’ve never been very good at saying you’re sorry,” I whisper lowly, carefully nudging him, “cowboy.”

I am testing the water. He knows this, lets himself smile in that small way, lets himself exhale and deflate. It feels easier now--the air a tad thinner.

“You know that I am,” he says softly.

“And you know that I forgive you,” I whisper, “I always do.”

And before I can really even process what is happening, before I can lean forward and press my hand against his shoulder, he has closed the space between us. He has his arms wrapped around me, his grip constraining and tight, hands securely pressed against my ribs on either side. His head is very carefully hovering above mine, mindful of my hair and my makeup. And he’s very solid, just like he always has been for me, just like he always will be for me.

After a moment, I hold him, too--I wrap my arms around his shoulders, let my eyelashes flutter against his dress shirt. He’s inhaling me, breathing in my scent, stroking the fabric of my dress, hugging me to him as tight as he can.

I almost cannot breathe, but I don’t say anything. I just hug him back.

Almost, I whisper that I’m sorry that I don’t love him the way he wants me to. Almost, I whisper that we have just missed each other in this lifetime. We passed each other in separate taxis, his south-bound and mine north-bound. We are not meant to be together.

We say nothing. I am the one that pulls away finally, carefully dragging my fingers across his shoulder as I detangle myself from his grip, careful to keep the tears in the corner of my eyes right where they are.

And then he’s giving me this pitiful grin and his eyes are wet and wide and his face is flushed. He carefully wipes his thumb beneath my lip, correcting a nonexistent smear of lipstick. Then he smooths his hands over my hair, my veil.

I wipe a single, stray tear from his left cheek when it spills over his lash line. His face is warm beneath my hand, his cheek heavy when he leans into my touch.

“You are a good man,” I tell him seriously.

I know it is something that he does not hear often--I know that so much.

He sniffles, bites his lip hard, nods mutely.

“You’re an angel,” he whispers back.

Then I let my hand fall and it’s quiet in here again, just the two of us with open wounds on our chests.

I can hear everything happening outside the window suddenly. I can hear the record player from its perch on a kitchen chair just outside the backdoor, an old Frank Sinatra song floating through the winter breeze. I can hear Hondo’s kids playing with Warlock’s kids, all giggles and shouts and clamoring feet. I can hear everyone chattering in their seats, probably turned around to talk to whoever is behind them, familiar faces against familiar faces. I can hear everybody holding their disposable cameras in their laps, showing their kids how to crank the camera before capturing images, explaining the process of dropping the cameras off at the pharmacy and picking them up a few weeks later. I think I can even hear Bradley’s voice above everyone else’s, can hear him talking to the officiant, can hear him laughing lowly.

There are birds calling, California natives. They’re in my eucalyptus trees and fluttering past all the flowers we have been growing. Certainly they must be basking in the warmth of this winter sun, too--preening their feathers before perching on a branch. Maybe that is what Maggie is today; a calling bird, her song mournful and sweet, perched high above us to witness what she could not be a part of.

Yes, that is what she is today. I’ve thought about it and so it must be.

That’s when I know that we need to go. That’s when my palms start to itch because Bradley is waiting for me--he is standing in our backyard, at the end of the brick aisle, wearing a most handsome button down and pair of well-fitting slacks. I know that his heart must be jumping inside his chest, his throat aching as he waits for me there.

“I’ll lead the way,” Hangman says.

He moves his arm--offers me his bicep. He’s smiling again.

So I loop my arm through Hangman’s, squeeze him. He inhales, chest expanding, bites his tongue. I wrap my fingers around his bicep, praying that my touch doesn’t provoke pain.

“Knew you’d come get me,” I whisper to him.

My heart is steadily beginning to race.

He looks at me, looks at me right in my eyes, and nods despite himself. He’s smiling a sad kind of smile, a smile that is almost wet, almost a frown.

That’s when he does it. Very slowly, he leans forward and presses his lips to my forehead. It’s a long moment that he lingers there, his lips puckered, his eyes closed. That familiar kiss--it makes me feel like everything is going to be okay.

“My pleasure,” he whispers against my forehead, “now let’s get you married.”

So he walks me down the hallway of my home, this home that I love so much. He walks slow, matches his pace to mine, flexes his bicep beneath my fingers. He walks with his spine straight, his jaw squared. I try to walk the same way, measuring my breaths as we emerge from the living room into the kitchen, when everyone is suddenly looking at us.

He squeezes my fingers as everyone’s eyes fall to mine, like he knows how tight my throat suddenly is.

“Right on time,” Bob grins.

It’s much brighter here than the bedroom, the room made almost entirely of light and warmth.

I have always loved this kitchen very much--have worked hard to love it very much. It is copper and green and lovely, a place that I find solace in. It is a place that my sister used to frequent, perched on the counter as I made us sandwiches after swimming all day, mindlessly thumbing through cookbooks on her lap. She used to bump her hip against the island every time she rounded the corner, every time groaning and moaning. It used to be one of the only rooms in my house with working air conditioning, used to be where I spent much of my time before I met Bradley, before he fixed all the broken things in my home. It is where I find Bradley in the middle of the night sometimes, leaning against the kitchen counter with a makeshift charcuterie board spread lazily across a paper towel, his eyes half closed as he chews pepperoni. It’s where we have danced together, holding hands, spinning each other out and in, my hair whipping against the cabinets and his socked feet sliding against the cold floors. This is where we ate breakfast this morning, all together, each of us grinning as salmon oil coated our tongues. This is a very happy room, yes. But seeing everyone here now, everyone with their top button done up and their dresses steamed and their hair pinned and their grins wide--it is the happiest I have ever seen this room.

Bob and Phoenix are standing beside Maverick and Cyclone, each of them dressed very nicely, not a hair out of place. They’re all grinning at us, letting their eyes wash over me.

It is a strange thing to know that I look beautiful right now. I know that I should be gazed upon right now. Every piece of my look has been carefully curated, crafted. The moon earrings, the opal necklace, the opal and diamond engagement ring, the pearl pin; they are all things that have been specially given to me in celebration of this day.

“You look beautiful, sweetheart,” Maverick grins, coming forward to press a kiss to my cheek.

I let go of Jake’s arm.

“Bradley’s a lucky man,” Phoenix follows closely, smoothing her hand across my veil, “and I’m sure he won’t ever forget that.”

“Certainly never lets us forget it,” Bob adds, pretending to roll his eyes.

Bob watches on like a proud parent, arms crossed over his chest, smile prideful and boastful.

“Thank you,” I smile, “everything ready to go?”

☾☽ 𝐚/𝐧: yeeeeeehaaaawwwww the wedding chapter is finally here!! I split it up into two parts but this part is 25k..........so sorry about that. mental illness really popped off w this one!!!

☾☽ 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫

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