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“We’re getting married by Elvis.” She slips her arm into the crook of his elbow and he swallows down his urge to agree with her. They aren’t doing that. Not today. He’ll fly her back tomorrow if she changes her mind. He’ll fly Elvis to them. He will research marriage licenses and requirements. But not tonight. “Ooh, rings.”
She’s pressed over the top of a glass display case, eyes shining down at the glittering gold bands like a kid on Christmas morning. Given her history, he wonders if she ever had memories of happy holiday mornings. He knows her dad left when she was twelve, but a family has to be fundamentally broken before that. Right? Did she have twelve years of joy and presents and hugs around a Christmas tree? He half hopes she did. If anyone deserves a little bit of joy, it’s her. The other half hopes she doesn’t. You can’t miss something you’ve never had.
“These boys are volunteer witnesses.” The woman at the counter says, eyes still on her phone. “You need two for any legal marriage. You can use them, or we can provide some.” Her voice is the monotone of someone who works a night shift that sees very little action. It must be Hollywood that made him think that getting married overnight in Sin City would be popular. Maybe he should be glad that it isn’t. He wonders how many people who get hitched on a whim in Vegas make it long term.
“We don’t need them,” he tells the chapel worker, trying not to laugh as his teammates’ faces fall. They don’t want to miss the good gossip. “No one’s getting married tonight.”
To the hockey players he adds, “We have an early flight. Head back to the hotel.”
Two “yes, captain’s” and a longing look toward the jewelry case, and the bell over door chimes as Tyler and Jack walk away. That’s about the same time Tristan comes skipping back to him, her hand outstretched with two plain gold bands nestled in her palm.
“I like the matching ones. How about you?” The rings clink together as she shakes her hand back and forth. He’s not sure what she’s doing, honestly, but the open joy on her face is intoxicating. He could barely say no to this woman before. Now it’s going to be next to impossible. “I think it’s important that they match,” She says, the rings reflecting in the sky blue of her eyes and he catches himself nodding at her. “Do you have an Elvis?”
She’s turned her attention to the woman behind the counter and he has a moment to look his fill. Her cheeks are flushed, her pupils wide, and he wants to lean down and slot his mouth over hers. More than he can remember ever wanting anything, and he’s had some big dreams in his life.
The older woman is saying something, nodding at the interior doors, and his blonde is throwing them wide open, a charmed squeal breaking out of her as she spots the King of Rock ‘n Roll standing under a gravity-challenged arch that seems to favor the left side.
“Oh my god this is my dream.” he hears her say as she trails her fingers over the fabric petal of a grayish synthetic rose.
He doesn’t point out that her siblings aren’t there. That he’s sure she’d want them there for the real thing. He learned a long time ago not to tell a woman what she wants. Maybe the solitude is exactly that. Maybe she wants someone willing to choose her first, over and over, someone who wants her with such a burn of longing that they would jump at the chance to keep her. To never let her go.
Instead he hears himself ask, “How much to have a ceremony but not a marriage license?” And if he expected the chapel worker to push back, insist they have to go through the proper channels, well he would have vastly underestimated the indifference of someone working the night shift for minimum wage.
The service itself is less than ten minutes. Later he’ll barely remember the bad accent, the limp bouquet of daisies she holds in her pale hands, or the musty smell of the maroon carpet. He’ll remember the way her hair shone under the lights like polished silver. How she wet her bottom lip with the edge of her pink tongue before repeating the vows fed to her by fake-Elvis. He’ll remember how her hands didn’t shake, but his did, as he slid a gold ring past her knuckles.
He’ll remember stopping just outside the chapel doors, crowding her back against the stone as he pushed a strand of hair behind her left ear. His own band shining in the glow of the neon sign above them. He’ll remember that it was softer than the silk of her little white dress as he cupped a hand around her hip and drew their bodies together. How his gaze fixed on her mouth and he felt drawn in as if she had a gravitational pull he couldn’t escape.
How at the last minute he remembers himself and presses a kiss to the hollow below her earlobe, and the sound of her quick inhale would fuel his fantasies for decades to come.
He carries her most of the way back to the hotel, her legs again wrapped around his waist, and his hands helping hold down her short skirt. No one gets a show. No one.
He takes her to his own room, trying not to shiver as she asks ridiculous questions against the skin of his neck.
“Do you know you’re really tall?”
“Do you and Erik communicate through telepathy? Because I think my twin siblings do.”
“Is anyone actually real? Or are we all some computer simulation, or a growth on some alien child’s science project they left in the back of a closet?”
“Can you hear the way my heart pounds every time you touch me?”
He sets her down carefully, putting her shoes near the desk in his single room. The king-size bed takes up most of the space and he leaves the curtains open because she keeps looking out at the night lights with awe-struck wonder. He steps into the bathroom to grab her a cup of water and finds her with her nose pressed to the window.
She asks him to untie her dress and he pauses, wondering if he should. If his control will hold. If it’s taking advantage if she asked him to, and he won’t go any further, he won’t. He won’t. Definitely won’t. But she’s untied the knots herself and the dress is sliding off her shoulders as he slams his eyes shut.
He counts to ten, lids squeezed tight, because if he doesn’t see her then he can pretend she’s not naked in front of him. Maybe not naked, but close enough to make no difference. Especially silhouetted against the sixteenth floor windows. He doesn’t think he could handle seeing the shimmer of the lights against her skin.
He’s doing well until she makes a sound. A breathy moan mixed with a laugh. His eyes snap open and it was a mistake. His brain is screaming warnings, alarms and lights blaring in the recesses of his mind, because there is the smooth line of her back and the round curve of her rear covered. Her panties are plain white cotton, not particularly fancy or provocative, but all the blood in his brain rushes south so fast he goes dizzy.
Her head is thrown back, hair brushing the edges of her shoulder blades, and she moans again. He can see her breath fogging up the window. His fists are clenched so tight he might break a finger, but he doesn’t care. His throat is dry, each breath agony. He once played in a playoff game that went to a third overtime and even then he wasn’t as starved for oxygen as he is now.
She spins against the window, and he can’t figure out where to look. Or not look. Not at her breasts, tipped with rose petal nipples. Not at the movement of her fingers under damp cotton. And maybe he should close his eyes again, look away, turn around, but he’s caught in her web. Stuck. Spellbound. He won’t touch her. He won’t. But it would take the force of the entire US military to make him stop watching her.
“Please.”
The tendons in her neck stand out in sharp relief, her stomach quivers. She’s close. He knows she is.
“Please, Vic.”
