I leaned my temple against the wall next to him, and he rolled his head to face me, matching me beat for beat. “You would’ve evicted me from the tour bus and sent me to the suitcase compartment.”
“Benson got stuck in there by accident once.”
Imagining that asshat trapped between roller bags sent a dart of laughter through my chest. “You’re joking.”
“Dead serious,” he said. His forefinger brushed mine, but I didn’t pull my hand back right away. He didn’t either. We were two people, face-to-face, connected at the index finger in the strangest re-creation ofE.T.ever conceived of in a Minneapolis ax-throwing bar.
“You might’ve written a song about me,” I whispered, and it was as though I’d lit a fuse. The space between us crackled with dangerous intensity. God, why had I said that?
“Who says I haven’t?” His eyes darkened, and I felt them everywhere. My pulse throbbed in the tip of the finger that was touching his.
“What’s with all this chaotic energy, Powell?” I asked, injecting much-needed lightness into this confoundingly weighty conversation. “My money’s now on you as the member of the bridal party who makes a scene.”
His lips pinched, and I could almost hear his mind working. “I’m hoping to be the one who gets very drunk and pops out of the cake.” Between his voice and his face, he couldn’t seem to settle on a tone. Breezy or sincere. Nonchalant or wholehearted.
“People don’t pop out of cakes at weddings. You’re thinking of strip clubs.”
“I forgot you opted against the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen’s Club in favor of the Nicollet Island Pavilion,” he deadpans.
“You’reobsessedwith my wedding venue.”
“I’mfascinatedby this choice. I still can’t think of you as married.” His eyes narrowed. He was settling on serious, it seemed.
“Probably because I’m not. Yet.”
“You’re not. Yet,” he whispered, drawing even closer. I toldmyself it was the acoustics, but I knew it was something else. The intensity of his half-lidded eyes. The quirk of his lips.
“You know, I came here tonight to tell you something…” There was a grit to his voice I’d never heard before—an intimacy—like we were talking in the dark, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure I could get married on Saturday without knowing what he’d come here to say.
I held my breath, dangling out on a ledge of what was about to happen next. He didn’t say anything at first, as though he was trying to read me. “Telling the time,” he’d called it once. My heart pounded in my ears as his lips formed the first word.
“Don’t—”
It was all he could get out before a stray ax came careening over our plywood divider and clocked Ethan on the back of the head.
—
Ethan sat beside me on the cot in a curtained-off area of an emergency room, holding an ice pack to the back of his skull and stinking of wound ointment.
“And that’s when you were struck with the ax?” A younger nurse asked the questions while an older nurse typed the answers into the computer.
“It was an accident,” he repeated for the third time, maybe fourth. “And it was the broad side of it. It’s not like the blade got me or anything.” No matter how many times he emphasized that last part, it never sounded reassuring.
“There was blood, though. Is that normal?” I was repeating things too.
“Head wounds, even superficial ones, tend to bleed,” thenurse informed us, just as the doctor had. As had the first triage nurse we saw before they moved Ethan to this bed behind the curtain.
Since they didn’t suspect a concussion, they provided wound care instructions and sent us on our way.
“Should I call us an Uber?” I asked when we stepped outside. It was late, maybe one in the morning, and, as we’d taken the ambulance to the hospital, both our cars were parked at the ax-throwing bar.
He pulled out his phone. “I can get myself a car.”
I felt a bit silly. Why had I assumed I’d be going somewherewithhim?
“Were you going to say something? Back at the bar? Before…”
He didn’t look up from his phone as he typed in an address I didn’t recognize into the search field. “Huh? Oh. I, uh, was about to…give you this.” He plucked something from his pocket.
