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Mason was silent, his eyes distant. Without looking at me he said, again softly, again I was sure too softly, “Well, now I know that you’re definitely remembering wrong.”
Between his stomach and mine our fingers were twisting around one another’s. Not interlocking. We never stilled enough to hold one another. Never stilled enough for his fingers to rest in my palm, or my fingers in his. It wasn’t exactly playful either. Just a sort of circling one another. Wanting to feel the other. Not wanting to stop. But also not wanting to stop moving. To sink. To be still.
“I think I said something about always being on the road,” I said after a few quiet moments. “Something about running from home and feeling like that was safety: running. Something about how when I was with you, I felt like I was running with my feet in one place. And, like, how with you I was always panting and out of breath and there was always that thrill of being gone, being alive, being on the run, but, I don’t know, how it was amazing because I felt all that in your bed. In your arms. When I wasn’t even moving at all. I don’t know, something stupid about how I ran all this way to you. And that you knew I wouldn’t know how to stop so you just ran with me. And you’d always run with me, if that’s what I wanted.”
I laughed. I rolled onto my back as I dragged my fingers through my hair.
I said to the ceiling, “Something really stupid like that.”
Mason made his way slowly back up to me. With his tongue. With his lips. With his fingers. He moved over me like that hot Vegas breeze. He was everywhere. So fully all around me.
“Do you remember what I said to you?” he asked.
I felt like he was searching me. Hands moving over my body in the dark like an archaeologist. Thorough, but careful. Wanting to find something, but afraid that the finding would break it. Afraid, then, of the finding.
I sighed deeply as his hands caressed my breasts.
“I think you just said that you love me,” I said quietly, a little too quietly.
Mason lifted my arms, placed them over my head. His fingertips tickled slightly as he ran them down the underside of my arms.
“That’s it?” he asked, eyes darting to mine. Darting away.
I stared up at the ceiling. I considered what I’d wish for Mason to say to me, if I actually remembered our wedding, his vows. Mason moved his hands over me. Touching me. Holding me. I tried and tried to find more, to want more.
Finally, I just reached out, touched his arm, and brushing my own fingertips against him said, “It was enough.”
Mason sat up and guided me up into a sitting position in front of him. My hands were held in his between us.
“Was it?” he asked, turning my hands over, drawing over the lines of my palm like he was doing a reading.
“Yes,” I answered, the first truthful thing I’d said all goddamn night.
I wondered if Mason could hear the difference. I waited for his head to jerk up. Waited for the accusation in his darkened eyes. But he kept his attention on my fingers, turning them this way and that like he was trying to crack a code.
I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me, but then he said, “If I married you today, I’d say more.”
“I wouldn’t want you to.”
“I’d say I love you and—”
“And I’d cut you off right there,” I insisted, curling my fingers around his. “And not let you say another word.”
Mason finally looked up at me.
“Whatever we fucked up later,” I said, “we got the wedding right. We got the vows perfectly right.”
How silly how much I believed that, despite having not a single recollection of it happening. How silly that Mason seemed to trust me, despite not having any reason at all to do so.
“One thing I thought I remembered…” Mason began after a moment, frowning again down at my hands.
Again that jolt of fear. Again that need to run. Again that terror that always lurked beneath the surface like a black river.
Mason smiled and shrugged and said, “But I guess not.”
“What?” I asked.
Mason laid me back down. Cuddled behind me. Wrapped me tight in his arms.
