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“Right.”
She could picture that life a little bit clearer now. And maybe that was a wholly appropriate thing to be doing at their wedding.
They stayed to cut the cake, but declined to make a big ceremony out of it. She hadn’t been able to eat. Not anything. She wasn’t sad. That wasn’t it at all. She was just... Things had changed. They were changing. And she wanted to hurry up and get to the part where it felt certain and settled. Because right now it was... She was trying to latch on to a picture of it all, and it was a little bit difficult. Right now it was all very weird.
When they were through with the wedding, it was dark outside and the whole crowd of people cheered them on as they headed to Gus’s truck, which thankfully hadn’t been vandalized in any fashion. Probably because they were just driving up the road on the same property. And she knew that they weren’t headed for an actual wedding night, and still. Her body felt jingly with nerves.
Maybe because he took her hand. And it was as rough and hot as it had been at the wedding. And it was just a strange thing to have him touch her like that.
When they got in the truck it seemed especially quiet.
He started the engine and they went down the road, and suddenly he sang a line of the pop song that had been on when they’d driven out to Mapleton. Then stopped. Just as suddenly as he’d started. As if he realized that he’d done it out loud. Not embarrassed really. Just done.
“We did it,” she said.
“Yeah,” he responded.
“Married.”
“Yep.”
They pulled up to the house, and got out. And she was suddenly...very nervous.
“Relax,” he said, anticipating her mood again.
It was...comforting in some ways when he did that, and a little bit disconcerting, also. Because she felt taken care of, but at the same time extraordinarily exposed.
They walked into the house, and she didn’t know what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t there.
Maybe a sense of warmth. A sense of homecoming. But it just felt like Gus’s house, that bachelor pad that it had been before.
“You need anything?”
“No,” she said. “I’m actually really tired. I think I’m going to go take a shower and go to bed.”
“All right. See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”
He went into the kitchen, and she went upstairs. She wondered if he had gone into the kitchen just to avoid going upstairs at the same time she did. She walked into the bedroom, and stopped. There were just stacks of boxes. On her bed. And it wasn’t nice or special or hers at all.
It was his.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes.
“You’ve got this. This is your new life. Make it yours. You don’t need to feel bad about it.”
She was done with her shower and ready to get in bed when she realized she still hadn’t talked to either of her parents. Maybe one of her sisters had told them. That she was pregnant. That she had gotten married.
She didn’t know why she felt an obligation to them.
It just didn’t go away. No matter how angry or upset she felt, no matter whether they felt like parents.
She felt like their daughter and it made her think she needed to tell them.
And that was a feeling too complicated for her to dig into. A sensation she didn’t like at all.
CHAPTER FIVE
