Chapter Fifteen
Carmen
I was frozen still on the altar. I hadn’t moved since Ben had surprised me by kissing me on the cheek instead of the lips. My cheeks were burning red, but I didn’t know if it was from embarrassment, fear, relief, or some other emotion that they hadn’t even invented words for yet. All I knew was that I was way out of my depth. My life was spinning rapidly away from everything I knew and loved, faster than I could get a grip on what it was becoming, on where I was headed. It almost made me feel dizzy.
His back grew smaller as he stormed down the aisle without looking back. What had that expression in his eyes been? Tortured was the word that came to mind, but that just didn’t make a single lick of sense. What did he have to be tortured about? He wasn’t the one with a child in him. He wasn’t the one being shipped off by their parent. He wasn’t going through the things I was going through. No, that was just me. All alone.
I looked at my father where he sat in the front pew. Not a single other person had come to the wedding. I wondered if he’d told them about it, or if he’d even gone so far as to warn them to stay away. I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. Did he love me? Hate me? It was impossible to say.
He and Ben were alike in that sense. Both men were dark and unreadable. The door swung open at the far end of the aisle and Ben disappeared through it. All eyes were fixed on me. My face felt so hot that I was sure someone could see me blushing from space. Without any other ideas, I stepped gingerly down from the altar and walked as fast as I could down the aisle after Ben. No one followed me.
He was waiting outside. I saw that he had undone the bowtie and the top few buttons of his shirt. The tie hung loosely around his neck and the starched white fabric of the shirt parted to reveal a bronze chest glimmering with ink. He’s beautiful, came the unbidden thought.
Shut up, I reprimanded myself mentally. He’s the reason you’re in this catastrophe to begin with. Back and forth went my thoughts, pinwheeling from the same awestruck intimidation I’d felt when I first met Ben to a cold anger at his role in getting me here.
His bike was chugging behind him, still resting on its kickstand. He didn’t look at me as he swung a leg over and heeled the stand up, straightening the handlebars like he was about to leave.
“Are you coming?” he asked in a low voice.
“I don’t know,” I shot back. I felt suddenly furious. Jeez, my emotions were wildly out of control. One minute I was angry, the next I felt like I wanted to sit in a dark room and cry until there was no water left in my body.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He eased out on the clutch and started to roll forward.
“Wait!” I exclaimed. “Are you just going to leave me here?”
He turned to look at me for the first time since the bizarre non-kiss a minute earlier. His face was blank but strained, like he was working as hard as he could to prevent himself from showing me a single sign of normal human emotion. Or maybe I was just imagining that. Maybe he was actually just incapable of feelings at all. “If you don’t want to come with me, then go back with your dad.” He jerked his head towards the church behind us.
I shuddered at the thought. I had buried thoughts of my father as far below the surface as possible. I wasn’t even close to ready to opening that can of worms. Just the word dad made me feel dizzy and nauseous. “No,” I said stubbornly. “I’m not going with him.”
“It doesn’t seem to me like you have a lot of choices,” he drawled. “You go with me or you go with him. Your call.”
I looked behind me. The church rose tall and blank behind us. I remembered coming here with my mother every now and then when I was little. Daddy had never joined us, so it was just my mom and me, wearing our cute dresses and coming here to sit in the back and clap and sing. I actually liked it. In my memories, I associated this building with singing and my mom’s warm hand holding mine. She was never religious or anything; she just liked to hear the music. I hadn’t been back here since she’d died.
What kind of life was ahead of me? I felt like getting on the back of the bike was the real vow, like everything we’d just said on the altar had been a big build-up to this moment. If I got on there with Ben, that was it, no turning back. We’d peel out and my life would officially be taking a sudden and extremely unexpected turn, one that was going to take me into territory I was completely unprepared to enter.