The Vow

Chapter 19

Annie

It’s the only thing to do. There’s not even a choice to make, not that I can see. He was there for me—the only one there for me—after the world was still reeling from Lena. I won’t send him away to be a foreigner again, not to Jordan, not to anywhere.

I look at him. He nicked his jaw shaving, and he’s giving me that crooked squint and half smile, the one that always makes me think he’s reading my mind.

We’re making this real.

Sam knocks and comes back in. There’s something about her. I like her. I hope it’s not just because Mo hates her. It’s obvious he does, but he sometimes hates people for hardly any reason.

“So?” she asks, tucking strawberry-blond waves of hair behind her ears.

I wait for Mo, but they’re both looking to me, like my answer is the one that counts. “Yes,” I say.

Sam cocks her head to the side, eyes coaxing me to say something else. I wish I could. I don’t know if I imagine the miniscule shake of her head or if she actually does it. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, file the forms.”

She blinks long. Long. Like a prayer-blink. “You’re sure.” Her fingers are cupped over the edge of the table, like she’s fighting the urge to reach across and cover my hand with hers.

I wonder if Lena would have gone to law school. She was smart. She was on the debate team, so maybe.

“We’re sure.”

“Okay, then.” She turns to Mo. “I’m assuming you want me to file for work authorization and advance parole so you can visit your family at some point? Both of those take a while to be approved, by the way. You can’t get a job or leave the country until they are.”

“How long?” he asks.

“I don’t know. A few months?”

A slow smile spreads over Mo’s face. “So I can’t work this summer.”

“No.”

“Awesome.”

Our drive home is quiet. Mo leans his seat back and stares at the dimpled leather roof. I drive between the lines but float my eyes to the clouds, watching them gather and clump and drift apart again. There’s too much to say, so we don’t say any of it.

But the truth of it is spreading through me like a droplet of dye in water. First it bloomed like a single firework in my chest, and now it’s melting into the in-between, dissolving.

I should be terrified, but staring into freedom is the strangest feeling. Not what I expected. I’m going to hurt them. But I can’t believe how little I care, considering that’s all I’ve done for the last seven years—care about not hurting them. Except now I’m marching toward that, the hurting them, and that means I’m marching toward the after too, and I don’t know what to feel about the after.

“Don’t you have work?” Mo asks, and I realize I’ve turned off the highway one exit early, like I’m going home.

Home.

Instead of work.

Work.

Reed.

Reed.

“Because if you’re not going to work, we should figure out a few things. Like who gets the bed, assuming real doesn’t mean real. And how we’re going to get your stuff out of your house without your dad killing me with his bare hands.”

Reed.

“Are you not talking to me because you’re contemplating how real real is? Because we both know it’s not going to be that kind of real. I’ll sleep on the couch till divorce do us part. I mean, right? Right? Yeah. I think the bigger issue is whether or not we’ll make it to the hospital in time after your dad rips off my arms and legs one by one. If you could be in charge of collecting the limbs and putting them in buckets of ice while we wait for the ambulance, that would be great.”

Reed.

“I bet limb reattachment recovery sucks, but the Harvard admissions board will be impressed. I could write an essay about perseverance in my journey from bloody stump of a torso to a reattached-limb-scholar. Annie, snap out of it. Are you in shock? You’re freaking me out. Pull over.”

Shock. I must be in shock, but I don’t pull over. My hands are glue white, frozen to the wheel, and not even remotely familiar. Someone else’s hands. And my mind is sprinting through my morning, looking for another ending, the path I missed that would have led me somewhere else, but there isn’t one. Mo and I are going to tell the world we’re married and pretend it’s real, and this has to happen because I want it to happen, but when did I forget Reed? I haven’t been able to think about anything but Reed since the night he first kissed me.

“Annie, your parents are going to be okay. It’s not like they’re going to stop loving you.”

Mo’s voice is on the outside, swimming around me but not touching my thoughts. I can hear Reed, though. What was it he said the other night on his couch? His voice was low and warm, and he was close enough to my ear for it to vibrate through me. I don’t want you and Mo to be anything different than what you are.

And now I have to tell him that we are different than what we are. Just words circling around on themselves, lying about a lie. But he won’t know that. I can’t imagine how I’ll say it to him. I’ll have to memorize something beforehand because right now all the wrong words are clumping themselves together in my brain. I’m a liar. A married liar. A married liar and a felon, and I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me, but we can’t see each other anymore. And if federal agents ever stop by to question you, please tell them I’m happily married, and don’t mention anything I may have said to you about never in a million years being able to love Mo like that or about us kissing.

And he’ll say something back, but I can’t imagine that either. I don’t know him well enough to even guess. I’ll never get to know him well enough to guess.

“It won’t take much to convince them,” Mo is saying. “They’ve been anticipating this for years. Now I just need to trick you into converting to Islam and force you to wear a burqa and strap a suicide bomb to your chest, and all their worst nightmares can come true at the same time.”

I’m too drained to tell him to stop being such an idiot. He knows they aren’t that racist.

“So, you’re going to work?” he asks.

I’ve pulled into the Wisper Pines parking lot and I’m staring up at the rows of redbrick boxes. Reed is at work. “No. I’ll call in sick.”

Mo gets out but stands with the door open, his hands on the roof. “We need a timeline.”

“What?”

“An order. Who gets told when, what gets done first.”

I shrug. Chronology seems pointless. If a nuclear bomb is exploding, what does it matter who knows first?

“I mean we need to get your stuff into my apartment before we tell your parents. But we need to tell your parents before anyone else finds out, so the cashier at CVS isn’t the one to break it to your mom. Are you going to start talking again anytime soon? You’re kind of scaring me.”

Maybe I can have the cashier at CVS be the one to tell Reed too. “I’m okay,” I mumble.

I look at Mo and read him in an instant. The stupid banter was a cover. His eyes—he’s terrified. “You can still back out,” he says.

I turn back to my redbrick future. I need him to be cocky and selfish, not worried about me. “I’m not backing out. Don’t ask me again. Ever.”

He swallows and I see his Adam’s apple snake down and then float back up. “Okay.”

“Wednesday,” I say. “Let’s move my stuff in the morning. My mom is planting rosebushes at Mayor Thompson’s.”

“The whole morning? You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Thompson’s been asking her for help with it for a while.”

“So call me as soon as she leaves and I’ll come help. That’s only two days. Are you sure you want to do it so soon?”

“Yeah.” Maybe I could pretend with my parents, but I can’t pretend with Reed. I need this over. “Okay, go already. I have to call in sick.”

“And I have to go tell Satan’s Cat we’re getting a new roommate.” He slams the door and walks away.

I find my phone and stare at it. It feels heavier than usual, but so does my tongue, my skin, the air around me. I dial Mr. Twister. Don’t be Reed, don’t be Reed, don’t be Reed. I repeat it three times into the dead space between rings, nine times total before Flora’s phlegm-choked voice says, “Mr. Twister.”

“Flora.”

“Annie, hey. You better not be calling in sick five minutes before your shift starts. I assume you know it’s lover boy’s day off.”

I didn’t know. Or maybe I forgot. “I’m sorry. I just have this fever-and-chills thing happening.” I press a clammy hand to my forehead. It does feel hot. Or my hand is cold. “And I feel like I might throw up.”

She sighs and the sound makes me think of sandpaper. “Then I won’t yell at you for the last-minute crap until you’re feeling better.”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat, squirming as the guilt settles in my stomach like a ball of glue.

“Don’t be sorry. Go sleep it off.”

Her voice is too kind considering I just short-staffed her. Then I remember. The Lena factor. The umbrella hanging over me, shielding me from anyone’s honest emotion.

“Thanks,” I mumble, and hang up. Would the ball of guilt glue feel less sickening if she’d cussed me out like she would’ve done to Reed?

Reed. Not at work.

I squeeze my eyes shut and refuse to think about his paint-splattered hands, or the light in his hair making it every red and blond and brown all at once. I refuse to remember kissing him, because that would hurt too much.

Now. I have to end it now or the dread will kill me.

I start the drive to Reed’s grandmother’s, but I don’t think about what I’m going to say. I distract myself as I drive, looking at leaves on the poplars, just leaves. I could paint them. That shade of green is so alive and sweet it burns my eyes. Movement is harder to paint, though. I try to memorize the feel of a thousand quivering leaves floating around branches, the upheaval of a breeze pushing through the mass of them. They shimmer. I can only paint them later if I can remember what that shimmer feels like.

The poplars run out and are followed by mud-colored evergreens with needles too stiff and dull for shimmering. It doesn’t matter though, because I’m there, pulling up to Reed’s Grandma’s, heart in my throat. I park at the curb and wait for useful thoughts to come and form a plan. They don’t.

Maybe this is what talking yourself into suicide feels like, forcing yourself toward one horrific but necessary end. People do it—contemplate it, plan it, actually follow through with it. I’m not that brave. I’m not even brave enough to do this.

At least I think I’m not brave enough, but my fingers somehow end up on the door handle. And I’m opening it. And I’m getting out of the car, walking up the gravel driveway. The windows above the garage look dark, but I go there first anyway, climbing the stairs up to the entrance like I’m walking through knee-deep sludge.

You don’t have to tell him now. You can just be stopping by to say hi.

I can’t even pretend to believe the liar in my head. I don’t have the stomach for avoiding him, or worse, being with him and knowing what I have to tell him but not telling him. Slow death. The poison started seeping through me from the moment I realized that I was losing him. I think I might hate myself.

I knock.

No answer. I don’t know whether to scream or cry. My arms feel strangely loose and long and out of sync with my body, so I fold them and pinch the skin. He’s not here. But as I’m turning to leave, I glance over at the house, through the open window, and I see him.

He’s on a foot ladder with his back to me, one arm stretched above his head, swaying slowly back and forth. He’s painting. I lean against the wooden railing to watch.

There’s something magical about watching somebody when they don’t know they’re being watched. Even from here I can see the definition in his outstretched arm as he pulls the roller along the wall. He’s wearing just an undershirt with his jeans, and I realize that I’ve never seen his back before. The color of his skin makes me sure that if I put my palm on his shoulder blade, he’d be warm. Reed’s skin is like his hair, melted caramel.

He turns sideways, and there’s his profile. No glasses, just like when we kiss. He crouches to dip the roller, and for just a second I forget why I’m here. I want to grab an extra roller and help him, to splatter paint on each other, to reach out and smear yellow fingerprints across his jaw, his collarbone.

But he feels my stare. He must, because he turns and looks out the window, up the stairs, and into my eyes. He smiles.

I remember why I’m here.

He disappears, and I want to run before he’s any closer, but I only make it halfway down the steps on shaky legs before he’s taking long strides across the lawn toward me.

“I thought you were working today,” he says. He’s grinning, and the sun is glowing in his hair.

“I’m supposed to be.”

He gives me a funny look. “Playing hooky?” He grips either side of the railing at the bottom of the stairs and starts his way up to meet me in the middle, where my legs have stopped working.

“Playing sick.”

“You should play harder. You don’t look sick. Actually, you look pretty good to me.” He stands on the step below me, reaches out and puts his hands on my hips, his fingers hooking my side, his thumbs at my navel. He’s pulling me toward him, and I have no choice but to look into his eyes. It’s a mistake. They’re gentle, and they see right into me. I can’t keep looking into them, so I look down to the base of his neck, where a single drop of sweat is about to roll over his collarbone. He smells like salt and paint.

“Come on up,” he says. “It’s boiling out here.”

I turn weakly to follow him into the apartment, but my chest drains a little with each step. I’m empty by the time I’ve reached the top, like I’ve left my heart below to bake in the sun. He holds the door open for me. I duck under his arm and inside.

“I don’t want to interrupt you,” I say, closing the door behind me. “You looked like you were in the middle of a room.”

“You aren’t interrupting. I need a break.” He stops and grins sheepishly. “And I was sort of thinking about you anyway.”

Yesterday that would have made me smile. Today it makes me want to die.

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks.

I shake my head but follow him to the kitchenette.

He takes a soda from the fridge, opens it, takes a sip. “So, playing sick. I’m not complaining, but any other reason, besides saving me from boredom?”

My mouth won’t open and my legs feel weak. I hoist myself up so I’m sitting on the countertop and stare at my lap. I realize too late that it’s the wrong thing to do, that he sees something else in how I’m sitting, in me being here. He steps toward me and rests his hand on my thigh. “Have I ever told you how sexy you are? And this dress . . .” He leans in to my knees. He puts the soda down and the shock of his cold fingers on my other thigh almost makes me shudder. “Seriously, it does something to me to see—”

“Stop.” I almost yell the word, and he jerks away. It rings between us like a slap.

He takes a step back, hands hanging by his sides, and I pull myself together. I won’t look at his face.

He waits. Of course he waits. There has to be an explanation coming, because it was only two days ago that he made me dinner and we talked on the couch and then we kissed on the couch and he had his hands all over me on the couch and it was okay with me. It was more than okay with me.

I don’t have the right words for this. If I’d have planned out the words, I couldn’t have made myself come here. I’m a coward.

He’s still waiting.

“I need to talk to you.” I shake my head. Obviously I need to talk to him. “Something happened.”

“Are you okay?”

I make the mistake of looking up. His eyes are full of worry—worry for me, instead of worry for what I’m about to do to him. “I’m fine,” I say, and look back down to the safety of my lap. When I start again, my voice is shaky and too high. Not my own. “Remember that conversation we had the other day about Mo?”

“Yeah.”

“About how our relationship was, you know, platonic?”

Reed folds his arms, and I see that caramel skin ripple over muscle. “Yeah.”

“Well, something happened.”

“Something.” His voice is hard and flat, a penny with the shine scuffed off.

“It’s not quite . . .” I pause, hating the sound of the voice coming out of my mouth. I sound like the kind of girl who would cheat on her boyfriend. Intentionally. I have to. “It’s not quite like that anymore.”

“You mean platonic.”

“No. I mean, yeah, it’s not platonic.”

“Anymore,” he says, not a drop, not a single whiff of emotion.

“Right.”

His arms, still folded over his chest, move up and down with his breath. “But the other night, two nights ago, when you said it was, it still was? Or were you lying then?”

Was I? When are my lies supposed to have started? This is too muddy, but I can’t think whether it matters or not. I guess I was married then. I guess the lying was supposed to already be happening, I just didn’t know it. So I guess I’m supposed to be lying retroactively, even if I thought I was being honest then. Which I sort of was. I close my eyes. I’m not smart enough for lying about lying.

But then I remember the deliciousness of that night, the food, the ice cream, talking, kissing, and it doesn’t matter if I was supposed to be lying then. I can’t lie about that night. “No. I was telling you the truth then.”

He snorts and takes a step toward me, gripping the edge of the counter on either side of my knees. I can feel his breath on my forehead, but I won’t look up again. “It’s been two days. You’re telling me in those two days, the two days I’ve spent not being able to think about anything but you, you just all of a sudden decided it’d be a good idea to screw your best friend?” He’s not yelling, but it feels like he is. It’s not loud, but it’s brimming with anger. I keep my head down. “The one who thinks of you as a sister? And I’m supposed to believe that it honestly never occurred to you when you sat on that couch and looked at me like I was some kind of pervert for suggesting he might actually want you like that?”

My cheeks are on fire now, hot tears dripping off my nose and soaking into the fabric of my dress, turning the light blue to indigo. It’s better to be crying. I look too guilty to defend myself. He can’t expect any more words.

“And after . . .” He cuts himself off.

But my mind completes it for him. After he fed me. After he told me about cooking school and having his own restaurant someday. After he kissed and touched me and made me feel like I was some sort of angel.

I stare at his hands. His knuckles are white. I didn’t expect him to be so angry, but I’m not scared. It feels like he’s angrier at himself than me, which feels worse. He steps back, out of my reach. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet and so bitter it eats away at me. “After I told you that my last girlfriend cheated on me.”

Everything runs cold. My blood, the tears, my thoughts. I am a monster.

“I’m so stupid,” he says to himself, and pulls his hand down over his face, over his mouth like he wants to wipe me away.

“You’re not stupid.”

“But apparently I have a type.”

Type. He doesn’t say the word. Of course not. He’s not the kind of guy who would call a girl a slut, even if she deserves it. And besides, his eyes say it perfectly. I look into them and hold his gaze long enough to see what I made him feel.

Crushed. My rib cage. I can’t breathe. I’m all puncturing splinters on the inside, so chewed by pain I must be bleeding. Somewhere the blood must be gushing out, pooling, filling all the spaces around my heart. I let out one humiliating half-stifled sob, and he turns away from me in disgust.

“What kind of person does that?” he yells. “Tell me. Was there any point where this felt real to you?”

“I’m so sor—” I start, but he cuts me off.

“Go,” he shouts, coming closer again.

But I’m frozen, scared to move, scared that this’ll be the last time I see him.

“I didn’t mean to hurt—”

“Go!” He slams his fist down beside me.

I go. I slide off the counter and run. He doesn’t want to hear that I’m sorry, because there’s no way he can believe it. I wouldn’t. I stumble out the door, and it’s a miracle I don’t trip running down the stairs, tears and the midday sun blinding me. I make it to the car, but my hands are shaking so much, it’s hard to get the key in the ignition.

I’m sobbing. I didn’t think it would hurt this much, but I’m already doing it, and there is only one direction to go now. I finally get the car started and pull away from the curb.

I had to do it. It had to be done. I repeat it over and over so repetition can either make it true or numb me. Hurting Reed was the price for saving Mo. I had to do it. It had to be done. I had to do it. It had to be done.

But If I’d have imagined that his eyes could ache like that, I don’t know. I don’t know.