The Vow

it’s there anyway. She gives me one last woeful glance and refuses to look at Mo at all.

He doesn’t seem to notice. He’s staring at the stack of papers, gripping it in two tense hands like he’s afraid someone will rip it away if he relaxes a single cell. Together we follow Mrs. Hussein out the door.

“The sun,” I say as we walk into the blinding light. Twenty minutes inside the courthouse, the morning has thickened from warm to blazing.

“Brace for the sneeze,” Mo says.

“I’m—” A wave of color pulses through me and I sneeze.

“Bless you. I think it’s a good omen.”

“If I didn’t do it every time I walk outside, then yeah, I’d agree with you.”

Mrs. Hussein gets in the car, but Mo and I hesitate outside our doors.

“We did it,” Mo says softly. He’s not quite smiling, but staring at me with this dazed-but-hopeful look on his face. Whatever nervous tizzy he was in is over.

“We did do it.” I grin and punch him in the shoulder as hard as I can.

He doesn’t flinch. “Is that seriously the best you can do?”

“That killed my hand.”

“We’ve got to work on that, Annie. An eighty-year-old woman could punch harder.”

“You insult your bride like that?”

“Only when she physically abuses me. Hey, what was your deal last night, anyway?”

Last night. Reed. My spine tingles at just the thought of his name, and I can suddenly almost feel his lips on mine and the pressure and warmth of his hands on my hips. “Nothing.”

Mo snorts. “You’re such a liar. You were totally—”

He’s interrupted by the window rolling down, followed by Mrs. Hussein’s voice. “Mo, I have a hair appointment, and Annie has to work, right?”

Mo smirks at me and gets into the car.

I breathe a sigh of relief and climb in too.

I’m going to be late. I get home exactly sixteen minutes before my shift starts, which only gives me six minutes to get it together and get out the door. By get it together I mean calm the freak down, because I’m jittery and spastic and acting, as Mo would say, like a squirrel on crack.

No time for food, but I’m suddenly so famished I feel like I might faint before I even get to work, so I grab a few random lunch-type items from the kitchen—a pear, a bag of walnuts, a sourdough roll—throw them all in a plastic bag, then run to the laundry room, strip out of my sundress, and dig through the warm clothes in the dryer for something to wear.

A weird, sour excitement gnaws at my insides and makes me nervous and happy and almost sick. I’m afraid to really think about it. I pull a white T-shirt over my head, inhaling that artificial wildflower scent of fabric softener. No. I’m not thinking about how I feel, or about why I’m smiling like an idiot. I pull on a denim skirt. Because if I think about it, if I let my mind wade through the euphoria that feels like the color gold and smells like oranges and rainwater, I’ll have to admit to myself that I don’t know who the thrill is for. If it’s what I’m coming from or what I’m going to.

Mo and I just got married. Mo. Me. Matrimony. Of course it means nothing, but still. Legally wed to each other until death do us part, or until the minute we can get a divorce. Married. MARRIED. To think that I just did something so incredibly stupid and brave makes me shiver with pride. Nobody would believe I had it in me.

He’s staying.

But now I’m going to work, and the giddiness, this rolling sensation in my stomach that’s making me feel like I’m on a boat—it’s not for Mo.

In ten minutes I’ll be with Reed again.

I don’t have time to stare at my face in the mirror, so I assume everything is the same as it was this morning.

I wonder what Reed thinks when he looks at me. I know I look unusual. I’ve heard it all—ghostly, doll-like, eerie, pixieish, cute—and I have no idea which is right, because sometimes I see myself in the mirror and know that I’m beautiful, and other times my reflection is too creepy to stare into for more than a second. My eyes are lighter blue than anyone else’s I know, which I like, but my elf-shaped ears border on freakish. Has he noticed them? The pointy chin and skin the color of paper, well, they are what they are. They can go either way—weird or interesting.

Today, though, I’m gorgeous. It doesn’t make sense, rushing around like a psycho, no mirror in sight, but I know it. I think I’ve been beautiful since the moment Reed kissed me.

I grab lip gloss and a hair clip to mess with in the car and slam the front door shut hard behind me. I never do that. It drives my dad nuts, but he’s tripped out on DayQuil, and today I am all-powerful. I am defiant. I am beautiful. I am myself and someone completely different at the same time. So this is love.

* * *

“You’re late,” Flora says. “Not that I’m keeping track, but I might have to leave a half hour early as payback.”

I finish tying my apron and glance at the clock. 12:06. “Thirty minutes?”

Flora does this one-eye-half-closed look she uses to call people on crap. “You’re saying you don’t want an extra half hour alone with Reed?”

I shake my head at her, even though I know he can’t hear us from the front window where he’s adjusting the blinds to let the sunlight in. He glances up, but in the other direction, out the window at the customers approaching. He hasn’t noticed I’m here yet.

“Where did you two disappear to last night, anyway?”

I can feel my cheeks turning red as I stammer around an answer. “What . . . I don’t . . . nowhere.”

“Sure. Nowhere doing nothing, right?”

“Whatever.”

“So that’s what the kids are calling it these days. Whatever. I like that.”

“Did you have fun at the party last night?” I ask, hopeful she’ll latch on to something else.

“The part that I recall, yeah. It reminded me of why I made such a bad bartender all those years ago. You aren’t supposed to make yourself a drink every time you make one for someone else.”

“I didn’t know you used to bartend,” I say. “I thought you’ve worked here since—”

“Since dinosaurs roamed the earth?” she interrupts. “Not quite. Remember that bar that used be on the corner of Main and Perry? Never mind. You’re too young, but there used to be this little bar called Ranchers, right where Payson’s Sporting Goods is. You know, across from the post office.”

Flora prattles on, but my mind is already at the corner table where Reed is bent over a mound of pink, yellow, blue, and white sweetener packets. He looks adorably awkward, his hands too big to be sorting pastel confetti one piece at a time.

At the end of yesterday’s shift, Flora discovered that someone (probably Soup) mixed them all in a huge container instead of keeping them in their separate bulk boxes. It didn’t seem like the end of the world to me, but Flora insisted the fake sugars and the real sugars be separated first thing in the morning. Reed and I did not disagree, as this seems to be how Mr. Twister operates best: Soup is the boss, but Flora runs the show.

Maybe I should go help him.

Except with his head bent and his hair falling over his glasses, he looks like he did when I first met him, and I’m suddenly sure he’s reverted back to that same shy Reed who could barely look me in the eye.

Like Chris Dorsey. I can’t not remember, and my cheeks are suddenly on fire. He’d wanted nothing to do with me after. Reed and I only kissed, but if he’s embarrassed around me now, or if he acts like nothing happened at all, I may have to lie down and die. Or at least quit my job.

He looks like he’s focusing on the sweetener, but he could very well be wondering what the hell he was thinking last night and trying to figure out how he’s going to brush me off now.

Without warning, he lifts his head. His hair falls back, and our eyes connect. I’m dying to look away or smile or turn around and go home, but I don’t do any of those things. I hold his gaze, even though I feel like my heart is being emptied.

Until he smiles. Then it’s like a tidal wave of color in my brain.