The Vow

“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