My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss)

by Carmen Richter

  “They’re such fucking hypocrites,” I sobbed into her shoulder, not even bothering to try holding back my tears anymore. “They go to church and they listen to your dad, the biggest hypocrite of them all, tell them bits and pieces of Bible passages that he doesn’t even give the right context for, and they just go around parroting what he says and spewing out the same bullshit, but then they don’t practice it. How can my mom say she believes in God and then turn around and cheat on my dad like that? I hate her, Dar. I fucking hate her so much.”

  I was a little shocked to even hear myself using that kind of language, but I couldn’t help it. There weren’t strong enough words to describe my disgust toward both of them, but an f-bomb was close enough. I’d thought I already hated my mom as much as was humanly possible because of the way she dismissed Darla’s pleas for help, but what happened today had just stoked the fires of my fury.

  “I know,” she whispered. “She’s not a good person. I’ve known that for a long time.”

  “He’s only four years old. You should have seen his face when he heard my dad telling my mom that he was her problem, and my mom saying that he was a mistake. What kind of assholes take their hatred for each other out on an innocent little kid?”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed, pulling back to look at me. “But you know what I do know? I know that he’s so blessed to have such an incredible big brother who cares so much about him. Watching you with him…it’s one of the things that made me fall in love with you. Most guys your age would just ignore the sweet little kid who looks up to them and just wants their love and attention, but you’re so amazing with him. I think that’s why God chose your family for him. Not because of your parents, but because of you. Because He knew Nate needed someone like you to show him what a man is supposed to be. To model compassion and humility and love and respect and strength for him.”

  “But what’s going to happen when I move out of the house in a couple of years?” I sniffled, voicing my fears aloud. “Who’s going to look out for him when I’m gone? Who’s going to make sure he’s still getting attention and love?”

  “You are. I know you, and I know you’re going to stay close by. Just because you’re going to move out of the house and start your own life, it doesn’t mean you’re just going to forget him. I know you better than that. I bet he’s with you more often than he’s home. And he’ll still have everyone at church too. Me and Nay and Heather and Alex and Peter and Marie. We’re going to make sure he still gets all the love and attention he needs. Sometimes it really does take a village. I’m not going to lie and say this isn’t messy and ugly and screwed up, because it’s all of those things, but Nate still has so many people who love him, and we’re not going to let him suffer. We’re going to make sure he knows what an amazing and special kid he is and how blessed we all are to know him and be part of his life.”

  How was it possible that hearing her say that just made me cry even more? But this time it wasn’t because I was upset. It was because I was that moved by what she’d said. It was because I didn’t know how else to deal with everything I’d been through in the past twelve hours.

  “You know something funny?” I chuckled through my tears. “One of the things that made me fall in love with you is how much you love him and how good you are with him. He loves you so much.”

  She smiled. “The feeling’s mutual. I can’t imagine my life without the two of you in it. Actually…” She got up off my lap and went to her closet. “This Christmas present is really for both of you. I’ve been working on it ever since you told me that he was going to help you paint that cabinet you were making.”

  Right. Christmas presents. I got up and located my jacket, pulling her gift out of the pocket. She came to sit next to me, holding a big, flat box that was wrapped in brown boarder paper and had a red ribbon tied around it.

  I handed her a small white cardboard box that was tied together with a small piece of twine. “Ladies first.”

  She giggled quietly as she pulled on one of the ends of the sloppy bow to untie the twine and took the top off the box, then covered a gasp with one of her hands as she pulled the thin silver chain out and looked at a much more feminine version of my nail cross necklace. Knowing how much she loved the one I wore, I’d paid my aunt to make this one for her, and she’d done an amazing job. Darla’s necklace was made with small silver nails, like you’d hang a picture with, and there was a peridot stone, which was her birthstone, in the middle.

  “I remembered you saying how much you liked the necklace my aunt made me, so I had her make you one too,” I explained.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “I love it. Thank you.”

  She unfastened the clasp and went to put it on, but she couldn’t quite manage to re-fasten it, so I took it from her and did the honors, kissing her shoulder. And that was when I realized that she’d have to find a way to explain it to her dad. Damn it. Maybe giving her something like this wasn’t the best idea.

  “What are you going to tell your dad if he asks about it?” I asked her.

  “I’ll just tell him it was part of our Secret Santa thing in youth group. I can hide it for another day, since we’re doing the gift exchange this Sunday,” she said with a smile.

  “Who’d you get?” I wondered.

  “Alex. What I wanted to do was give him a gift card to a restaurant and tell him to ask Naomi out already, but I didn’t.”

  I laughed quietly. I’d also kind of been wondering why he didn’t just admit he had a thing for Naomi and stop tap-dancing around it. He’d been laying it on pretty thick in youth group, and apparently he was more interested in talking to her than his actual date when the gang ran into him at the movie theater this afternoon.

  But, then again, this was Alex. He never dated a girl for longer than a couple of months because the second it got too real, he’d break it off. So, if his feelings for Naomi were even half as strong as my feelings for Darla, it probably scared the hell out of him. I had a feeling it’d happen eventually, but it’d take a little while for him to accept the idea.

  “So, what’d you get him?” I asked her.

  “I’ll tell you after you open your present. Because it’s kind of similar,” she chuckled as she handed me the box.

  As quietly as possible, I untied the ribbon, then tried to un-tape the wrapping paper instead of ripping it to minimize the possibility of her parents hearing anything. I found a plain cardboard box taped shut with Scotch tape, so I opened it, and what I found completely blew me away.

  Darla had taken big, thick, cast-iron nails and wrapped them together with heavy-duty wire to form the letters B and N, then wrapped the two letters together. She’d even somehow managed to bend the nails to form the curves of the B. And she’d put a small hook on the back so it could be hung or mounted on something.

  “I figured you guys could put that on your cabinet when you’re done painting it,” she told me. “It was kind of inspired by your necklace, actually.”

  “It’s amazing, baby.” I set it back in the box and turned her head for a kiss. “I love it, and Nate will too. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She scooted closer to me and hugged my arm as she rested her head on my shoulder. “So, I made Alex a football with the same materials. I ended up with a ton of extra nails and wire, so it was super easy to do. Except his is mounted on a bigger frame with a bar going across the middle because I needed something to attach the laces to.”

  “He’ll love that,” I told her.

  She sighed. “I just…I wish we didn’t have to do this in secret. I wish I didn’t have to lie to my dad about where this necklace came from. I wish you didn’t have to sneak in my window at night just so we can spend time together. That’s all I really want for Christmas, and it can never happen.”

  My heart squeezed, and after the emotional day I’d already had, I had to blink back more tears. I felt her pain more than she knew, because I hated this too. But the one thing that gave me hop
e and kept me going was knowing that this was only temporary.

  “It’s not forever, Dar,” I whispered, pulling away from her so I could look into her eyes. “I’m not going to lie and say the next few years are going to be easy, because they aren’t. But you know what?”

  “What?” she mumbled.

  “We’ll get through it,” I vowed. “Together. And in the end, it’ll all be worth it. I promise you, we’ll get our happy ending, no matter how much we have to fight for it. Because I’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen.”

  Part II

  When the Mountains Fall

  May-August 2001

  Chapter 19

  Brendan

  Love Only Knows

  “Ready to head out?” Alex asked me as he removed his hardhat and gloves.

  “You have no idea,” I groaned, heading to the designated area of our construction site to grab the backpack and lunchbox I’d brought with me.

  Almost everyone in my life had told me how stupid it was to decide not to go to college when I graduated from high school two years ago, but I didn’t regret my decision to take the apprenticeship with my uncle for a second. Especially not once I found out that I’d be working with Alex. We worked so well together that my uncle made sure we were both working the same jobs most of the time.

  I’d saved up enough money to move into a small one-bedroom apartment about nine months ago, and I was making enough to support myself – and Darla, once she turned eighteen in August – comfortably. It was amazing to have my own space, and even though she hadn’t needed it yet, Darla loved knowing that she always had somewhere she could escape to if things got too bad at home. And between her having a key to my place and the Nokia cell phone I’d gotten her for Christmas, I slept easier at night knowing that she wasn’t completely cut off from the world anymore.

  “Where the hell is Frank?” Alex muttered, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  “I haven’t seen him for the past half hour,” I realized.

  Our foreman, Frank, was one of the laziest men I’d ever met in my life. He basically just walked around and acted important, and I had more construction knowledge than he did after just two years working for this company. I’d seen him do some outright idiotic things at jobs we’d worked, and he’d always find a way to blame someone else for it. I knew my uncle was about at the end of his rope with Frank, but he couldn’t just cut him loose without a good reason.

  Alex and I headed outside in search of Frank so we could let him know we were leaving for the day.

  “Hey, did you see the news last night?” he asked. “About that girl who was killed by her boyfriend?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “That was…I just don’t understand how someone who claims to love another person can turn around and kill them.”

  “I don’t either,” he agreed. “Her dad’s a cop, and my dad’s his sergeant. I guess I’m not supposed to know about it, but her boyfriend’s trying for an extreme emotional disturbance defense.”

  We stepped out the door of the unfinished house we were working on, and we immediately heard grunting and groaning coming from the side of the house, which backed up to an alley.

  “Oh, fuck,” came Frank’s voice. “Yeah. Just like that, baby.”

  Alex’s eyes widened as he started to walk in the direction of the commotion. I just rolled my eyes and shook my head as I followed him.

  Was it a bad thing that I wasn’t even surprised to see a girl who was at least half his age on her knees in front of my boss, while they were in full view of the street? Because I wasn’t.

  That wasn’t to say that seeing it didn’t make me uncomfortable. I had to avert my eyes because I didn’t want to see the scene that was unfolding in front of me, but that had to do with the fact that Darla and I hadn’t even gotten past second base, and with the fact that I was about to have to call my uncle and tell him that his foreman had been getting a blow job on company time. But it didn’t shock me that Frank would do this.

  “Are you kidding me?” Alex said before I could. “What the fuck, Frank? Paul isn’t paying you to get your rocks off, man!”

  The girl quickly backed away, wiping her mouth as she stood up, and for a second, I was taken aback. Because this girl, whoever she was, could have been Darla’s twin. It was like I’d stepped into an alternate universe and was seeing what my girlfriend would have looked like if she was a drug addict trying to make some quick cash for her next hit.

  “What the fuck?” Frank growled as he zipped his pants up, staring daggers at me. “The fuck are you doing out here?”

  “Um, it’s six,” Alex scoffed. “And we couldn’t find you to tell you we were leaving.”

  “I’m not your goddamn babysitter,” he snarled.

  “No, but you are our boss,” I reminded him. “And you’re representing this company. Pretty sure my uncle would have an issue with you getting serviced on company time. In full view of the street, I might add.”

  “I’ve let you both have your girlfriends come visit you while you’re on the job,” he said smugly, like that somehow made this okay. “You have no room to talk.”

  “Yeah, during our lunch break,” Alex countered. “And somehow, we both managed to keep it in our pants while they were here. So, yeah, we’re headed out. If we keep up at this pace, we’ll finish a few days ahead of schedule. We got the beams installed in the bedrooms, and it’s ready for the drywall guys. We’re starting on the kitchen on Monday.”

  “Good,” he grunted. “Go home.”

  Again, I rolled my eyes as I turned around and walked away. I didn’t even have any words for what I’d just witnessed. I heard footsteps behind me, but I didn’t even look to see who it was.

  “I have to say this so one of us does,” Alex chuckled, clapping me on the shoulder. “That chick was a dead ringer for your girl.”

  “Yeah, thanks for reminding me,” I muttered.

  Because that was going to make it easier to put what I’d just walked in on out of my mind. And to stop myself from thinking for the millionth time what it would be like to take that step with my girlfriend. I knew she wanted to wait, and I was fine with that, but it didn’t mean that I didn’t want her with every fiber of my being.

  “Whoa. You okay, Brendan?” he asked.

  “No. I’m not,” I bit out. “We both know I have to call my uncle and tell him what we just caught Frank doing on company time. I’m not particularly looking forward to that conversation. And, if that wasn’t enough, I just saw a girl who could have been Darla’s twin giving my boss a blow job.”

  “I mean, not like you can’t get your girl to take care of one of those problems tonight,” he chuckled. “I know I’m going to make sure Nay and I get some quality time in later.”

  As glad as I was that Alex and Naomi had finally come to their senses and started dating last year, I didn’t know why the man felt the need to tell me every single detail of their private life. I’d learned way more than I ever wanted to know about my best friend’s sex life ever since they’d started sleeping together.

  “And you felt the need to announce it because?” I snapped. “I still have to look Naomi in the eye at church tomorrow. I don’t need to know that shit.”

  “Dude, stop and take a breath,” Alex said, grabbing my arm in a death grip.

  I stopped walking and spun to look at him, fuming. He was lucky I wasn’t the violent type, because if I was, I definitely would have taken a swing at him right about now.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked. “This isn’t like you.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me!” I spat. “I just don’t need to hear about your goddamn sex life, okay?!”

  I swore I could physically see the lightbulb turning on over Alex’s head. His eyes widened, he let go of my arm, and his expression changed from combative to sympathetic in an instant.

  “Brendan, you could have told me you and Darla hadn’t…” he trailed off, sighing. “I’d never judge you fo
r that. I know I gave you hell in high school for being a choir boy, but that was before Nay and I got together. If we’re being honest, I wish I’d waited for her like you’re waiting for Darla.”

  “But you didn’t wait,” I pointed out.

  It wasn’t so much that I wanted to wait for marriage with Darla. It was that I needed to wait until she was ready. Until she made the move. I didn’t want to feel like I’d pressured or forced her into being intimate with me even a little bit. For her entire life, she’d been told to act a certain way, to dress a certain way, to talk a certain way. She could barely even breathe without her father’s say-so. And I refused to be another person who forced her into doing something she wasn’t completely okay with.

  “I’m not talking about waiting for marriage,” he clarified as he started to walk toward where we’d parked our cars. “I couldn’t care less about hearing a minister say some fancy words and signing a piece of paper. I’m talking about commitment. Love. I never realized how different sex would be with someone I loved. If I’d known, I damn well would have waited and not lost it with a girl I’d only been on two dates with when I was fifteen years old. To tell you the truth, I was scared shitless when Nay and I took that step the first time.”

  “What? Why?” I asked, completely confused.

  At least he’d had some frame of reference for what the hell he was doing. That was more than I’d have when the time came with Darla.

  “It wasn’t my first time, but it was hers,” he told me. “I was scared of hurting her, and I wanted more than anything to make sure it was good for her. I think it’s the first time I wasn’t a selfish asshole in that department, actually. Again, it’s different with someone you love. You actually give a shit about their needs too.”