by Tahereh Mafi
“But if you could do it however you wanted, you’d do it differently,” she says, looking up at me. “You’d do it better than that, wouldn’t you?”
“Well— Yes—” I falter. “I mean, if it were a different world, maybe. If things were different for us, if we had more time, or more resources. And maybe one day we’ll have a chance to do it over again, but right now all I—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to do it over again. I don’t want you to look back on our wedding day as a placeholder for something else, or for what might’ve been. I want us to do it right the first time. I want to walk down an aisle to reach you. I want you to see me in a pretty dress. I want someone to take our picture. I want you to have that. You deserve to have that.”
“But—how—”
I look up, distracted by the sounds of movement, voices. A crowd of people is swarming, moving toward us. Nazeera and Brendan lead the charge; Lily and Ian and Alia and Adam and James and Castle and Nouria and Sam and dozens of others—
They’re all holding things: bouquets of flowers and covered trays of food and colorful boxes and folded linens and—
My blood pressure seems to plummet at the sight, leaving me dangerously light-headed. I take a sharp breath, try to clear my head. When I speak, I hardly recognize my voice.
“Ella, what did you do?”
She only smiles at me, eyes shining with feeling.
“How did you find so many flowers? Where—”
“All right,” Winston says, holding up his hands. He sniffs, twice, and I see then that his eyes are red. “No more divulging secrets. We’re done here.”
Kenji, I notice, is looking determinedly away from all of us.
He clears his throat then, still staring at the sky when he says, “For what it’s worth, bro, I tried to get her to tell you. I don’t approve of this whole surprise-wedding nonsense. I told her—I said, if it were me, I’d want to know.” Finally, Kenji meets my eyes. “But she wouldn’t listen. She said it had to be a surprise. I said, You’re going to go back to your room tonight smelling like paint, and he’s going to know! The man is not an idiot! And she was like blah blah blah he’s not going to know, blah blah blah, I’m the queen of the world, blah blah—”
“KENJI.”
“What?”
Ella’s fists are clenched. She looks like she might punch him in the face. “Please. Stop speaking.”
“Why?” Kenji looks around. “What’d I say?”
“Paint,” I say, frowning as I remember. “Of course. I thought you smelled like something faintly chemical last night. I wasn’t sure what it was, though.”
“What?” Ella says, crestfallen. “How? I thought you were asleep.”
I shake my head, smiling now, though mostly for her benefit. Ella’s guilt is palpable, and multiplying quickly.
“What was the paint for?” I ask.
“Nope!” Winston claps his hands together. “We’re not doing that right now! You guys ready to get started? Good. Kenji and I will lead the way.”
TEN
Ella is holding my hand like a lifeline, grinning as we forge an unfamiliar path through the Sanctuary. Her happiness is so electric it’s contagious. I feel heavy with it, overwhelmed by it. I don’t even think my body knows what to do with this much of it.
But seeing her like this—
It’s impossible to describe what it does to me to see her so happy, smiling so wide she can hardly speak. I only know that I never want to do anything to make it stop.
We’re following Kenji and Winston, both of whom were quickly joined by their counterparts, Nazeera and Brendan, while the rest of the crowd follows close behind. I seem to be the only one of us who doesn’t know where we’re going, and Ella still refuses to tell me anything more about our destination.
“Will you at least tell me whether we’re leaving the Sanctuary?” I ask.
She smiles up at me. “Yes and no.”
I frown. “Are we going somewhere to see the thing you wanted to show me? Or is this something else?”
Her smile grows bigger. “Yes and no.”
“I see,” I say, squinting into the distance. “So you’re torturing me on purpose.”
“Yes,” she says, poking me in the stomach. “And no.”
I shake my head, laughing a little, and she pokes me in the stomach again.
“Ow,” I say quietly.
Ella beams before wrapping her arms around my waist, hugging me as we walk, not seeming to care at all that she stumbles every few steps. I’m so incomprehensibly happy I seem to have misplaced most of my brain cells. I can hardly gather my thoughts.
After a moment, Ella says, “You know, it’s not much fun to poke you in the stomach. It’s not even possible, really, to poke hard muscle.” She slides her hand up under my shirt, then slowly down my torso. “This whole thing would work much better if you had some body fat.”
I take a steadying breath. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” “I never said I was disappointed,” she says, still smiling. “I love your body.”
Her words conjure a simmering heat somewhere deep inside me. I tense as she draws patterns along my skin, her fingers grazing my navel before moving slowly up again, tracing lines with excruciating care.
I finally cover her hand with my own.
“That,” I say, “is very distracting.”
“What is?” She’s not even looking at the path ahead anymore. One of her arms is wrapped around my waist, and the other is tucked unabashedly under my shirt. “This?” She drags her hand across my abs, moving steadily downward.
“Is this distracting?”
I inhale. “Yes.”
“What about this?” she says, staring up at me, the picture of innocence as her free hand travels lower, then slips just underneath my waistband. “Is this distracting?”
“Ella.”
“Yes?”
I laugh, but the sound is breathless. Nervous. It’s a struggle to maintain the control necessary to keep my body from announcing to everyone exactly what I would rather be doing right now.
“Do you want me to stop?” she asks.
“No.”
She smiles wider. “Good, because—”
“If you two are going to be disgusting on your wedding day,” Kenji says over his shoulder, “could you at least whisper? It’s close quarters in this crowd, okay? No one wants to hear your filthy conversations.”
“Yeah,” Nazeera says, turning to look at us. “No cute talk, either. Cute talk is highly discouraged on any day, but especially on your wedding day.”
Ella’s hand is gone from my body in an instant.
She turns to face them, the moment all but forgotten; I, on the other hand, need a minute. The effect she has on my nerves takes longer to dissipate.
I exhale slowly.
“I’m starting to think you two might be turning into the same person,” Ella says. “And I’m not sure I mean that as a compliment.”
Kenji and Nazeera laugh at that, Kenji drawing an arm around Nazeera’s waist as they walk, pulling her closer. She leans into him, planting a brief kiss at the base of his jaw.
Kenji’s provocations have grown innocuous in recent weeks. His bite is more habit than harmful, as he’s in no position to criticize. He and Nazeera are as inseparable as is possible these days, the two of them ensconced in darkened corners at every available opportunity. To be fair, we’re all lacking in privacy right now; very few people have their own rooms at the moment, which means we’re not the only ones engaging in public displays of affection.
Kenji and Nazeera seem truly happy, though.
I’ve not known Kenji a particularly long time, but Nazeera—I never thought I’d see her like this.
I suppose she might say the same about me.
“You know, technically, you two shouldn’t even be together right now,” Winston says, swiveling to face us. He walks backward as he says, “The bride and groom can’t just hang out toge
ther on their wedding day. Tradition frowns upon it.”
“Excellent point,” Brendan adds. “And as they’re both such pure, innocent souls, we wouldn’t want them to risk accidental, indecent skin-to-skin contact.”
“Yeah, I think it might be too late for that,” Kenji says.
“Seriously?” Brendan and Nazeera say at the same time.
Brendan laughs, but Nazeera turns sharply around to look at Ella, whose responding blush all but confirms their suspicions.
“Wow,” Nazeera says after a moment, nodding. “Nice. You have interesting priorities.”
“Oh my God,” Ella says, covering her face with her hand. “Sometimes I really hate you guys.”
I decide to change the subject.
“Will we be arriving at this mysterious destination soon?” I ask. “We’ve been walking for so long I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll need international clearance.”
“Is this guy serious?” Winston calls back, exasperated. “It’s been maybe five minutes.”
“Sprinting two miles—uphill, in the heat, in a suit—and he doesn’t break a sweat,” Kenji says. “Wouldn’t even let me rest for thirty-seconds. But this—yeah, this is too much for him. Makes sense.”
“Okay, you can ignore them,” Ella says, taking my hand again. “We’re pretty close now.” I feel her enthusiasm building anew, her eyes brightening as she peers ahead.
“So—what changed yesterday?” I ask her. “To make all this happen?”
Ella looks up. “What do you mean?”
“Yesterday Nouria told me that, for a number of different reasons, it was basically out of the question for us to have a wedding. But today”—I glance around us, at the mass of people sacrificing hours of their work and life to help organize this event—“those issues no longer seem to be relevant.”
“Oh,” Ella says, and sighs. “Yeah. Yesterday was a mess. I really didn’t want to postpone things, but there were just so many different disasters to deal with. Losing our clothes was one obstacle, but trying to host the wedding at night was proving a logistical nightmare. I realized we could either get married last night and have to compromise on almost everything, or push it by a day, and maybe, just maybe, be able to do it right—”
“A day?” I frown. “Nouria made it seem like it might be months before we could reschedule. She made it sound functionally impossible.”
“Months?” Ella stiffens. “Why would she say that?”
“You must’ve really pissed her off,” Kenji says, his laughter echoing. “Nouria knew Juliette wouldn’t have postponed the wedding that long. She was probably just torturing you.”
“Really.” The revelation makes me scowl. Between her and Sam, I seem to have made two very powerful enemies.
“Hey—I’m sorry she said that to you,” Ella says softly, hugging me from the side as we walk. I wrap my arm around her shoulders, holding her tight against me.
“I think Nouria leaned a little too hard into the cover story,” she says. “I had no idea you thought we might be postponing the wedding that far into the future. I’m only now realizing that yesterday must’ve been pretty rough for you.”
“It wasn’t,” I lie, gently cupping the back of her head, my fingers threading through the silk of her hair. I study her face as she stares up at me, noticing then how the sun changes her eyes; her irises look more green in the light. Blue in the dark. “It was fine.”
Ella doesn’t buy this.
Her hands graze my hips as she draws away, lingering before she lets go. “I was so busy trying to make everything work that I didn’t even—”
She cuts herself off, her emotions changing without warning.
“Hey,” she says. “What’s this?”
“What’s what?”
“This,” she says, gently prodding my pant leg in a manner that would disturb Kenji for weeks. “This box.”
“Oh.”
I come to a sudden and complete stop, heart pounding as the crowd surges around us, several of them calling out congratulations as they pass. Someone sticks a homemade tiara on Ella’s head at one point, which she accepts with a gracious nod before discreetly tugging it out of her hair.
They seem to know better than to touch me.
In the distance, I hear Winston clap his hands. “All right, everyone, we’re basically here. Juliette, will you and Warner pl— Wait, where’s Juliette?”
“I’m back here!”
“Why the hell are you back there?” Kenji cries.
I hear faint grumbling from Winston, more exasperated words from Kenji; all this is followed by soothing sounds made by their partners. The sequence would be comical if I were in any mood to laugh.
Instead, I have turned to stone.
“We’ll be right there!” Ella reassures them. “You can start setting up without us!”
“Set up without you? If I find out this was your plan all along, princess, Nazeera is going to kick your ass.”
“I absolutely won’t,” she calls out cheerfully. “In fact, I fully support the two of you tearing off each other’s clothes, if that’s what you’ve got planned!”
“Oh my God, Nazeera—”
“What?”
“Don’t encourage them,” Kenji and Winston shout at the same time.
“Why not?” Brendan says. “I think it’s romantic.”
They bicker a bit more while my mind spins. I feel the outline of the box against my leg more acutely than ever, a square spot of heat against my skin.
This is happening out of order.
I manage to comfort myself with the reminder that everything about us has unfolded in an unconventional way; I shouldn’t be too surprised to discover that, here, too, things are not going to plan.
Then again, I didn’t really have a plan.
In an ideal scenario, I would’ve proposed to her with the ring; she should’ve already had it on her finger. Instead, we are now fast approaching our actual wedding and I’ve yet to give it to her. And while it occurs to me that I could find a way to evade her curiosity right now, I’m not sure there’s any point in prolonging it. I have no idea where we’re going. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
I might not even have time later to do this properly.
I swallow, hard, trying to force back my apprehension. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.
That’s not true.
I know why I’m nervous. I’m worried she’s going to hate it, and I don’t know what I’ll do if she hates it. I suppose I’ll have to return it. I’ll have to marry her without a ring, acknowledging all the while that I am an idiot of astronomical proportions, one who couldn’t even manage to pick out a decent ring for his fiancée.
This imagining inspires in me a wave of dread so severe I close my eyes against the force of it.
“Aaron,” Ella says, and my eyes fly open, bringing me back to the present.
She is smiling at me.
Ella, I realize, already knows what’s in the box.
Somehow, this makes me more nervous. I look around myself, searching for calm, and register a beat too late that we’re all alone. The crowd has dispersed into the distance beyond us, and as I watch them disappear—their bodies growing smaller by the second—I recognize only then that I have no idea where we are.
I take stock of our surroundings: there are paved roads and sidewalks not far away, wilting trees planted at regular intervals. The air smells different—sharper—and the sun seems brighter, unencumbered by dense woods. I hear that familiar trill of birdsong and search the sky again, trying to orient myself. My mind searches itself for maps, blueprints, old information. This area looks less wild than the Sanctuary, stripped back. I feel quite certain we must be encroaching upon old, unregulated territory, but as we still appear to be within the boundary of Nouria’s protections, that can’t be possible. The lights that delineate our space from the outside world are clearly visible.
“Where are we?” I ask. For a moment, my ne
rves are forgotten. “This isn’t—”
“We can get to that in just a second,” Ella says, still smiling. She drops the homemade tiara to the ground and steps forward, drawing her hand slowly up my thigh, tracing a faint circle around the impression of the box. “But first, I feel like I have no choice but to make a terrible joke about finding something hard in your pants.”
I drag a hand down my face, vaguely mortified. “Please don’t.”
Ella fights to be serious, biting her lip to keep from smiling. She mimes locking her mouth, tossing the key.
I actually laugh then, after which I sigh, staring for a moment into the distance.
“So. What’s in the box?” she asks, her joy so bright it’s blinding. “Is it for me?”
“Yes.”
When I make no move to procure the object, she frowns.
“Can I . . . have it?”
With great reluctance, I tug free the little velvet box from my pocket, clenching it tight for so long she finally reaches for my hand. Gently, she wraps her small fingers around my fist.
“Aaron,” she says. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I take a deep breath. “Nothing is wrong. I just—” I force myself to open my palm to her, heart still pounding. “I really hope you like it.”
She smiles as she takes the box. “I’m sure I’m going to love it.”
“It’s okay if you don’t. You don’t have to love it. If you hate it I can always get you something else—”
“You know, I’m not used to seeing you nervous like this.” She tilts her head at me. “It’s kind of adorable.”
“I feel like an idiot,” I say, trying and failing to smile. “Though I’m glad you find it entertaining.”
She opens the box as I say this, giving me no time to brace myself before she gasps, her eyes widening in astonishment. She covers her mouth with one hand, her emotions so unrestrained I can hardly read them. There’s too much all at once: shock, happiness, confusion—
The effort to say nothing nearly costs me my sanity.
“Where did you get this?” she says, finally dropping her hand away from her face. Carefully, she tugs the engagement ring free from its setting, examining it closely before staring up at me. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”