I rolled my eyes. “Probably not the best time to ask that question.”
“I know. Sorry. I should have asked it long ago. You’re happy. So I’m happy. I guess why I’m asking is…how do you know? Like, know know? For sure, that he’s the one?”
I breathed in—well as much as I could with the dress I was wearing—and looked at the stranger in the mirror.
A sexy stranger, I might add.
I looked at Lizzie and saw that there wasn’t fear in her eyes that I was making a mistake as much as curiosity for how I knew he was the one. She wanted to find the one. She’d obsessed about it since we were freshmen in college. Always thought the next one would be it.
I displayed a wide grin, thinking about the incredibly unlikely events that brought Shane and I together. I wouldn’t wish them on anyone. And I also couldn’t freely share them.
“I want the best for Shane. He wants the best for me, and I know he’ll protect me no matter what. But yes, there’s this unspoken connection between us, too. I’m afraid I’m probably not much help…unless you have some boys from back home you might want to hit up? I think there’s something special about having spent your childhood in the same place as someone. It gives you this root connection and deepens things.”
She nodded. “Well the next time I’m in Mobile, Alabama, I’ll see if there are any local guys I somehow missed when I was there. Champagne?” She handed me a glass of the golden liquid.
“Yes please.” We clinked glasses and I took a small sip. I saw worry in Lizzie’s eyes so I added, “It’s not like I believe you should save your virginity for the one you marry or something. But it just…happened that way for me. To each their own.”
“To each their own. I love you, Nat.” She gave me a little hug from behind.
“Love you, too, Lizzie. I’ve never had a sister, so I hope you know how much you mean to me.”
“I know.”
I felt my mother’s presence before I saw her in the archway of the door.
“Hello there!” She said to my mom. “I’ll give you two some time.”
“Thank you Lizzie.”
I spun around.
“You look beautiful, Mom.”
“So do you.”
My eyes flitted to the picture I had brought into the dressing room dresser of my father. “Thanks for walking me down the aisle. I think dad would have wanted it this way.”
Mom took a few steps toward me, tightly clutching her necklace.
“You think?”
I frowned, and rubbed my forearm. “Mom, can I ask you a question?”
She sat down on the sofa and poured herself a glass of champagne. I held my flute up to her and she refilled mine as well.
“Of course.”
“Why did you leave dad, originally?”
Something stirred inside me when I asked the question. I’d meant to ask it in the wake of the events two years ago, but, in large part due to the trauma that Shane and I had gone through, never got around to it.
Mom sighed and took down half the glass of champagne with one gulp. “Your father was…a good man when I met him. But once the profits started coming in for the mine, he never got onto solid ground. He forgot about me. All he wanted to do was drink and look at profits. He couldn’t believe how much money he was making. No one could. I told him he was losing himself in the work, in the bottom line, and tried to remind him that life would pass him by if he wasn’t careful. I tried for a long time to get through to him. But he had those dollar signs in his eyes. It was so painful to see him turn from the young man I fell in love with…into, sorry Bruce,--” she paused and looked up, “a greedy monster.”
I glanced at the picture again, trying not to shy away from the truth. I had good and bad in me, too. I certainly knew that now.
“Is that why you tried to get as far away from Black Mountain as possible?”
She stiffened, then finished the rest of her champagne. Leaning in toward me, she pursed her lips.
“And,” I added, “hid the accident from me where the seventeen miners died?”
Her posture tightened, and she sat for a moment, thinking.
Her nod was slow. “I had this feeling like something horrible was going to happen there, with you. I had nightmares for years, before I finally left him. Talking to him was like talking to a brick wall…” she adjusted her dress. “Is Shane starting to act differently since he got his new contract or something?”
“No, not at all.”
I could never tell my mom why Shane and I shared the connection we did. Secrets you took to the grave had a way of doing that. But there was more, too. He was so attentive every moment I was with him. He encouraged me to finish my first book last summer, which was a mid-level success, and gave me enough confidence to try another one. Yes, he was a superstar, too, and I turned into a puddle just thinking about what he could do to me. But I knew in my heart that even if he weren’t—if he were a construction worker and that’s what made him happy—we’d be as deeply in love as we are now.
Although yes, dating a ripped, hot-as-hell hockey player was nice.
He had turned me into his little groupie.
“Honey, you okay?” Mom asked. She filled up her champagne glass once more.
“Fine. Thanks for telling me. I’d like to know more about him sometime. Not now, obviously.”
“Anything you’d like to know.”
Lizzie poked her head into the room, a sly, sarcastic grin pulling at her face.
“Yes?” I asked.
“So…you’re needed in the church in about five. Turns out you have a wedding today or something.”
I bit my lip, playing along. “Oh yeah? How’s the groom look?”
She gave me a thumbs up. “You hit the jackpot.”
A few minutes later I left the bridal room and appeared at the top of the aisle with my mom.
He stood there, all six foot two of him with his blond hair and icy cold glare.
My mom walked me down the aisle to the instrumental of a song we’d given the organist, which was hopefully disguised enough by the environment enough that others wouldn’t notice.
Would you kill for me?
As I walked up the steps to the altar, he clenched his jaw and it sent a shiver through my whole body.
He gestured for me to lean in, and I did.
“You look un-fucking-believably hot right now, and you’re going to get it tonight. Just had to say that,” he whispered, then winked.
The priest stood there with wide eyes.
Eh, when in Rome. I leaned in, and whispered, clearly loud enough for the priest to hear me.
“Can’t wait for you to take my virginity tonight, handsome.”
His best man, a teammate of his, Dwayne, grinned from behind and eyed Lizzie.
Maybe there would be something there.
The wedding ceremony was small and without a lot of pomp and circumstance. For the last two years, we’d been living in Kansas City, a good compromise for us between the tropics of Florida and the frozen tundra of Black Mountain, Michigan.
We had built a new life together, complete with a new city, new house, new friends. A new us. Our mothers had even both moved to our city.
Our past still haunted us occasionally, but with every passing day, we were settling into our thriving new life and our commitment to each other.