She nodded, but she looked away from me. Her fingers slipped out of mine as she walked down the aisle toward the doors, opening them to the blazing desert sunset and slipping away into the blast of fiery light and heat.
The priest looked at me, reproach in his eyes. “You make that girl happy. You should not marry a girl and make her unhappy.”
I wasn’t a believer. We upper classes never were, except for the occasional desperate mother praying for a miracle for her sick child, which was always a dangerous precedent in my family. Too easily manipulated.
Yet, maybe God himself was shining from the priest’s eyes and rebuking me for catching an angel and tying her down.
Probably not, though.
Lexi was quiet as I joined her in the back seat of the SUV in the church’s parking lot, and she was twisting the rings around her fingers.
Before the driver put the car into gear, I announced, “Ueli, we need a moment.”
The security guys stepped out without another word, closing the doors behind them. Ueli stood outside, back toward us, in the sweltering evening air, but the other guy climbed into the other SUV closer to him to get out of the heat.
Our SUV’s engine shifted to a higher idling speed,whistling notes competing with the air-conditioning’s jet-speed fan.
“Are the rings all right?” I asked her.
“They’re beautiful. I could never have imagined wearing rings like this in my life. They’re just heavier than our other rings or my first engagement ring. They feel different on my finger. Wider, I guess.”
I couldn’t help myself. Maybe I should have left her alone with her thoughts, but I pried.“Firstengagement ring? You’ve been engaged before?”
She nodded. “I got dumped by my fiancé six days ago.”
Shock rippled through me.
“Isn’t that pathetic?” she continued. “He left meduringthe ceremony,at the actual altar,for someone else. That’s why I was busking in a wedding dress on the streets of Las Vegas, because that dress is all I have left.”
Slivers of tears glistened on her lower eyelids.
Oh, no. Oh no, Lexi. No.
“He was afool.”I picked up her hand nearest to me, her left hand with our rings on it. I studied her pale little fingers, turning her wrist over to examine her soft palm as if I were a fortune teller, which I most certainly wasn’t, and then back to inspect how the wedding ring set looked when it was worn by a woman, this woman,mywoman, mine at least for a while. “He is anabsolutefool.”
“Maybe he was smart to get out while he could. You don’t know. You’ve only known me for less than a day, a large part of which you spent blackout-drunk.”
“Then I’m a fool. If we’ve only got a year, then let’s make the best of it. Let’s enjoy each other’s company, knowing there’s a time limit to this madness.”
She chuckled a little, but drily, and she continued looking out the car’s side window at the desert xeriscaping and withered cacti.
“Yeah, because we’re just a short-term interlude. That’s all I ever am.” She dabbed one finger under her eye while still turned away from me. “You know what’s really the worst? My phone is so quiet. It used to beep a hundred times a day because I was in group chats with Jimmy’s sisters and sisters-in-law. Every time a thought came into their heads, they’d text it into the group chats, and then everyone had an opinion about it.”
I waited because she hadn’t looked back at me yet.
“But they kicked me out of our group chats. I didn’t do anything wrong,nothing.Jimmy leftmefor another woman whomhe’dbeen seeing. Who he’d beenliving withat college, while I waited for him back in nowhere-Nebraska.But they kicked me out of their chats, and they turned off their location sharing.”
Oh, my sweet angel.
“They blocked me on all our socials. I can’t see their posts, their pictures. I don’t know where they are or what they’re doing, and they can’t see me. They didn’t just ghost me, but they turned me into the ghost. So now, nothing happens on my phone. It’s just quiet. No pings, no texts, no stupid memes, no check-ins. It’s like I can hear them giving me the silent treatment.”
Something deep in my chest grew heavier, pulling my sternum inward. “I am so sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I was an idiot who believed love would save me, Nicolai. Evidently, I needed to be taught a hard lesson so I won’t be so dumb ever again.”
They’d repaid her kind heart with such cruelty.
A vision flashed behind my eyes of wrapping my whole body around her tender little form, my arms tight to cradle her close to my chest, and snarling at anyone who came close enough to hurt her.
