We laugh because that’s the understatement of the year. Carrie Ann sits where I was having an existential crisis a minute ago, and starts on her face.
I explain to Vet, “Carrie Ann has six younger brothers and sisters, and for whatever reason, all of them like pranks.”
“Pranks?” Vet asks.
Carrie Ann nods, trying not to poke her eye with the mascara wand. “Like when your little brother collects two dozen frogs and hides them under your bedspread.”
“Distasteful,” Vet declares.
“Or when her little sister rigged herself into a harness that made it look like she had hung herself.”
Vet’s eyes bulge. “No!”
“Oh yeah,” Carrie Ann says. “She thought that was real funny. She stopped laughing when she spent three days in a psych ward for a prank, though. After that, they slowed down for a while.”
“That’s beyond messed up.”
I nod. “Yeah. So walking in here, only to have a gun pointed at her?—”
Carrie Ann’s laugh cuts through. “That’s not even the first time. Remember Stephen?”
“Oh my god, I forgot all about that!”
“Stephen had a gun?” Vet asks.
I nod. “Stephen had one of those water guns that looked like a real gun—he had painted over the red safety tip—and pretended like he was going to shoot me.”
“What did you do?”
I grin at Carrie Ann. “This lunatic clocked him with a two-by-four.”
My best friend giggles. “You’d think they would have learned not to mess with me, but they’re slow learners.” She corrects the edge of her lipstick. “Let’s go get you married.”
The ceremony is small and quiet and takes place in a room that Pavel has filled with ivory peonies. My favorite. I don’t know how he knows that. Maybe he asked Carrie Ann.
I stand across from him in my expensive dress with Carrie Ann beside me. Vet stands at the back of the room, appearing unexpectedly moved for a woman of her professional background.
Pavel wears a dark suit that fits him the way all his suits fit him, as though it were constructed specifically to make him look exactly like what he is. Big. Handsome. Impossible to ignore. He’s looking at me with those pale blue eyes, and the look is the one I have no clean word for, the one that makes my chest feeltoo small for everything inside it. It’s not a managed look, and it’s not the look of a man executing a survival plan.
I know what it is. I have known for longer than I’ve been willing to say.
The officiant speaks, and we answer, and somewhere between the speaking and the answering and the cool weight of a ring sliding onto my finger. I stop being the stranger in the mirror and start being something else. Someone who walked through a door she opened herself, complicated circumstances and all, into whatever comes next.
Carrie Ann cries through the entire thing.
18
PAVEL
The penthouse is quiet.I stand at the window with a drink I’m not tasting and watch Manhattan’s cold electric burn forty stories below and think about the fact that I’m married.
Me. Married. The word sits differently than I expected it to.
Molly is asleep in the next room.
She drifted off to sleep with her head resting on my shoulder around two in the morning, mid-sentence about something Carrie Ann mentioned at dinner. Her voice faded into silence, like someone who has exhausted all their reserves and just stopped. I stayed still for a long time afterward, unwilling to disturb her.
Eventually, I settled her carefully, covered her, and came to stand at the window with my drink and my thoughts and the city that knows nothing about any of this and cares less.
