Here I Go Page 9

  “Just for a minute, please?” I asked him, and it sounded like I was begging. “Just for a minute.”

  I could feel his body relax a little and he settled me more comfortably in his arms. “Just for a minute.” He sighed, his breath ruffling my hair. “Just for a little while.”

  This felt wonderful. I could understand why Kayleigh wanted to keep men for the night, even after they’d done the deed. “I like them to hold me,” she’d always said, and I got it now. It felt different from my prior boyfriends, because I wasn’t worried about Cain trying to get something from me or to push me for more than I wanted to give.

  I patted his chest again. “I like you so much,” I told him. “I’m so glad you came home.”

  He said something to me, very low and soft against my hair, almost like another sigh. His arms pulled me even closer and in a moment, I fell asleep.

  And then, in the next moment, I heard screaming. The high-pitched wail formed into words:

  “Aria! Aria Louise! My baby girl!”

  I sat straight up in my bed and my head cracked into something hard. “Ow!”

  “Muck!” I heard Cain say, but he used that word that started with an F, and my mother screamed again.

  “Cover her up!”

  And there was my Aunt Jill, too, throwing a blanket over me like I had something to hide. I looked down and saw my bra. My bra? And Cain’s shirt was open a little, and his hair was messy as he rubbed his jaw, where my head must have cracked it. Cain? What—my thoughts tangled in a heap like our purses in the corner of the room and I couldn’t figure out what was happening.

  “Why are you here?” I managed to ask my mother, but she was busy shrieking.

  “I knew it! I knew he was Trouble, with a capital T! How dare you!” She started slapping at Cain, striking him on the shoulders, before my Aunt Jill pulled her away. My Uncle Cy, Kayleigh’s father, ran in, and then Kayleigh herself. They all stared at us, and Kayleigh covered her mouth in shock.

  “Did you take off my dress?” I asked Cain, confused, but then I spotted it folded on Cassidy’s empty bed, like I would have done if I’d removed it myself. “No, I don’t mean that,” I told him. “I must have taken it off in the night—Mama, please! Please, stop yelling! This isn’t what you think!”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. McCourt.” Cain’s voice cut through all the noise, the screams and Aunt Jill’s and Kayleigh’s talking and my confusion. “Aria and I are getting married.”

  It got dead quiet.

  “You’re getting married to Cain Miller?” Kayleigh asked me, breaking the silence. “Congratulations, Aria!”

  And like so many years before when she’d heard terrible news, I watched my mama slide to the floor in a faint.

  ∞

  “He doesn’t have to marry me. You don’t,” I informed Cain, just before my mother demanded that all men leave my bedroom, immediately. My Uncle Cy, Kayleigh’s father, had managed to revive her and calm down his wife. Aunt Jill had taken on the role of screamer, this time over my paper-white mother out cold the floor as I cried and clutched at my blanket. When Mama was fully awake and back to ordering people, Uncle Cy took her arm and led the way out of the room with my Aunt Jill still crying and Cain not meeting my eyes.

  Only Kayleigh stayed while I got dressed, randomly grabbing clothes from my closet and trying to pull a brush through my hair. She peppered me with questions the entire time, and the answers I had to give her sounded so pathetic and stupid. We just fell asleep, I kept repeating. I didn’t remember taking off my dress, but it was tight and uncomfortable so I’d probably done it half-asleep. We were only sleeping! I said that word so many times in so many variations that it started to sound funny, like “sleep” didn’t mean the same thing anymore.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re taking the heat off me a little,” she said. “We came back here this morning to pack up my stuff. Mama and Daddy are making me move back home.”

  “What?” I still wasn’t understanding anything. “You’re moving out?”

  Kayleigh shrugged but nodded. “I have to, because they pay most of my rent,” she explained. “They say they want to keep an eye on me.”

  “But, what are Cass and I supposed to do?” Her share of the rent was a lot of money. Cassidy and I wouldn’t be able to make it up, not very easily.

  She shrugged again. “Sorry,” she said, and she did sound like she was. I just wasn’t sure exactly what Kayleigh was sorry about: that she was running out on our lease, or that the party was over because now her parents would be closely watching her behavior? I stared at her and she shrugged again and started to root through the purses in the corner to see if any of hers were mixed in the pile.

  When I was finally presentable, I followed my cousin out into our living room—mine, I guessed, and not hers anymore—where everyone else was waiting for me. Cain sat on the sofa, his elbows on his knees and head tilted down. He didn’t look over as I chose a chair as far away from him as I could. My three older relatives stared at me and I had the terrible feeling that they were some kind of jury deciding my fate.

  “Mama, we didn’t do what you’re thinking,” I tried again. “We fell asleep, that’s all. But even if we had done that, Cain wouldn’t have to marry me for it! What would you do, get Uncle Jed to chase after him with a shotgun? This isn’t the eighteen hundreds! I’m a grown woman.” Even if I felt like I was about ten years old with all of them looking at me.

  “Aria, I’ve never been so ashamed,” she answered me. “I came here today after services—services you did not attend—to help your Aunt Jill pack up Kayleigh’s things. I told her that my daughter, my sweet, pure Aria, would be able to talk to Kayleigh and show her the right way to live. I said that you could be an example! And then, we walk in on you and him!” She pointed a shaking finger at Cain, who still hadn’t looked up. “I’ve never been so disappointed in you. Never!”

  “Mama! I…” I broke off.

  “Leave her alone.” Cain stood up and walked to my chair. “Y’all should go on home.”

  “What?” Mama stared at him.

  “It’s not your house. Go on. Get out.”

  My mother looked like she’d had cold water thrown over her but she stood up straighter and stared daggers at Cain. “We are here on Kayleigh’s invitation, sir!” she announced, like someone in an old movie, not herself. But nothing about this was normal!

  “Then we can go,” Cain answered. “We’re not going to listen to you talk that way to your daughter. Come on, Aria.” He turned over his palm and offered it to me.

  “This is crazy. It’s crazy!” I told him.

  He stood there in front of me, his hand out. “You’re saying no to what I offered?”

  He wasn’t talking about leaving the apartment with him, I knew that. I also knew that he must have been regretting what he’d announced to my family in the bedroom. He’d probably been in shock when everyone had walked in there and the screaming started, and then I’d hit him in the jaw and almost knocked him out. And I’d been practically naked and draped all over his body, adding to the confusion!

  It had been a mess of a situation and he’d acted out of kindness to me. He’d spontaneously said that we were getting married in order to save me from embarrassment and humiliation in front of my family. Of course, he hadn’t meant it, and now was the time for me to say no. No, we weren’t getting married.

  Then I thought about his life, about his father hurting him, about his mother dying, about the anger and sadness he’d already toughed it through. I thought about him only having Miss Liddy, how worried he was about her, how mostly, he was alone. I looked into his blue eyes and I hesitated, and then I doomed us with one, small word, only three letters sealing up our future:

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” he repeated. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. Was it relief or horror? Had I said what he wanted to hear? “Yes, you’ll marry me?” he asked.

  I stood up and put my hand in his. “Y
es,” I said again. “I’ll marry you.”

  “Aria Louise,” my mother started to warn, but my Aunt Jill came over to hug me.

  “I’m happy for you, Aria,” she said, and I almost burst out in sobs.

  “Thank you,” I choked.

  “Come on, then,” Cain urged, and started to pull me toward the door.

  “Aria, don’t you leave here!” Mama said. “Don’t you leave this room with that man!”

  I didn’t look at her as we walked outside into the bright, cold sunlight of a new day. Cain had said that things would be better in the morning, hadn’t he? I looked at him but he looked up into the sky and then closed his eyes. “It’s going to be all right,” he told me, or maybe he was talking to himself. “It’s going to be just fine.” His hand moved in mine but I didn’t let it go.

  “Were you serious?” I asked him. “Did you mean it about getting married?”

  “Do you think I’m going to back out on you now?” he asked me in return. His blue eyes opened and we stared at each other. I wanted to tell him that he could, that I’d understand. He’d made a generous gesture, but I wasn’t going to trap him in it for a lifetime. I wanted to say that, but instead, I looked into his eyes and didn’t speak a word.

  “Aria!”

  “Cass?” I squinted into the sunlight as my cousin hurried across the parking lot to me, still wearing her pretty party dress from the night before. Right behind her, holding her hand, came Bo, her old boyfriend. From the way he was looking at her, he was now her current boyfriend, too.

  She let go of him to hug me, smiling like she didn’t have knots in her hair as large as walnuts. “Ari, we’re engaged! Look!” She held out her hand and I saw the gold band and the sparkle of a stone. “Bo asked me last night and we got the ring from his grandma this morning, and his family is so happy! My parents are acting like the two of us hung the moon!”

  “Oh, Cass!” I hugged her again. “Oh, wow! That’s wonderful news!” I hugged Bo, too, and told him I was glad he’d come to his senses, and Cain shook hands with him and did a very awkward pat on the back to Cassidy.

  “We were at Aunt Harlene’s house and I was telling him about Kayleigh and how mad I was,” she said, “and how I wished we didn’t live together, and then—”

  “I suggested that she live with me,” Bo told us, “and then I asked her the question I’d been thinking about since the day I joined up.” He leaned down and kissed my cousin, not at all bothered by the hair walnuts or her smeared mascara.

  “That’s so wonderful!” I said again, and now wiped away a few tears.

  “I’ll be in the apartment for at least a couple of months, so don’t worry about me moving out,” Cassidy told me. “Maybe we’ll be engaged for a year.”

  “Ninety days,” Bo told her. “That’s about as long as I can wait.” They started kissing again before I could say anything about Kayleigh leaving first. Or about me also getting married, which I thought I might keep to myself for a moment.

  “Isn’t this amazing?” I asked Cain while they were busy with their lip-lock. “They’re so happy! I’m just thrilled for them.”

  He was looking at the couple, the icy eyes back. “I hope it works out. They’re young.”

  Cassidy was my age. “They love each other! It will be perfect. But do you think I’m too—”

  “What’s going on out here?” Kayleigh dropped the plastic bin of shoes she was carrying through the apartment door as she spotted our other cousin. “Are you kissing Bo in the parking lot, Cassidy?” They broke apart and Kayleigh pointed. “Oh my God! I saw it shine in the sun. What’s on your finger?” She started screaming wildly and Cassidy did too, their fight totally forgotten. My Aunt Jill and Uncle Cy came out behind their daughter and got involved in the congratulations and even my mother emerged and moved her mouth into an expression that might have been a smile, but looked more like she had eaten a spoonful of vinegar.

  Cain and I stood on the outskirts of the happiness. “We should go,” I told him. “I don’t want to mess this up for Cassidy by talking about what happened this morning. Maybe we can keep it quiet for a while.” Although, with Kayleigh and my mama involved, the chances of quiet seemed slim.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, staring at the smiling couple. “We should make plans, too.”

  I followed him as he walked off, noticing for the first time that I was wearing a pink and white floral, summer skirt on the bottom and yellow wool turtleneck on top that itched a lot. “Plans?” I repeated. “Marriage plans? Wedding plans?”

  “I was reading up on it while you were putting on clothes.” He glanced over at my strange outfit as we got into his car. “There’s no waiting period in Tennessee. We could get our license on Monday and take care of everything so that it’s settled before I have to go back to San Francisco. Quick and easy.”

  “Wait a minute.” I had so many questions about what he’d just said that I didn’t know where to start. I went to the last thing. “You planned to go back to California right away?”

  “Aunt Liddy’s final treatment is next Friday and they want to wait a few weeks before starting the second round. I thought I would stay for Christmas with her then leave afterwards, maybe on the night of the twenty-fifth. That’s an easy day to fly.”

  Right, because people wanted to be with their families on that day! Well, he could go, and I would stay here and plan and pack. “There’s so much I have to do to get ready,” I said out loud.

  “What?” Now he turned to stare at me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mostly have clothes, not furniture, but there’s still a lot. I have to give plenty of notice to my boss, Gary. I don’t want to leave him with no help. Even if I don’t really do a great job there,” I admitted.

  “You thought you’d move to California,” Cain stated.

  “Not right away, not until we get married.” I looked at his face and understood. “Oh, you don’t really want to. I see. Ok.”

  “What do you think would happen if we didn’t?” he asked me. I could hear anger in the words. “How do you think your mother would treat you?”

  “She’d get over it!”

  “Really,” he said, the word dripping with doubt along with the anger. “After how she just acted to you, you think she’d get over it?”

  “Well—she wouldn’t get over it, but it would be ok! I won’t force you to marry me because my mama’s mad!”

  “How much time do you spend with your family, Aria? Pretty much every waking moment. You’d never live this down. It would be all they’d think about you, how little Aria got herself naked with that criminal and he backed out of marrying her. She couldn’t even get a jailbird to take her down the aisle.”

  I looked out the window so he wouldn’t see the tears on my cheeks. “They’re not a bunch of crazies! They’d understand that you—that we changed our minds.”

  “Really,” he repeated, in exactly the same tone. “Is that why your aunt and uncle are dragging Kayleigh home, because they’re understanding about how twenty-year-olds act?”

  I tried to focus on another issue, because I wasn’t able to solve that one. “So you want to get our license next week at the courthouse?”

  “We’ll do it quick and easy,” he agreed. “And you thought you’d move to California with me?” This time, it was a question.

  I flipped around to face him. “You planned for me to stay here after the wedding? Husbands and wives—they cleave! They stick together, Cain. Your company is in California and you live there in a house you bought.” I remembered the pictures on Miss Liddy’s phone of that palace. “I haven’t given any of this much thought but we should be together, wherever that might be. But you didn’t plan for me to…” Oh, my word! Did he want to leave me in Tennessee?

  “I wasn’t planning,” he told me. “I’m reacting, that’s all.” He glanced over at me as we came to a light. “Aria, don’t cry. This is going to work out. We’ll finalize everything next week and you’ll move. Packin
g won’t be so bad and your boss will understand. You’re just an assistant there, aren’t you? It shouldn’t be hard for him to find your replacement.”

  I pushed his hand away from where it was awkwardly patting my knee. “You’re right, I won’t be hard to replace.” It was hard to hear but it was true. And not just at my job, because everyone here would go on with their lives. I’d be leaving Eimear in the lurch with her wedding—no, I wouldn’t, I promised myself. I’d fix up everything and I’d fly in for the shower, which I’d already made her fiancé’s nana promise would be stripper-free.

  “Ready?”

  I looked around and we’d stopped at a restaurant. “Yes,” I said vaguely, and we did go in and I ordered something, but I couldn’t have told you what it was that I ate. Cain said a few things but mostly we were both lost in thought, or maybe, he was lost in regret. I tried to bring that up a few times, him backing out, but he just shook his head.

  “No, Aria.” But then he asked me in return, “Do you want to?”

  “No,” I answered quickly. No, I realized, I didn’t. I didn’t at all.

  “Just because you want to get married is no reason to follow through on some lie of a proposal!” Cassidy counseled me that evening, and I told her that I knew that, but we were going ahead with it. I’d passed the rest of the afternoon in the vague, confused state I’d had at the restaurant, but things had gotten better when Kayleigh was finally packed up and she, her parents, and my mama left. Cain had stayed until that moment, apparently not wanting to leave me alone with them. He left when they did, after brushing a quick kiss on my cheek as my mother watched. Our first kiss.

  After a while, my sisters started calling and more cousins, aunts and my Uncle Jed, everyone wanting to hear why I would have decided to marry Cain Miller—and so suddenly, too! Mama had managed to keep the story of finding us in bed together under wraps, which must have involved some serious threats from Kayleigh’s parents to their daughter to keep her tongue in check. I didn’t have much to say to my very upset family, nothing except that yes, we were getting married, and no, I wasn’t sure when because we hadn’t set a date, and yes, I was very happy with this decision.