Chapter 10

10

The first time I ran the way I run now, as though escaping from some enormous, sharp-fanged, soul-eating monster, it was after the search teams had given up on finding Sky's body. I had felt so helpless, so damn sad that I didn't think there could be an end to the despair. I've battled with depression since I was a teen, and only a few months before Sky fell, my doctor and I had figured out that the depression came from my being bipolar. She got me on an antidepressant dosage that made riding out those deep, raw moods more doable. But for some reason, the state troopers telling Nadia those words, Sorry, ma'am, but we've suspended the search indefinitely , I felt both grief and depression closing in on me at impossible speeds.

I ran upstairs, to bed, which is where I spent most of my depressive episodes. I couldn't breathe. Outside, the weather tossed out choked, spinning clouds that darkened and darkened until they broke. Until the way I felt on the inside reflected exactly how it felt on the outside. I couldn't get out of bed for days, maybe even weeks. Everything—time, meals, showers—became fuzzy in the onslaught of the pain.

That year was the record for Cranberry's yearly rainfall, and most of it happened in the weeks after Sky fell. The valleys flooded, and several homes were destroyed. Nadia's garden was so underwater that she had to wear long rubber boots to get from her car to the porch after work every day.

My doctor upped my prescription dosage again, and that helped some. As in, for weeks there was slight rain as opposed to hurricane-inspired storms, one after the other. But my sister had just died due to my stupidity. No pill was going to cure that grief.

So one day, the day I felt like I couldn't take one second more of that bullshit, I put on some old Nikes, and I rushed out the door.

I ran through the tangible evidence of my emotional body—calf-deep puddles, loud howling wind, fog as sticky as flan. I ran through the woods so that mud splashed up over me. I ran until I felt like my lungs were scarring, my bones shattering, my muscles all cramping, every last one. I might still be running that particular run if I hadn't collapsed, looked up, and seen a sliver of sun breaking through the sky, through the forest canopy, thickened with the soft rain catching the sparkling light. I realized that running helped . Just like my prescription, it wasn't a cure—but it somehow carved a hole of sunlight in the sky for the first time in weeks.

I only just told Sky and Sage about my being bipolar a couple of months ago, when they both tried to tell me that the amount of running I do seemed unhealthy. Not going to lie, I was really nervous. The only person I had told about it was Amá Sonya, and she basically pretended like she didn't hear me. But that's kind of how Amá works. If there's some type of information in the air that makes her uncomfortable? It basically doesn't exist.

Luckily both Sage and Sky just asked how they could help, and when I told them I had it handled, they stopped talking to me about how much I run. Maybe the running isn't normal, but it's what's keeping me stable. It's what's keeping the whole of this damn town safe from nonstop hurricanes, too.

I didn't run as much when I worked at Cranberry Fitness—I guess training and doing alternative workouts helped to ease the tide of my emotional turbulence, too. But since I was let go, I think I've done the equivalent of fifteen or twenty marathons in the span of two months.

That's why I groan inwardly when I look at the steps leading to the Cranberry courthouse. I ran for over an hour this morning, as fast and as hard as I could. I couldn't stand in the shower afterward—instead I had to sit down to wash up. And now there's this —eighteen concrete steps between me and my new life as a wife. Well, a fake wife. Either way, my nervous system didn't seem to know the difference—hence my need to run until my legs wanted to fall off.

"What is this? Cold feet?"

I turn and groan for real, out loud, as I watch Amá Sonya walk up. She's wearing a belted pale pink suit with cuffed wide legs and a dainty chain belt that may well be real gold. On her wrist is a white snakeskin Dior satchel and her heels are so high, she towers over me even though she's one inch shorter. Her Chanel shades cover more than half her face and I feel like I am speaking to someone wearing a bizarre space helmet. "Seriously?" I ask her. "How did you even find out when I would be here?"

"We abuelas have our ways." She raises her glasses and fixes a long glare on me. "I spent a lot of money on you yesterday. I deserve to witness the first of my grandchildren commit to holy matrimony."

I bite my tongue. I've already explained to her that our relationship isn't transactional, but I guess my actions haven't really been backing that up. I did accept pretty clothes yesterday, didn't I? I decide right then and there I'm not going to allow her to try to buy my love anymore. "Well," I mumble. "I guess we need a witness."

"I wish you had let me witness what you had planned on wearing." She lowers her eyes over my outfit as though I'd thrown on a few layers of rotted cheese. "This isn't a beach party. It's your wedding day."

I look down at my Target sundress, white with lace eyelet embroidery in blue. My shoes are sandals—my calves almost leapt out of my skin when I tried to put on heels—and my bag is one of the camel-colored ones I have, handmade from Mexico, the leather tooled into a pattern of vines.

Someone's clears their throat behind us. "Buenos días." We both turn to look up at Carter, who bends to greet Sonya with a cheek kiss, and then he does the same for me. Something about him, old gods know what—the cologne? Beard oil? Deodorant? Either way he smells so good I want to wrap my arms around his neck and keep him where I can just inhale like a total freak.

He looks as handsome as he did for Nate's wedding, in a black suit that emphasizes the V shape of his torso, the thick of his thighs. He looks at me up and down as he pulls away. There's no heat in his eyes, nothing to show that he thinks I look as good as I think he does. His previous words come over me. We're never going to have sex, Teal. The reminder helps me to push away the low-level vibe of attraction making me want to do something stupid, like swoon. "Why are you wearing a suit?" I don't intend to make my voice as sharp as it sounds, but I guess I can't help it. I hate feeling even the suggestion that I might want Carter, especially since he's made it so clear the desire is not mutual.

" He's ready for his wedding," Sonya answers for Carter, her voice approving. "Not like he just walked off a surfboard." She scrunches her nose at my dress again.

"People don't surf in dresses, Amá." I nod toward the big white building looming over us. "Shall we?"

I don't think I've ever been inside the courthouse before. The main room has tall ceilings, wide carved columns, and a mosaic on the wall featuring what looks almost like religious iconography, featuring brown-haired women doing things like brushing their hair and gathering fruit into baskets.

Carter leads us to another room off to the side. It's smaller and reminds me of the post office—shiny, smelling like strong cleaning agents, and a little boring, especially compared to the grand entrance we were just in.

The clerk is a middle-aged brown woman with fine blond curls and perfectly applied brick red lipstick. The ceremony is unremarkable, lasting just over five minutes, with us answering I do and I will to predictable questions that you hear in all the series and films that show weddings. Finally, the lady gives us a small smile and says, "Now you may kiss the bride." During my research of courthouse weddings the night before, kissing didn't seem to be a requirement, and so I'm a little taken aback.

I look at Carter, who doesn't seem fazed. In fact, he looks downright bored. The look of disinterest on his face at the suggestion of kissing me pisses me off instantly. The last time we kissed—also, incidentally, the first time we kissed—he was so into it, so frazzled by the heat of it, that his hands shook, that he could hardly breathe. How could he go from that to this —a face without a single emotion—in less than a year?

But I already know the answer to that. I blew it, just like I fuck up all the good things in my life.

I almost jump back when he bends down toward me. The move doesn't escape him, and he pauses, his eyes intent on me, looking at me, searching. I give him a faint nod, and then I smile as big as I can—Amá and this lady need to buy this, after all—and place my arms around his shoulders and meet his lips.

Carter freezes the instant our mouths touch. I feel the way his back muscles tense up under my hands and forearms. My stomach drops—am I really so repulsive?—but one split second before I pull back, he lets out a huff. I would call it a faint moan if I didn't know any better. And then his big hands reach the small of my back and he tugs me closer, angling his head just to the left.

His mouth is still open after that huff, so I tease my tongue in. I can't help it. He looks and smells so damn good that I need to see if his taste matches the rest of him. And of course he does. My entire body heats as his tongue meets mine, so intense and fast that I don't need to tighten my thighs together to know I'm already wet.

He tastes as good as I remember. Better, even. Back after I'd dumped Johnny, after everyone found out about the bruises he'd left on my arm once, with the implied truth of our relationship: that he'd given me a great deal more bruises all over the place in the course of six years. When Carter heard the gossip, he dropped everything—I mean, he literally left work in the middle of a shift—and ran to Nadia's to see if I was okay. I broke out the moonshine, and sometime after my tears and him holding my hand, I ended up on top of him, his hands pushing my tank top up over my bra, my hands under his shirt, groping his hips roughly. Even though we fooled around for all of two minutes, I had never been so turned on in my life.

As though he can sense the memories, too—like they're seeping from my lips to his like a poisoned lipstick—he pulls back, his eyes wide and his breath fast as though he's afraid of something.

Almost a year ago, Carter ended our last and first kiss because he had said I'd had too much to drink. But now I wonder if it was something else. Maybe the fact was that he only kissed me because he felt bad for me. Because now he won't even meet my eyes as the rest of the room—our clerk official, a few random people, the janitor, even Amá—clap in celebration of our holy matrimony.

My heart sinks as I realize that as much as I love his taste, he can't stand mine.

I sternly remind myself that this is for the best. That it would be way better to become best friends with Carter again through this fake marriage than to ruin everything by throwing myself at him over a one-sided, temporary attraction.