Chapter 18
T hey left just after dark. Ethan became antsier and antsier until finally he said they could leave.
“Are you going to tell me now why you were so jumpy back there?” she asked once they were a safe mile or so away from the border.
“Because night is the safest time for us to get away from people, but the most dangerous time to avoid animals.”
“I didn’t even think about that. It’s like Africa is actively trying to kill us in every possible way,” she said.
“There’s a lot of good here, a lot of beauty and nice people. We’re just not on the sort of journey that sees any of that right now. And my mind is always geared toward spotting the threat.” He shifted his weight, flexing his shoulders.
“I can carry your pack for a while, if you want,” she said.
“It’s heavy,” he said.
“I’m strong. I do Pilates,” she informed him. “And sometimes hot yoga.”
“If I let you carry it, will you show me what hot yoga is sometime?” he asked.
She nodded. They stopped and he placed the pack on her back. “You good?” he asked.
“Gup,” she said, stumbling a little. When he said heavy, she had no idea he meant heavy. The thing was probably sixty pounds, and he had been carrying it for days.
“Amelia.”
“Bimp.”
“Why don’t I take the pack back and you can regain the ability to form actual words again?” he said. She stood still while he lifted the pack off her back and put it back on his.
Flexing her shoulders, she resumed walking. “Now when people ask me how I got injured in Cameroon, I’m going to have to tell them it was from walking three steps with a heavy backpack. What a wimp I am.”
“I spent years training to be able to do the things I do, to condition my body and mind to respond the way I need it to, when I need it to. It’s not like I could walk into your salon and give someone a perm on the first try,” he said.
“How do you know about perms?” she asked.
“My granny used to get them,” he said.
“She might be the only one who still does,” she said.
“How did your parents take the idea of their math genius daughter becoming a beautician?” he asked.
“First of all I’m not a beautician, I’m a stylist. Second, they eventually came around. It helped that I had Maggie on my side. My brother, Darren, still thinks I’ve wasted my life.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s getting his doctorate.”
“In what?”
“How to try to run other people’s lives and give unsolicited advice. He’s really good at it. It’s nice he’s found his passion,” she said, and he laughed.
“I take it you guys don’t get along,” he said.
“Do you remember those old Tom and Jerry cartoons where they fought incessantly the entire episode? I wish we got along that well. Do you have siblings?”
“I have a half sister, five years younger, your age. We get along okay; we talk a couple of times a year. She’d like to be closer, but you can imagine how that goes.”
“You said she’s a half. How does that work?”
“My parents got divorced, my dad got remarried and had her. For a while I shunted between the two houses, but then he left that family, too. Thankfully he stopped reproducing, hopefully because he realized parenting wasn’t his thing. Not that he was abusive or anything. He was just not father material.”
“Are you close to your mom?”
“I talk to her less than I talk to my sister, and she seems perfectly fine with that arrangement. My parents weren’t horrible to me. They were just cold, withdrawn, indifferent, into their own lives.”
“How did you turn out so well?” she marveled. He laughed before realizing she was serious.
“It’s nice you think that, but I’m an unproven quantity, remember? I’ve never been a husband or a father. I’ve never even been a boyfriend.”
“But you’ve been a soldier, a hero, a rescuer, a team member, an employee, a best friend. All of those things count for something,” she said.
“Where can I purchase your worldview? It seems way better than mine.” He took her hand. They walked a while longer in companionable silence, and then it started to rain. Amelia had been in too many rainstorms to count, but this was unlike anything she had ever experienced. Water seemed to come at her from every direction. She could swear it was actually raining backwards, as if coming up from the ground.
“It’s the wet season, did I mention?” Ethan yelled. He was standing right beside her, but she could still barely hear him. After only a moment, she was soaked through to the skin, despite the fact that she was wearing two layers. The town was still a couple of miles off. They tried to hurry, but what had been a road a few minutes ago was now ankle-deep mud. The bottom foot of the long robe became quickly caked with layers of wet earth. Eventually, when it became too heavy to walk, Amelia peeled it off and wrapped it around her shoulders. She thought it would be easier to walk if she took off her shoes, but Ethan stopped her.
“You can’t walk barefoot here. Too much bacteria your system isn’t used to,” he yelled.
She kept her shoes on and inched forward. If not for Ethan taking her hand and practically dragging her along, she likely would have gotten stuck and cemented in place, possibly forever.
The rain showed no signs of ending; it went on and on and on. At last they eked their way into the city, but it was now so late everything was dark. All doors and windows were closed. Somehow through the sheeting rain, Ethan located a church with an attached parish house. He pounded on the door and eventually it was opened by a little man wearing hastily gathered vestments. It seemed to take him a while to recover from his shock at seeing two Americans on his doorstep at what was possibly the middle of the night. Yelling to be heard over the drenching, howling rain, Amelia tried to explain their situation. After a further moment of confused staring, he came to his senses and invited them inside.
They hovered in the entry, rivers of water pooling at their feet. A few weeks ago when they’d gone swimming, Amelia still hadn’t been as wet as she was now. Even her ears felt filled with water.
“We were wondering if you have a room to rent for the night,” Amelia said at Ethan’s prompting. “We’ll pay cash, American. And if you have any food, that would be appreciated as well.”
The man looked between them. “Are you married?” Es-tu marié?
“No,” Amelia replied. Non.
His face fell. “I am sorry. There is a room, but I cannot let it go to an unmarried couple. A room in God’s house is not designed for sin.”
Outside the rain was still pouring in waves. She wondered what God had to say about sending two wet, hungry strangers back out into the pouring rain with no prospects, but she didn’t argue.
“What did he say?” Ethan asked. Amelia explained to him, and he glanced sharply at the man. She was afraid he would argue or, worse, physically force the man to keep them, but he did something even more surprising. “Ask him if he’ll marry us.”
“Ask who if he’ll what now?” she said, her head swiveling to look at him so quickly she wrenched a neck muscle.
“Just ask,” he said.
“Have you lost your ever-loving mind?” she said.
“Have you taken a look outside? Pretty sure I saw some animals lining up in pairs and looking for a boat out there. We need a place to stay. He has a place to stay. I don’t see the problem,” Ethan said.
“The problem is we’d have to get married.”
“I thought that was what you wanted,” he said.
“When did I ever say that?”
“You said you love me,” he reminded her.
“When does I love you mean let’s get married before our first date? There’s a timeline for these things and, I know dating isn’t your forte, but marriage usually comes at the end, not at the beginning.”
“It’s not a legal marriage,” he explained. “Just a religious one.”
“Oh, well, if it’s just a religious one…Did the rain wash away your sanity?” she said.
He eased closer, placed his arms on her biceps, and gave them a light squeeze. “Amelia, just ask the man.”
Slowly, she turned her head to regard the priest, if he was a priest. She had no idea. “Can you marry us?” she asked, her voice shaking.
“ Oui, ” he replied with a definitive nod.
“See? Problem solved,” Ethan said.
“Ethan…”
“Amelia, we are never going to find another place to stay in this downpour. The man has a room for rent, I say we jump through this tiny hoop and take him up on it.”
“The tiny hoop is a wedding band,” she said.
“You’re getting caught up in the details. Big picture: we’ll have a safe, warm bed for the night. Remember the jungle where we spent ten hours today? Remember how it felt to walk through that mud? Remember how hungry, wet, and exhausted you are? Do you want to do all that again?”
She shook her head.
“Good.” He took her hand and faced the man. “We’re ready.”
The man reached for his bible and performed the ceremony then and there, as they continued to drip water in the entryway. Amelia felt like she was having an out of body experience. Not only was she getting married, but she had to translate the ceremony for Ethan, including his vows. She felt a little like she was marrying herself. At the end, he gave her a chaste, perfunctory kiss while his drenched hair dripped water all over her nose. The priest shook Ethan’s hand and showed them down the hall to their room.
“Hmm, not a bad setup for such a small town,” Ethan mused as he turned in a slow circle in the middle of the room. Their host left and returned a few minutes later with crackers, cheese, two bottles of Coke, and two clean robes, soap, and a towel.
“You will have to share the towel,” he said.
“No problem, thank you,” Amelia said on autopilot. She sounded like a robot. Or a nervous bride on her wedding night.
“You can shower first. There’s probably only enough hot water for the first one, so go ahead,” Ethan offered.
She nodded, dazed, grabbed her stuff, and headed into the bathroom. She tried to shower quickly to conserve warm water for Ethan, but it was already fading by the time she rinsed her hair. She put on the clean robe and returned to the room where Ethan remained standing where she’d left him.
“I didn’t want to drip near the bed,” he explained and Amelia’s eyes turned involuntarily there, toward the bed she’d be sharing with him. Her husband.
After he left the room, she doubled over and rested her head on her knees, trying and failing to draw a deep breath. What was happening here? Was Ethan expecting something to happen? He had said the marriage was in name only, an admitted sham. Did that mean he had no expectations of her?
She stood up. Forget his expectations. What were hers? It was her wedding night, too. For all she knew, she might never get another. The only thing she had to feel guilty about was that she had a boyfriend waiting back home. But she would break up with him, if she could. It wasn’t her fault she had no way to communicate with him until they reached the embassy tomorrow. Tomorrow. This could be her last night with Ethan.
That was her last thought as he wandered back into the room, sparkling clean and grinning the boyish smile, the one that had first bowled her over on the day they met. “How was your shower?” she asked.
“Brisk,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I tried hard to save water for you,” she said.
“It’s okay. A cold shower was what I needed,” he said.
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“Because you’re obviously not okay with this situation, and I’m not going to force you to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” he said.
She stood and bypassed him on her way to the door. He grasped her wrist. “Amelia, please don’t go.”
“Go? Who said anything about go? I’m checking to make sure the door has a lock. We’re in luck; it does.” She locked the door and turned her back to it, leaning against it.
He looked from the door to the bed and back again. “What exactly happened while I was in the shower?”
“I realized we might never have this night again. So carpe diem and all that.”
He studied her, his gaze dizzyingly intense. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
She left the door and sauntered toward him, slipping her arms around him when she reached him. “Ethan Becket, Becket Ethan, it’s our wedding night. Let’s not waste it with words.”
“Can I say one more thing?” he asked, his hands smoothing along her waist.
“What’s that?”
“ Carpe diem means seize the day. We want carpe noctem , seize the night.”
“Knowledge is power. Now let’s get cracking,” she said. She stood on her toes, her lips met his, and the world fell away for a long, long time.