Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Savannah
The day after our wedding party, I’m still fighting my postdrome headache. That doesn’t matter, though, when Barb declares that we need to be seen in church this morning.
No excuses.
The Peaches have a Sunday evening game—they’ll be on the national broadcast against the Monsters, which even I can tell is a big deal—so Brayden and Blake have to come too.
Only when I knock on Brayden’s bedroom door to see if he’s awake, no response comes.
He could be hungover. He could still be out.
I unlock the door, not expecting it to be open on his side—his locks too.
But the door swings. The lights in Brayden’s room are off.
The walls are just as empty as when I first moved in. Only his bed is empty too.
So he kissed me and danced with me and growled at Asher to stay away from me…then went out with…
I don’t even know. I go back to my room, grab my phone. Punch in a text to him. Where are you? It gets marked delivered, not read.
Fine. Whatever. If Barb asks where he is, I’ll just say he’s under the weather.
The way I actually am. I fight my headache hangover through a shower—I keep the lights dimmed—and through the blast of the hair dryer as I blow out my hair.
Before I do anything else, I need caffeine and breakfast. Who knows if Barb will serve me two lettuce leaves and some lukewarm decaf to prove a point?
I wrap myself in a robe and go down the back stairs to the kitchen, busying myself with measuring out coffee. Brayden’s car isn’t in the garage. Maybe he parked it out front for some reason. Maybe he left you to deal with his mother alone. I go to the front to check—no car outside, of course.
I’m about to go pour caffeine on my postdrome symptoms—for a lot of people caffeine is a migraine trigger, but fortunately, I’m not one of them—when I hear a noise coming from the living room.
Brayden, passed out on the couch.
So he did come home. He was just in too fucked up a state to make it upstairs.
He’s still in his suit. His shoes are discarded next to him along with his tie, jacket, and belt, though he fell asleep in his wedding ring.
He has dark circles under his eyes. Coarse blond stubble dots his face.
His shirt is open at the collar, not wide enough to know if he came home bearing lipstick or hickies or anything else.
He looks like he’s had a rough night, and we have to be out of here in less than an hour.
I shake him by his ankle. He lurches into consciousness with a start. “Sav, hey, did I wake you up?”
I gesture to the room around us. “I woke you up.”
Brayden blinks his eyes open then seems to register that he’s on the couch still in last night’s clothes. “Right.”
“We have to go to church.” I say it like it’s a punishment, because it pretty much is. “You gonna be good to go?”
He sits up. Blinks a few more times. “You’re sure I didn’t wake you up?”
I snort. “I didn’t even hear you come in.”
“Oh.” He presses a finger to his forehead, a gesture I know—trying to stave off the cluster of a headache. “Good.”
“I’m not—” I’m not a real wife who you need to sneak past. “I’m not dealing with your mother if we’re late,” I say instead, and don’t wait for his response before going upstairs to armor myself in acceptable clothes for church.
“That’s a lovely dress,” Barb says when we greet her outside the entrance to the church complex—because it’s not one building with a modest cross, but a main building with auxiliary units for a school and daycare and who knows what else.
I almost let my guard down at the compliment when she adds, “Only this is a church and not a nightclub.”
I’m in a dress that covers my shoulders and knees, but apparently flashing elbow on a Sunday morning is harlotry to her. And if that’s the case, what would she think of me being alone with Asher last night? Of him slowly unzipping my dress, breath hot on my shoulder?
“Good morning, Barb, it’s lovely to see you too,” I say instead of what I want to say, which is some variation of go to hell.
Given that she’s convinced that’s where I’m heading, maybe I should wish her heaven just so we didn’t have to deal with one another.
“Thank you again for all your work on the party. I had a lovely time getting to know everyone.”
“The part you were present for, at least.” Even if she can’t help but look pleased.
“I had a headache,” I say evenly.
“I’m sure that’s true.” Said like she doesn’t believe me in the slightest.
A little way off, Brayden hasn’t removed his sunglasses, even if he seems fine otherwise. He’d run, showered, shaved, poured enough coffee and protein powder in himself to be vertical. That’s about the best we can hope for.
Blake, meanwhile, is there looking freshly pressed like he got eight hours of very restful sleep.
Only the slight jump of muscle in his jaw gives him away.
“Hey, Bray.” He reaches for Brayden and pulls him into a hug—one Brayden remains stiff in as Blake says something in his ear.
Brayden’s gaze darts to me, once, before he nods, once, and pulls himself away.
We go into church like that—Brad and Barb leading, Brayden and me following, Blake walking solo, nodding and waving to various people.
I’ve been to church enough—an Episcopal one near us had a choir Cherri liked during Christmas—that I thought I knew about going to church.
This is closer to a convention center or arena: an enormous stage, a sound system, rows and rows of cushioned seats.
No matter where I stand, it feels like every eye is pointed toward us, a sense of being watched and judged—not by some higher power but by everyone else here.
Next to me, Brayden’s shoulders stiffen again. His hand brushes mine before he pulls it back. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re not supposed to touch each other in church or if the familiarity we had with each other last night has burned off in the hot morning sun.
We file into our seats: Brad, then Barb, Brayden, me, and Blake.
It occurs to me that I have no idea what I’m actually supposed to do during a service, but my father always said there was no situation that was boring, only one in which you were gathering the wrong information.
There’s information all right—in the flashy cut of the pastor’s suit as he paces across the stage, the heavy watch on his wrist—the same kind that the bank repossessed from my father.
There’s information in the synchronized rustle of a thousand people turning to specific pages in their hymnals. In the way everyone knows to speak the same words simultaneously, even if Brayden mostly mumbles his and Blake pauses briefly before following along.
My mind drifts during the actual service. Whatever feeling the pastor is supposed to be inspiring in me, mostly what I feel is my dress beginning to stick to the back of my knees.
Then the pastor says, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.”
Great, this shit again. Next to me, Brayden shifts around like he can’t get comfortable.
“That’s not…” he begins but can’t seem to find the end of the sentence.
On my other side, Blake is sitting with his hands stationed on his knees, studying the row ahead of us with great intent.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was counting the seconds until this was over.
Barb, on the other hand, is throwing me glances. Once, then again when the pastor follows that verse with one about the roles each person plays in the church. That young women should focus our work in the home. Is this aimed at me somehow?
I can’t ask Brayden, not when the pastor moves on, exhorting young men to be self-controlled.
Brayden is a model of control now. He’s sitting upright, gaze fixed on the stage, eyes tracking the pastor as he makes successive laps across it, the lav mic clipped to his lapel catching his every syllable.
The pastor continues: about roles we all have, which sound less like some divine plan than parts we’ve been cast in for a terrible play. How any upset to this natural order yields only corruption, depravity.
Someone beside me makes a disagreeing noise.
At first, I assume it’s Brayden. But when I turn, Blake’s mouth is set in a firm line, his knuckles on his knees pulled white.
He gives me a look I’ve seen once before: from Pastor Tim at the Las Vegas chapel.
Blake’s look is the southern straight-guy version of girl, run.
I can’t run. I can barely stretch my legs out. Every time Barb sees I’ve committed the unforgivable sin of wearing open-toed shoes, she frowns even more disapprovingly. She probably wants me to cross my legs at the ankle and fold myself away.
Girl, run.
It’s too late for that now. So I stretch my legs out as much as I reasonably can and listen to a pastor in a twenty-thousand-dollar watch tell me that the kingdom of heaven is mine if I just remain humble and submit.
A few days later, Brayden appears at my bedroom door, hovering as if he needs a specific invitation inside. “I was wondering”—he shifts his weight between his feet like he’s working up to saying something—“if you wanted to come to today’s game.”
Whatever I thought he was going to ask, that wasn’t it.
“Uh, I’m kinda busy.” Which I am. I have to run over to Morningside to meet with an advisor about transfer credits; I have to swing by the grocery store and to finally see about getting something to put on the walls; I have to look through the three options Lexi sent for girls’ brunch.
I have to answer Barb’s daily Bible chat text, even if mostly what I want to say is fuck off; I have to—
“A lot of the wives go,” he adds.