35. Elizabeth
Elizabeth
We were still tangled up together, my hands fisted in his jacket and his forehead against mine, when the crowd closed in around us both.
Becca got there first, already crying, laughing so hard the crying barely registered as its own sound, and she threw both arms around the two of us at once, nearly knocking all three of us into the grass. I hung onto Matt’s arm and hers at the same time, because my legs had become unreliable.
“You two,” Becca said, into both our shoulders at once, “are getting married.”
“Nobody said anything about married,” I said.
“I did. Just now. I’m speaking it into existence because I’ve always wanted a sister.” She pulled back and held my face in both hands, checking me over the way she checks a bruise, and then did the exact same thing to her brother, who let her without complaint. “Are you both okay? Genuinely?”
“I’m past okay,” I said. “I’m somewhere that doesn’t have a word yet.”
“Good. That’s the perfect amount of okay.
” She kissed my cheek, then his, and went to go find Levi, and the rest of my family arrived to finish the job in waves—Gwen colliding into both of us at once, June right behind her, my mother last and slowest, taking her time with it the way she takes her time with everything that matters, and she pulled me into her without a word, her chin coming down on the top of my head the same way it had the other night, except this time there was nothing underneath it but relief.
“I’m happy for you,” she said, into my hair. “Both of you.”
Around us, the crowd started to settle and started moving toward the barn doors, laughing, calling to each other, sweeping us along with them into the noise and the string lights and the smell of cider, and for a while we let it happen—danced, badly, both of us, Matt stepping on my foot twice and apologizing both times like it was a felony, June filming everything, Becca dragging Levi through something that was technically a two-step, my grandmother watching it all from just inside the barn doors with her hands folded and an expression I didn’t have time to read closely before somebody spun me the other direction.
It was Matt who found the gap first. He caught my hand mid-turn and pulled me gently out of the noise, toward the doors, and I went, because whatever was on his face wasn’t dance-floor easy anymore.
We ended up back at the gazebo, empty and quiet, the party’s noise gone soft and distant behind us, the same rail I’d made him promise not to fall in love with me on, a few months and a whole lifetime ago.
“I need to tell you two things,” he said. “Before I let myself just stand here being happy.”
“Okay.”
“The grant cleared this afternoon. Full award, no conditions. The barn, the roof, the parcel debt—all of it, gone.” He watched my face while he said it, careful.
“I told your mother and your grandmother before I came to find you. I tried to say it up on that stage, and then I got up there and only had room for the part about loving you. I’m sorry you heard it out here, alone, after the fact. ”
I stood there and let it sink in—the debt gone, the roof fixed, the number I’d been quietly doing math on since spring, finally settled—and felt something in my chest let go that I hadn’t fully known was still held tight.
“Thank you,” I said. “For telling me yourself. For telling them first, even. They needed that as much as I did.”
“There’s a second thing.”
“Okay,” I said again, because I genuinely didn’t know what was coming, and something in the way he said it made my stomach go tight anyway.
He came a step closer, hands out of his pockets now, and when he spoke, his voice had none of the polish from up on that stage.
“I went behind your back,” he said. “I decided I knew what you could handle better than you did, and I acted on that without asking you, more than once, for longer than I want to admit. I told myself it was because I wanted to protect you. That doesn’t make it right.
You said that to me in the barn, and you were right to say it. ”
“I know why you did it.”
“Knowing why doesn’t erase what it cost you.
” He said it quietly, no defense in it. “I don’t want to stand here and explain myself into looking better than I was.
I decided you’d break under the truth, or couldn’t handle it, or didn’t want it—and none of that was ever actually about you.
It was about what I needed to believe so I could feel useful.
You’ve never broken under anything in your life.
I took it out of your hands. That’s not partnership.
That’s just a nicer word for not trusting you. ”
I felt my eyes sting, and for once I didn’t blink it back or turn it into a joke. I just let myself feel it.
“I did the same thing to my mother,” I said. “I found out something hard about our family and I never told her, because telling her would make it real, so I just managed it alone instead. I don’t get to stand here and be angry at you for this. I built the same wall. I just built mine first.”
“I know. Heather told me some of it.”
“I’m not offering it as an excuse for you.” I took the front of his jacket in both hands again, slower this time, just the two of us and the gazebo lights. “I’m offering it because I don’t want to spend years keeping score over who went around who first. I want new terms.”
“Name them.”
“You ask me. Before you fix anything of mine, you ask. And I will always tell you the truth. Never a version that keeps things comfortable.”
“Deal.” He laced his fingers through mine, and for a second the easy confidence from the stage was gone entirely, and what was left looked almost afraid. “Elizabeth. Is this real? Not the version either of us performs for a crowd. This, right here, just the two of us. Tell me it’s real.”
I thought about a woman who used to build her whole life out of jokes because a joke was the only kind of honesty she trusted herself to survive.
“It’s real,” I said, no joke standing behind it anywhere. “I promise you.”
He kissed me again, slower, and when he pulled back he rested his forehead against mine and let out something that was almost a laugh.
“We should go back in,” he said. “Your grandmother’s going to send somebody after us.”
“She probably already has.” I took his hand properly, laced my fingers through his, and pulled him back toward the barn and the noise and the whole rest of our family waiting to claim us both. “Come on, Mr. Pumpkin. Dance with me like you meant every single word of that promise.”
The music met us at the doors. The band had slipped into something slow and country and aching, and the couples were folding together under the string lights, and Matt just gathered me in—one hand at my back, the other around mine, my cheek finding the place on his chest that seemed to have been waiting for it—and we danced.
Slow, and close, the noise dropping away until there was only the low steel guitar and the warmth of him and the way he held me like he’d been counting the hours until he could hold me again.
And I couldn’t help thinking of the first time we danced—the wedding, the champagne, the string lights, the question I’d asked him and he couldn’t answer. We were two different people now, dancing to the same kind of song. Nobody was pretending anymore. He knew what he wanted, and so did I.
“This is what I wanted,” he said quietly, into my hair, like he’d heard the wedding in my head. “In case you were still wondering. This.”
“I’m not wondering anymore,” I said. But I held on tighter anyway.