Chapter 14 #2
“Pretty sure this is just a trip to City Hall,” I say.
Hurriedly I put on my shoes, soft pink slingbacks with bows on the toes, concerned that without any buffer minutes, I might actually make us late to our own wedding.
(Or whatever we want to call it.) Pulling the slingback around my heel has me lose my balance, and I nearly careen forward, but Hudson’s hand juts out, gripping my hands where they were already desperately looking for something to grab.
“You have to stop doing that,” he says. “I won’t always be around.”
“Well, lucky me, I have you for now,” I say as I check my reflection in the hall mirror, tuck the brown wave of hair behind my ear.
If anyone were to see us right now, they wouldn’t doubt we are a couple.
We look it, from head to toe. Except he’s watching me with this new expression I cannot read, and never imagined on his face.
Not one of immediate annoyance or hatred.
His stare drips down slowly and his lips part as he comes to stand behind me with only inches between us.
It is not a large movement. It is barely a movement at all.
On anyone else I would miss it. But in a short time, I have become very aware of the movements of this man’s mouth. (Damnit, Lou.)
“It’s time,” he says, calmly, soothingly, as we make our way out the door, into our fake future. And somehow in that register, with that look on his face, it doesn’t feel like just another schedule item at all.
The elevator doors open and in flawless silence, he extends his hand out to me. Slipping my hand into his and stepping in. But rather than heading to the lobby, he hits ‘ROOF.’
“If you’re taking me to the roof to murder me,” I say. “They will never sell you that apartment.”
“Louisa.” My name forms on his lips in a low tone that rumbles through me. It hit me the day we met, also. But that day, he wasn’t saying my name. The only words out of his mouth were dripping with annoyance. Now, if I didn’t know better, I’d say they are dripping with something wetter than desire.
The elevator climbs and so do my nerves until the doors open to the stairwell to take us the last few steps to the outside. His hand hasn’t released mine as we climb the five steps together, him leading me each step of the way.
“What are we doing up here?” I ask. “What about our appointment?”
“Cancelled it,” he says flatly. Concern is a pit deep in my throat and it’s expanding each time I try to swallow it down. Nervous that somehow I had made a mistake or misunderstood. That it’s another thing that got lost in a stack of mail I’m too nervous to open.
“What do you mean you cancelled it? Did I do something wrong? Did I miss something?” The spiral is immediate and I cannot stop it. “You said we were on a strict timeline, you said—”
“I know what I said.” (Of course he does.)
With his other hand he finds the bare skin of my back in the low drape of the dress, and I feel every fingerprint of his as it settles there, warm and certain.
Not feeling foreign the way I imagined his touch might.
I feel the moment he registers the goosebumps and chooses not to mention them, which is somehow more devastating than if he had.
Because of course, we both know despite the outfits we put on, or the physical reaction I may have, no matter how important it is, it isn’t real.
“Was I late?” I ask, quieter now. “Is it… is it my fault?”
His eyes narrow as he steps deeper within my space. We are on the same inch of floor as he looks at me and doesn’t move, our feet are an alternating pattern standing on the same highline.
“The only thing,” he says, low and close, “that is your fault—” his middle finger traces a line down the column of my spine and my next breath does something embarrassing “—is how fucking beautiful, you are, in your dress.”
We’re standing at the door of the rooftop, and I feel my mouth open with something to say but no words to come out.
“Are you ready?” he asks. I look up at him somewhat confused, and he takes my silence as agreement. Pushing open the large metal door to the roof as it screeches in celebration of a visitor.
His hand is on my back, we step forward, and with each step further into the open air, the illumination of the hundreds of candles comes more into view.
Suddenly, the rooftop feels less like a place that existed and more like a secret someone built just for this moment.
The harsh, industrial edges and cement ledges, the hulking metal vents and the pipes that would never be called romantic, have been softened into something sacred.
By him. Every surface possible to hold light does.
Pillar candles casting long, golden shadows that flicker and breathe against the cement walls.
Around their bases, around everything, white daisies bloom in delicate rings, their petals catching the glow so they look almost luminescent, like they’ve borrowed the light from the flames.
Clusters of votives gather in small constellations scattered intentionally but effortlessly mirroring the stars above, as if they simply appeared there a billion years before.
Candlelight traces the edges of the rooftop, lining the ledges in shimmering rows that echo the city skyline beyond.
All the flickering light blends into the world around us, until it becomes hard to tell where the city ends and this begins.
The quiet hum of the city exists up here with warmer air and the glow of starlight.
Distant traffic, a faraway siren, and the low, constant pulse of life below, but everything except my heartbeat feels muted.
And his pulse, which I can feel so long as his hand is in mine.
Like the rest of the world has stepped back to give us space to exist.
As the candlelight dances, trying to reach the stars that inspire it, this almost feels real. The makeshift aisle does not scream ‘fake marriage’ but ‘grand gesture.’
It’s not an aisle runner, but a carefully folded drop cloth from a renovation.
Maybe it was up here already, clustered in a forgotten corner.
(That makes me like it more.) It’s lined on both sides in petals and candlelight, and leads towards the far end of the rooftop, a larger space with a gathering of six chairs.
Chandler is here, both hands pressed over her mouth, mascara already making its exit.
Toby’s face says he has been sitting on information for longer than was comfortable.
Lucas ,Hudson’s friend I met briefly to discuss some of the legality of my immigration case, and his wife, Paola, are here.
She might be the most inarguably beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life, or maybe that’s just because of how her husband is looking at her.
She’s sitting there with her hand on Grams’s arm.
And Grams is looking at me with equal parts warmth and an ‘I told you so’ that you’re only allowed to claim when you’ve lived a certain number of decades.
But most special of all, despite the lagging wave of excitement, propped on a chair beside Toby, a laptop screen glowing in the candlelight, my brother, Theo.
(Though it’s weird his laptop self isn’t ‘sitting’ next to Chandler.) His face is slightly blurry and slightly flushed because it’s late there and I assume this was not on his original plan for the night.
But he sees me see him and through the screen I feel the hug of my brother three thousand miles away.
“What is all of this?” My voice comes out too small for the size of what I'm feeling.
“You should have a wedding,” Hudson says, close.
“Regardless of the reason for the marriage.” I turn to look at him.
My eyes are collecting the tiniest bit of tears.
“I’ll meet you down the aisle,” he says.
Walking off, taking a few long steps to cross the space where his friend joins him in standing.
Chandler appears at my elbow. Any doubt she has about our love story, she seems to have pushed aside, by this display.
She presses a small bouquet of daisies into my hands, loose and simple, held together with a length of blue fabric that looks like it was cut from something else and makes the entire bouquet smell like licorice and cloves.
Across the roof, he’s standing and the illuminated path is ready to guide me to him. His eyes are locked on me, not just in the soft glow of candlelight, but the warmth of people who know and love us. It’s hard to believe that none of this is real.
Music suddenly comes through speakers I didn’t even know were here. I recognize it immediately. No lyrics, just an orchestral version of a song that I curl under a blanket to regularly. He knows this, I’ve told him. (He’s seen it.)
I take a deep breath in through my nose as the music builds.
As the music ascends, both in melody and volume, he nods at me from six feet away.
With my bouquet in hand, and fake fiancé waiting for me, I start walking.
Each step requires me to remind myself, this is all an act, because with each step I take, he takes the shape of someone I feel like I’ve known, a future I’m committing to for real, not papers.
I know what this is. (I know what it isn’t.)
I just wish the rest of me would consult the part that knows.
But Hudson doesn’t look away once. Doesn’t break eye contact. In fact, a smile spreads across his face as he watches me get closer and closer. It’s only then I realize, it’s because I am (unknowingly) mouthing the words to “Rewrite the Stars.”
When I reach him, we are standing so close as the song fades out and we are just left in each other’s shared breaths.
“I love this song,” I say.