Every comment took something out of him. He stopped talking about wedding plans. He avoided the mirror during his suit fitting, staring at the floor while the tailor pinned the jacket. When I asked what was wrong, he said he was just tired.
He was lying, and we both knew it.
Chapter 6 – The Wedding Day Crisis
On our wedding day, Eli disappeared.
My maid of honor, Priya, found me while a stylist was still pinning my hair. “Maren. Eli locked himself in the dressing room and he won’t come out.”
I stood up so fast the curling iron nearly fell out of the stylist’s hand.
I ran to the dressing room door and knocked hard. “Eli?”
Nothing.
I tried the handle. Locked.
“Open the door.”
“I just need a minute,” he said, his voice muffled and wrong.
“You’ve had several minutes.”
Priya sprinted off and came back with the venue manager, who tried a master key that didn’t fit. In the end, I grabbed a butter knife off the catering cart myself and worked the lock open with shaking hands.
Eli was sitting on the floor in his full wedding suit, tie hanging loose around his neck, his eyes red and raw. The old purple crayon pact was folded in his hands.
He looked up at me like he was about to say goodbye.
“I’m releasing you from the pact,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You don’t have to carry me as your burden anymore.”
My heart cracked straight down the middle. “What?”
“You don’t have to marry me out of some promise made by two little kids who didn’t know anything.”
“You are not a burden, Eli.”
“You’ve spent your whole life protecting me.”
“I spent my childhood punching boys who deserved it. This is not the same thing.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Look at me.”
He wouldn’t. His eyes went to the door instead. “Your mother is right about one thing. You will always have to explain us to people. Every room we walk into, someone will stare and someone will ask, and it will never stop.”
“They already do that, Eli.”
