How to Say I Do

by Tal Bauer

When they found my father's body, he was curled around my mother, and his charred bones were mixed with hers so thoroughly that it took a forensic anthropologist two days to sort out who was who. We buried them in the same coffin anyway.

He smelled like he wanted to be alone—that sour rankness of abject misery and the aftereffects of an extensive pile of hours dedicated to uninterrupted drinking.

He knocked my glass back, half water, half vodka, all pain.

I caught a buzz from the vodka on his breath,

My mouth had the flavor that I imagined what biting into a rotting corpse would taste like. Zombie pâté. Delicious.

Wyatt’s eyes were gray and soft as he studied me. “I’ve had a worst day of my life. I know what it’s like to feel alone, and I know what a difference it makes when you’re not.”

Whenever he spoke, I felt his voice moving through the water. My thoughts fell out of me. All of the anxieties I'd stoked behind the waterfall faded away.

A wave rose and wrapped around his waist. I watched salt bubbles pop at hips and stuffed back my jealousy at inanimate water particles. Instead of wishing I were sea foam, I followed him, laying on my side with my head in my palm.

His eyes were guarded as he searched the lobby, his expression impassive, almost dismissive of the world in front of him— Until he saw me, and he seemed to spark from the inside out. He looked me right in the eyes and smiled, like that smile was crafted just for me and hand-delivered into my heart.

He laughed, and our eyes met and held, and then I almost walked us face-first into the wall.

I didn’t want to decline Wyatt.

I was clinging to Wyatt’s waist and shrieking into his shoulder blades, my fingers dug into the furrows of his abs, probably imprinting the whorls of my prints onto his intestines and liver.

I’d met someone made of pure gold, so breathtakingly singular, so arrestingly distinctive, so absolutely, amazingly unbelievable, and we’d had epic, transcendental sex.

I never claimed to be a smart man, only a stubborn one.

What was rising between us felt like a newly-born star.

leaving me alone with the ruins of our burned-down lives and our parents’ bones.