Chapter 23: Ten Years On

"I'm not going anywhere," I said. "Come here."

She crossed the room and got into the bed, in my shirt, with her face wet.

I held her against my chest until the radiator quit ticking.

She told me she had woken at four, certain that I had stopped.

I told her I had been dreaming of nothing at all, and that I had slept through.

It was the first time either of us laughed that morning.

Ten years went by after that, mostly in ordinary ways.

I finished my degree, Erin finished hers, and we married in her mother's garden with Gabe holding the rings.

Now it was a Saturday in June, the night of our ten-year reunion, and we walked into the Garrity Falls High gym.

A banner hung over the door that said CLASS OF, with the year painted in blue.

I was twenty-seven, and I would turn twenty-eight at midnight.

Erin's hand was warm in mine, and the gold band on her finger caught the gym lights.

"You're gripping," she said.

"Am I?"

"I can hear your knuckles."

"I'm fine."

"You are not fine. You have been looking at the clock all day." She squeezed back. "Nothing is going to happen to you tonight, Alec."

"I know."

"You don't. That's all right. I know enough for both of us."

Gabe came up behind us with a paper cup of punch in each hand.

He wore a suit with a duck pin on the lapel and had put on, I thought, a good fifteen pounds of contentment.

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