Betrayed by My Childhood Love novel · Chapter 32 of 32
Chapter 32: Opposite Directions
We got married the next May, on Gran's dock, at six in the evening, with the tide coming in.
I was twenty-two.
Waylon was twenty-four and so nervous he'd re-tied his boots four times.
Gran wore a new dress.
It was the blue of the Gulf on a clear day.
She'd bought it in Houston with my mother, and neither of them would talk about it.
She still had her keys clipped to it.
"I'm not taking them off," she said. "Somebody's outboard will quit, and I'll need them."
The shrimpers had built an arch at the end of the dock out of old net floats and rope.
The team had strung Christmas lights through it.
The old man with the red boat had gotten ordained on the internet for twenty dollars.
He stood under the arch in a clean shirt and his good cap, holding a little book he'd printed at the library.
There were three steel pots the size of bathtubs on the shell road, already boiling.
The plywood sign still said RICE ROCKETS SHRIMP BOIL.
Gran had painted over the price and written WEDDING. FREE. EAT TILL YOU'RE SICK.
Gran walked me down the dock.
My father had asked if he could, very quietly, back in March.
I'd said no.
He'd said that was right.
He sat in the second row on a folding chair, next to my mother.
She was wearing flats on the planks and hadn't said a word about the smell.
Annika sat beside them.
She'd driven down the night before to help Gran with the pots.
She still had a little grease under one thumbnail.
Waylon's mother sat across the aisle with a sheet cake on her lap, already crying.
The team took up three rows behind her.
The birthday girl had flown back from her first job.
The recovery senior had flown in from Seattle, and he was wearing the trophy from New Mexico on his head again.
Gran's hand was rough and warm in mine all the way down.
At the end, she stopped and looked up at me.
"Sugar," she said. "You look like your own self."
Then she put my hand in Waylon's and went and sat in the front row, between his mother and mine.
Waylon's vows were a parts list.
He'd written them on the back of a test data sheet.
"I'll tell you when your chamber's too short," he said. "I'll bring you a Dr Pepper every morning. I won't touch anything of yours without asking first. Not your email, not your notebooks, not anything."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of Betrayed by My Childhood Love are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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