Light was flashing in our eyes as we ascended. The pictures for our Senior Prom were at the entrance. Our school was transformed into the forest of A Midsummer Night's Dream. All of my friends and I had gone to the prom together, all except one friend. Part of me felt a complicated bitterness towards Catchy, my lost friend.

And then I saw Death standing in my path. Catchy had a look in his eyes that frightened me. I wanted to turn and flee from his wrath. Then after he had spoken, I could see how small and weak he really was.

The glass of his eyes said he meant no harm to me. He wanted nothing more in the world than to be by my side and with Cinder and everyone else; yet I didn't let him.

We left him outside in the cold where he sat for a little while and heard the music. Then he dropped his boutonniere and left. He walked away and didn't look back; couldn't turn his head or raise his eyes.

It should have been me.

That night Cinder slept with me, that wasn't part of my plans, it was her's. She told me she loved me. Honestly, it wasn't as good as when I was with Tickles; because I had bandages all over me, and staples in my neck like Frankenstein's Monster, and Cinder was a virgin.

Because I loved her: most of the night I just pleasured her; though she didn't reciprocate any of that. I realized my love for her was not something I wanted to be in bed with her for. At least that is how I felt at the time. We didn't actually start dating until August.

There was just this long awkward summer where she kept asking me to come over whenever her parents had left and I would not come over.

Eventually it was a letter she wrote to me that convinced me. She explained that her love for me was always poetic in-nature, and that she had not actually meant to disappoint me. Her letter expressed that she had longed to show me her affection and that I needed to give her a chance.

So I went to her as Summer waned.

August was a good month for Cinder and me. We actually had a decent relationship for almost the whole month. Then she started packing for college. She hadn't told me. Evidently she had waited until the last minute to show me. I told her:

"This is confusing. I need some time to think." And I probably sounded hurt and angry; but at least I escaped with my dignity. I went home and cried very pathetically until she had gone, refusing her calls.

She was gone after that.

I didn't go to college. I hadn't thought that far ahead. I had planned to marry Cinder and after she left I worried that my plans were insane. I had wasted so much time on a very petty moment in our lives. I had treated her unfairly, and finally realizing the consequences. I could have spent all that time with her, I already knew she loved me. I didn't need her promises and sweet words. I missed her so much it drove me mad.

I started working at the pawn shop. I tried to forget Cinder while she was gone. Every day I either made money or I lost my shirt. Sometimes I just drank beer out of an oversized beer bottle and sat there watching girls take their Johns out on dates. Winston gave me a gun and a set of keys and told me not to fall asleep. Then he looked at me again and said:

"On second-thought, maybe you should get some sleep."

I did fall asleep after the vigil became too long. I woke up staring at Cinder. At least a vision of her. She was sitting somewhere alone with Catchy. He was groping her. I shrugged. My mind was trying to play tricks on me, make me feel insecure.

It wasn't going to work because I was ready to completely give up. I felt quite directionless. I really didn't deserve her, did I? I should have appreciated her more while she was still with me.

Winston walked up to me as the morning light shone behind him. He took away the gun and keys and knocked over all my empty forties. Then he pulled me to my feet and put my arms up like a cross. He sleeved a shirt onto me and buttoned it up.

"You need some money?" Winston asked. He showed me a fan of hundreds and then offered it to me. I shook my head. "That's all I can do for you. You came here and did everything like a gangster. Except you don't want your pay. What do you want?"

"I want to marry her." I recalled. It seemed very far away.

I examined the butts of my thoughts, hieroglyphs of spit on the ground where I'd sat. So, these were lies, these words I had invested my thoughts with. They hurt, the lies hurt more than the truth. And now I knew fear, a real instinctive kind of fear. Fear of what is not the truth.

"Take this then." Winston took my hand and put the money in my hand. "Go get your wife and marry her."

"Thanks Winston." I thanked him. I walked home in cold sunlight, feeling bathed somehow.

I called Cinder.

"Dude, why haven't you called?" Her voice broke. How'd she know it was me?

"I didn't know you wanted me to." I was in a weird place when she left. I tried to tell her that: "I fell apart. I just sat...waiting..." I was apologizing in my tone. Then Cinder said:

"Me too." And she was crying. "Please come."

"Okay." I said. I listened to her weeping over the phone and I felt like the world's worst boyfriend. It was almost unendurable and it went on for some time before she hung up. Then I shattered into self-admonishing tears.

I caught an overnight bus and thirty hours later I was at her college. I hadn't even packed anything. Well, I pocketed my toothbrush on the way out.

Cinder was waiting for me with a timeshare car. Some kind of new rental thing. I'd never seen one before. When she got out I was stunned.

She looked completely different, her clothes, hair, everything. She'd even grown more. Cinder was grinning and ran to me and we embraced and kissed, both of us swapping hot tears to our cheeks.

"You missed me." Cinder squinted cutely. "It killed you not to hear from me."

"I'm surprised you survived." I told her. "I thought you'd gone off to war."

She took me back to her dorm and I had to get a guest pass. My curfew was six.

"I'm gonna get an apartment near campus." I told her. "And a job. I can't ride a bus for thirty hours away from you. I'd be three percent more dead with each passing hour."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"You'd still be ten percent alive." Cinder pointed out. "I can work with that. I bet I could keep you alive at just five percent."

"Let's not try that." I laughed.

We just stared into each other's eyes. We had renewed all of our favorite things to do together and this was a new one. Just laying there staring into each other's eyes because there is nothing else either of us wanted anymore.

I was supposed to leave after six, as a visitor. Sort of hard to follow a rule that only seems to be there to make you miserable. So I stayed.

When we woke up it was from a restfulness we had forgotten. I wanted to remember it always and told her:

"Cinder, I am going to marry you. You know that, right?"

She sat there looking at me strangely. Sadly. There was something wrong, yet. Then she said: "We can't get married. I love you, Dude, you are my soulmate. Get a home and a job and be with me. Never leave me."

I was confused and I went from her side. I got to know the college town. I took a job assembling lawnmowers and doing gardening retail at a home and garden outlet. I found a cottage next to my work that I could walk to Cinder's from. Everything was close-by. I leased the cottage to buy it. I didn't like the idea of wasting money on renting something. Then I returned to Cinder and told her what I had done.

She seemed like she had expected me to say everything that I said. Then she told me she wanted to marry me; only that I needed to bring back all of our friends.

"You want them too." She reminded me. I agreed. "Even Catchy."

"I don't know where he is." I shrugged. She didn't accept my attempt at an excuse.

"Make it right and I will marry you." Cinder said seriously.

She moved into my cottage from the dorm and we lived there together. I worked hard at my new job and made the place shine. After her next year of college was over, I already had my first promotion at work.

I had called Asia many times and she was already planning the wedding.

Tickles was a little bit harder to find. Her and April had opened a bar, a mysterious benefactor had funded them out of nowhere. They called it 'Moonshine'. I went there and visited, to give them their invitation to a wedding that might not even happen.

"Cinder is all-about honor." Tickles finally turned from all her bar chores and spoke to me about Cinder.

"I am honorable enough for her. Will you come?" I asked again. Tickles sighed and gave me a sidelong look.

"What about Catchy?" Tickles asked.

"What about him?" I demanded she make a clearer inquiry. Tickles scoffed and pointed at me like I had my answer. This is why her and I only lasted one date.

"Cinder isn't gonna marry you and leave him out like at the prom." Tickles pinched her lips and widened her eyes, expecting me to fully comprehend what she was saying.

"She already told me I had to make it right with him." I surrendered. "And I will."

"There is a scar on your neck. How you gonna make it right?" Tickles held her elbow and put one finger over her lips.

"I am gonna get him to talk to me. I'm gonna listen to him." I told her. She nodded.

"Dude." Tickles gestured for me to lean closer to her and she whispered: "You got this."

Then the excitable creature in her licked my bullet scar and giggled crazily.

"You're sick." I laughed. I left Moonshiners, as the place was actually called, not 'Moonshine'. Or something like that. It seemed to have two names.

April was out in the parking lot. She had come to pick up Tickles. I greeted her and told her I had come and invited Tickles to the wedding and asked if she would come too. She smiled and hugged me and said:

"Yes."

Then, on a caprice of intuition, I thought to ask her if she knew where Catchy was. She darkened slightly and I regretted deputizing her. April looked away and a cold wind blew.

"What is it?" I asked.

"He isn't well." April looked at me sternly. "I can't look at him again."

"I understand. Can you tell me where he is?"

She nodded. Tickles came out and April suddenly switched to her normal self, and to hide her countenance, she hugged me again.

"Dude, I am so glad you are back. You have to come stay on my couch. Please?" April asked, not letting go of me until I agreed. She gave an affirmative laugh and pushed me into the back seat of her car and closed me in. Then she spoke to Tickles for a moment.

Tickles didn't look happy with whatever bullshit April was saying to her. Why April lies when she feels awkward, I don't know. I thought: I'd just rather tell Tickles, she already knows I am gonna go see Catchy.' It occurred to me this elaborate sleep-over cover was so that Tickles wouldn't know April would be going near Catchy to take me to him, wherever he was. I sighed.

Then we dropped off Tickles and April took me to a trailer. I expected this was where Catchy was, but indeed it was her place. I was already irritated with her for spinning a web with Tickles. I looked at her and complained:

"This is your place. I want to go to Catchy, right?" I was pushed into a chair.

"What is wrong?" April asked. She sounded wounded by my tone so I confessed to her with a nicer expression:

"I don't like that you lied to Tickles."

"I didn't lie to her. I told her I am taking you home with me and in the morning I will take you to see Catchy. After breakfast." April sighed strangely and sat down with some intensity, across my lap. I was startled and my arm held her waist on reflex as she almost slid off. She wrapped her hands around the back of my neck and held me like that.

"April, I am with Cinder. We live together." I objected verbally to her proximity and yet my body was all-for-it.

"She doesn't care." April looked at my eyes finally. She believed it and she looked slightly insane. "You are not married yet, so you shouldn't then either."

"I do." I protested. Then April covered my mouth with her's and stood, only to straddle my lap instead. I was terrified that I was going to get with her, because it would mean I didn't really love Cinder or have enough honor for her.

Then she took a picture of us like that and got up, saving it to her cloud. She looked down on me. Now she looked excited, instead of seductive. I'd never seen her look crazy before.

"That's mine." April challenged me.

"That's it?" I was bewildered. Then I hesitated, realizing I was pursuing her, even leaning forward. I was still turned on, blushing, not thinking clearly. I leaned back, trying to calm my breathing.

"Yes." April was also trying to calm down. She wasn't pretending to be aroused. "Unless you want more?"

"No, no. I'm good. I got scared for a second." I wondered what I sounded like at that moment.

"I will behave myself. Come be next to me, like before." April's demeanor slowly cooled and she led me to where she wanted me.

So we did, like church-mice, lay there all night worrying about falling asleep. She'd given me sanctuary and now I knew what it felt like. She'd wanted me to touch her: not. And I hadn't. I knew why she was so grateful to me back then.

Best breakfast ever.

She was texting to Tickles. "I told her we fucked. Sorry. Anything else would be a lie. You understand."

"I am a dead man." I laughed. "Cinder will think so too."

"She will still marry you. Your good behavior is my secret, understood?" April glared. I tried to understand her insanity. She rolled her eyes at me and then thought about saying something to me and then didn't. Instead: "Just trust me."

We drove out to Catchy.

Out by the lake he was living in a kind of freaked-out hut. Animal skulls adorned the place. He had a hunting rifle leaned against a stump with an ax in it. He was gutting a small deer with a huge knife. Steaming guts were under it on a black trash bag.

April had waited back down at the car.

"Catchy?" I asked him. He turned with a feral look on his face.

"Dude." He growled.

"I need to talk to you." I told him.

He waved the knife menacingly. I wondered if he was going to cut my head off completely, this time. His eyes betrayed depths of despair and loneliness. All of his pain was named after my relationship with Cinder.

"About what?" He grinned evilly.

"About Cinder. We are getting married."

"You came out here to tell me that?" He nodded appreciatively, his eyes mad.

"No I came out here because I wanted to apologize to you." I told him. "I wanted to hear things from your perspective. What happened? Why did you cut me?"

He hesitated. "I don't remember."

"Then can you accept my apology, for being an ass to you? Whatever I did, it was so bad you did that. So I'm sorry." I apologized, as best I knew how. I hoped this meant things could be right.

"Is that it?" Catchy asked, still holding the knife.

"Will you come to the wedding?" I asked. I hoped he wouldn't.

"No." He mused.

"Well, it's good to see you, Catchy." I told him. He gave me a weird smile and waved. I left him there and went back down to where April was waiting.

She called Cinder and we talked to her. "I made peace with Catchy. He doesn't want to come to the wedding though."

"Alright. Come home, my love." Cinder blew a kiss to me. "For better or for worse."

"Till death do us part." I said. As she hung up I felt like that was our vows.

Suddenly April was wide eyed and choking on a scream.

From behind, my death pierced my heart.