Page 87 of Best Served Cold

“Religious family?” he checked.

“Very. Grew up Evangelical. My parents have been trying to marry me off since I was eighteen.”

He wrinkled his forehead in confusion.

Zane wasn’t an expressive person. I wasn’t used to seeing this side of him. I liked it. How many other people got to see him let his guard down like this?

“Things are different where I grew up. Parents arrange marriages and they happen young. Last time I talked to my mom she had a girl picked out for me to court.”

“Court? Is this the eighteen hundreds?”

“That’s what good Christian kids do,” I said, my voice taking on a teasing quality as the high started to peak. “You court because dating is for sinners.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Courting is basically the step before being engaged. It’s dating with the intention of marrying. It cuts out all the middle stuff like getting to know the person and spending time together to make sure you’re compatible. It also takes away the possibility of getting your premarital sex on because you’re never allowed to be alone with the person. All the firsts happen at or after the wedding. First kiss, first front hug—”

“Front hug?”

“Yeah, like chest-to-chest hugging. Holding hands and side hugs are as scandalous as we were allowed to get.”

“That’s controlling.”

“Yup, but they don’t see it that way. It’s just what you do.”

“And you have a girl all lined up?”

I chuckled. “Yes, but no. My mom has one all lined up. I’d rather scrape my eyes out with a hot spoon than court her.”

“She ugly or something?”

“She’s sixteen.”

“The fuck?” he spluttered. It was the most animated I’d ever seen him. “Sixteen?” he repeated incredulously.

“Yup. She’s my mom’s best friend’s daughter.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

He wrinkled his nose. “That’s very illegal.”

“Not if her parents approve.”

“You said your sister has kids…”

“She was one of those girls.” I sighed and dug my heel into the ground. “Courted at sixteen, pregnant and married at seventeen, and a divorced single mom of two at twenty.”

“That’s fucked-up.”

“It is. At least I never really fit in.” I waved at my face in explanation. “No families were clamoring to marry their daughters off to a freak with face shrapnel, so I didn’t have to deal with the same kind of pressure other kids did.”

A new song started, a metal cover of “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne.

Zane bobbed his head along with the music.

“Is your family religious?” I asked tentatively, desperate for even a kernel of conversation or connection with him.

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