Page 81 of Your Chorus
23Read My Mind || The Killers
ROXANNE
One Year Later
“Christe alors,I’m getting married.”
I mutter the words to myself as I step into my dress and pull it up to cover my bare shoulders. I meet my own gaze in the huge, full-length mirror on the wall, and for a second, I don’t recognize myself.
My hair has been dyed back to its natural coffee hue and twisted up into an elaborate arrangement around a crown of dark green leaves. I asked the makeup artist to keep my face simple, but she somehow managed to make me look like some kind of European fashion model even with just muted browns and chastely stained lips.
“T’es qui?” I whisper to the girl in the mirror. “Who are you?”
She blinks back at me, her eyes wide with something that looks close to panic. She’s trembling, her whole body seeming to vibrate with the frantic threat of a trapped animal about to break loose and run.
She looks like a scared little girl in a wedding dress that’s slipping down her shoulders.
“What am I doing?”
I can’t go out there looking like this. I’m not a bride. I want to rip the stupid leaves out of my hair, wipe the makeup off on the clean white skirt of my dress, and get as far away from this place as I can.
I’m just a runaway. I’m just some girl Cole found in the gutter. I can’t walk out there like this.
I don’t know where these thoughts are coming from. I was so excited for this moment that I could barely sleep last night. I couldn’twaitto slip this dress on, to see myself all done up the way I’d been imagining for months. People had to keep tapping me on the shoulder and calling my name all morning because all I could do was stand there imagining Cole’s face at the end of the aisle, trying to predict exactly what his expression would be when he first set eyes on me.
Now, though, as I stand here on the cusp of the moment I’ve been picturing for so long, I realize I’ve just been pretending. I went along with everything like I was acting in a play, only to look around me and realize there is no stage. There is no script.
This is real. This is happening. This is my wedding.
I jump at the sound of the changing room door being cracked open.
“I’m coming in now!” Monroe’s voice sings out.
I twist my head over my shoulder to look at her as she steps inside and shuts the door behind her, the emerald green bridesmaid’s dress she’s wearing swishing around her legs. Her hand flies to her mouth when she sees me, and her eyes instantly glass over with tears.
“Roxy...” she murmurs between her fingers. “You look...”
I feel a burning at the corners of my eyes. I try to blink the tears back and just end up forcing them out.
“Tabarnak,” I swear, my voice watery. “Don’t make me wreck my makeup.”
She digs around in her clutch and pulls out a tissue, coming forward to dab at my eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” she tells me.
“I’m terrified,” I confess.
She leaves my makeup alone and instead reaches to grab hold of my wrist.
“You’re getting married, Roxy,” she says sternly. “Of course you’re scared. Hell,I’mscared. You’re supposed to feel that way. The best decisions are usually the scariest ones.”
“I just...I don’t feel like enough. I don’t deserve him. I’ve hurt him so much. What if I hurt him again?”
I expect her to soften, but she drops my wrist and jabs a finger at my shoulder.
“You remember why you got this?”
She’s pointing at my tattoo, the one that’s just visible under the lace cap sleeve of the dress. Hardly anyone can tell what it is. I wanted it to be subtle; most people who look at the design just see a thin, circular swirl of ink that looks like it was made by a paintbrush.
