"I left him/her at the alter." // "Will you be my maid of honour/best man?" // "Are you proposing to me?" // "Till death do us part." // "You can't spend the rest of your life with someone you don't love."
“I left him at the altar.”
As much as he didn’t want to give Clarke the satisfaction of knowing that she had any effect on him, her words made him pause. His hands froze in the process of packing up all of his things, and he glanced over at her. She was a bit of a mess. She was wearing the clothes he had seen her in earlier, and her hair had been haphazardly taken down from what he assumed was her wedding hairstyle leaving it in waves. Her face was the real give away that her words were true though. It was easy to tell that she had been crying, her eyes red rimmed with tear stains streaking her cheeks. If he wasn’t still so angry about the whole situation he would have tried to comfort her, but he was. It was still fresh in his mind how she had told him to leave. How the two of them were never going to happen. That the two of them had been a mistake since the beginning. With those thoughts in his head he turned back to his packing. “Finally decide to stand up for yourself? Good for you.” He replied without even turning to look at her. “I’m not sure why you’re telling me though.”
“Will you be my Maid of Honor?”
She wanted to laugh. After all, this had to be some sort of sick joke right? The girl that she had spent most of her college career fucking and sleeping in her bed every night asking her to be her maid of honor? She couldn’t be serious. But one look into Celeste’s eyes, and she knew that she wasn’t. What could make her think that she wanted to do this? Yes, their “relationship” or whatever they could call it, had ended a couple of years ago, and yes they had still remained close friends since college, but why would she want to be her maid of honor? Did Celeste not see the way that Talisa was sure she still looked at her? The way that she hated her future husband because she knew that Celeste could do so much better? Did she not see how much the fact that the girl she was in love with was marrying someone else killed her? Talisa had planned to stay as far away from this wedding as possible so she didn’t do some fucked up shit to mess up her friend’s happiness, and now Celeste was trying to make her a vital part of it. It wouldn’t end well for either of them. “Uh, are you sure that’s a great idea?”
“Are you proposing to me?”
“We don’t get married.” Tamara replied, as she continued to brush her hand through her lover’s hair. “We’ve always considered it a primitive ceremony. Back when it first started the only reasons anyone ever got married were either to a, get some money from a dowery, or combine two families for financial purposes and b, to make a man have control over a woman. Say what you want about Vampires, but we’ve always considered the sexes equal.” It was true. Male Vampires and female Vampires were equal in power so why would one be more important just because he was a male? While after so many years Tamara became aware of how the concept of marriage has changed, and it was now much more important and equal to humans, the majority of Vampires still hadn’t changed their views on it. “There’s also the whole thing where I don’t have a real social security card, ID, or anything that you actually need to get a marriage license.” She teased, tugging playfully on the other girl’s hair. “Vampires have their own ritual. It’s more … eternally binding and is done by a witch, and since you are going to become a Vampire … Would you have me?” She asked, her dark eyes gentle and shining with love.
“Till death do us part.”
The significance of those words were not lost on Lee. For a normal couple, they were easy to say because for them, death was somewhere far, far away in the future. Most couples weren’t in danger almost every day of their lives. That wasn’t the case for Bronwyn and him. With the nature of his job, every day there was the possibility that it would be the last together. Around any corner that they traveled down, there was the chance that someone would be waiting at the end of it to end his life, and hers along with it just for being with him. It wasn’t the life he wanted for her. She was too good, too pure, too kind to have her life risked every day. As much as he wished it could be different, he knew it couldn’t. He was too selfish. He loved her too much, and she loved him too much to let each other go. She was reaffirming that with her words as they crouched behind the building, unaware of what they could be walking into. He leaned forward to press his lips against the smooth skin of her forehead, lingering there for a moment to take in her flowery, comforting scent before pulling away and slipping a gun into her hand. “Till death do us part.” Lee repeated.
“You can’t spend the rest of the life with someone you don’t love.”
Well, after a month of dating, it had finally reached the point where they had to have the talk about exes. Of course the obvious one was Lily’s mother. It had been in the back of her mind from the moment that she felt attracted to him and got the inkling that he felt the same. She didn’t want to just be some sort of replacement or rebound for Lily’s mother and his ex. She was old enough now that she wanted to start her life with someone who loved her, someone who wanted a life and family with her. Not someone who was just going to use her as a second choice when the first didn’t work out. It was why she wanted to have this talk sooner rather than later, and now she was glad that they did. His words were a comfort that was for sure. The fact that he said he didn’t love her was a balm to her anxiety about the situation. She could feel her body relaxing against his side, and her hand found his knee, giving it a gentle squeeze. She still had questions for him though.“If you knew that you didn’t love her, why did you keep on staying with her?” She asked out of curiosity. Maybe it was the hopeless romantic in her, but she couldn’t imagine being in a relationship with someone she didn’t love with every fiber of her being.