FULL NOVELXO Whose Bed Have Your Claws Been Under: Chapter 2
Paige was back in Petrified Woods, was she? If I wasn’t standing beside my best friend who was about to marry the woman he loved, I would pivot on my heel and stalk from the church.
Or stomp over to her and confront her.
Leave it to my old girlfriend—who abandoned me when I needed her most—to show her face in town once more.
I fumed, barely hearing the reverend going through the traditional vows, marrying my ogre friend to Monica. She sniffed and tears trickled down her cheeks, and it was so sweet, even I almost got caught up in the wonder.
If I believed in love, I might’ve, but the feeling had been stomped beneath Paige’s shoe when she raced from town, fleeing in the night without saying goodbye. I waited every day at the mailbox for over a month, hoping she’d send a letter. Explain. All I got from the experience was a solid lump in my gut and a wall of hurt around my heart.
“I now pronounce you man—er, ogre, that is, I do apologize—and wife,” the reverend said. “You may kiss the bride.”
Trevor carefully lifted Monica’s veil and cupped her cheeks. The audience sighed. Even Paige sniffed. I stood frozen beside my friend, trying not to shoot her a look that would literally turn her to stone. Could I capture the expression of shock she’d feel as her body solidified?
I should be over her by now. Nothing should hurt this much.
Yet my heart was cracking. I couldn’t seem to stop it from happening.
The music started again, and Monica and Trevor rushed down the aisle, their faces wreathed with smiles. The audience cheered.
Paige remained in place, staring forward as if I truly had turned her to stone. Only her hands trembled.
The basket of rose petals she held dropped from her hands, clattering on the altar.
If I was as hardened inside as I’d hoped, I’d turn and follow my friend, leave Paige standing alone like she’d left me ten years ago. But I guess I still had a tiny bit of squishiness left inside. I stepped over to her, picked up the basket, and held it out to her.
“This is yours,” I said.
“Darrow,” she cried.
I didn’t hear the pain in her voice. I didn’t see the shock on her face. And I didn’t feel the crusty walls of my heart still cracking.
“Damn you, Paige,” I hissed. “Why did you come here?”
“You’re supposed to be dead!”
Of all the things I thought she might say to me, that was the last. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The reverend cleared his throat at my slur. After shaking his finger at me, he puttered about at the altar.
I glared at Paige. “Is that the best you’ve got?”
“You don’t believe me?” she sounded horrified. Damn, but lies came easy to her. I was seeing someone I never had all those years we’d grown up together.
The rubber tip of a walking cane poked between us.
“Skedaddle, you two,” Grannie Vi said. “Everyone’s waiting to leave the church, and you two were supposed to follow the bride and groom. Get your rears in gear.”
She wasn’t my true grandmother; everyone just called her that. While she was Rylee, Gunner’s wife’s grannie and Trevor’s great-aunt, everyone in Petrified Woods had adopted her as their own. She loved all of us equally, something almost magical to those who felt they should be scorned.
Like me.
“If we don’t leave, we’ll miss out on the cake,” Uncle Bub said from beside her, lifting his cane to tap my spine. “That’s the whole point of a wedding, isn’t it?”
And he wasn’t my uncle. He’d come to town for the wedding, arriving a few days ago. He and Grannie Vi were dating, though there had to be a ten year age difference between them. Not that I cared about anything like that.
“He keeps me young,” Grannie confided in a too-loud whisper when she introduced us the other day.
Color had risen in his face, but he’d beamed and put his arm around her waist. Many of us could aspire to affection like that.
“Weddings are about more than cake, Bub,” Grannie Vi said, shooting him a grin. “I think you know that.”
I noted the new ring glistening on her left hand. Were they engaged?
“Go!” Grannie Vi herded us down the aisle with her cane, Uncle Bub hobbling along beside her.
Everyone else filed out of their pews, mingling behind us.
Outside, we paused on the front step. The sun poured down, making me sweat already. No, that was a result of seeing Paige.
Could I avoid her for the rest of the wedding weekend?
I’d asked Trevor why they weren’t leaving on their honeymoon right away, and he said something about wanting to visit with us. Once they left on Monday, I would too.
“Don’t hang out here,” Grannie Vi said, prodding us down the steps and out onto the walkway. “Keep going, you two.”
She kept at us on the path leading to the back of the castle, up the back stairs and inside, and down the hall to the foyer. There, she waved her cane to where Trevor and Monica stood in the front parlor getting their photos taken by the fireplace. “Don’t you need to get your pictures taken too?”
Probably.
Paige stoically didn’t look my way. She walked across the carpet with spine-tight dignity.
“Come on, Bub,” Grannie said, urging me to follow Paige. “There are party favors on the tables in the reception hall, and we need to find our seat assignment and grab what’s ours before someone else steals it.”
Grunting, he moved quickly behind her, aiming for the elevator that would take them to the second-floor ballroom where the reception was being held.
Inside the parlor, Gunner and Rylee stood near the windows, grinning at the wedding couple. They held hands, something I saw them doing all the time. They’d been married a few years and had a toddler son, Josh, though they’d left him with her mom. Gunner grew up in a nearby town and was a created monster like me, though he’d drank a strange brew versus the horror that had been visited upon me. Raze, Trevor’s ogre wedding planner, lived in Monsterville.
Raze stood to the side, watching benignly as Monica and Trevor posed. He nudged the bridge of his glasses higher on his nose, hiding his eyes.
Elisa, one of Monica’s friends, and the second wedding planner from Monsterville—I had no idea why they needed two—stood beside Raze, scowling at him rather than watching everyone else. She was human, however, not a monster.
We posed with and without the bride and groom, and my face ached from forcing a smile. Paige continued to ignore me, even when the photographer made us face each other and hold hands.
Finally, this wretched part of the day was over. Elisa steered us to the elevator and into the second-floor ballroom where everyone else sat at tables munching on appetizers.
“Head table, you four,” she said with a big smile. “Bride and groom in the middle, of course, but you two will sit together on their left side.”
I’d hoped we’d be separated by the happy couple.
“Right side,” Raze said. He’d followed us, scowling at Elisa while the elevator lifted us to the second floor.
“Left,” Elisa insisted, tension making her voice creak.
Monica and Trevor took their places.
“Right.” Raze urged us closer to the table while Elisa followed, grumbling.
We ended up to the left of the happy couple, and I was grateful Elisa and Raze hadn’t decided to duel it out before we took our seats.
I held out Paige’s chair for her to sit. I might be a gorgon now, but I did still remember the civil graces.
She thanked me politely, and as I settled on her right, she turned to chat with Monica.
I was miffed, though I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t want Paige to talk to me, did I? Listening to her insist she’d thought I was dead (really?) didn’t sound like my idea of a fun time.
Information like this could be looked up online. I graduated high school, started a business, and some of my stone artwork had been featured in the Petrified Woods Gazette. If she’d Googled my name, she would’ve seen that I was very much alive.
I’d missed her. The scientist changed me and not in a way I could welcome. I’d needed her strength and her reassurance that everything would be okay. My mom shunned me, moving out of town, and she’d done the same. Only Dad remained by my side.
Dinner was served, and we ate. Then the band started playing, and Monica and Trevor got up to slow dance. He kissed her to the cheers of the crowd, and then Monica waved our way.
Paige and I remained in our chairs.
Monica curled her fingers our way again, her eyebrows lifting.
“I think she wants us to dance,” Paige said, her voice harder than stone. If anyone knew what stone was, it was a gorgon. I could change anyone or anything into granite with one glance, though I’d finally learned to control it.
When I sighed, Paige winced. For a moment, I felt bad. I was being an asshole.
But then I remembered she’d left me when I needed her most.