Ellie had deemed it necessary to make Sarah's and my life hell in the weeks after I proposed to Sarah. She had decided on a pastor based on the availability of one to place the wedding on Christmas Day. Sarah had declared it that she always wanted to marry on Christmas Day, so it was set for then, and Ellie wanted to give Sarah enough time to heal, even though she was mostly healed except that the scars needed time to form. But, it was nice having someone else plan the majority of the wedding.
We had been waiting for a caterer to bring the testing food. Awesome, Ellie, and Morgan insisted on helping us decide which were better. So, we were sitting at the table sipping a sweet Merlot and talking about other wedding plans.
"I'm going to need you two to decide what you want for your wedding presents. I'll also need your guest list by the end of the week. I'll make sure that everyone sits by each other that RVSPs, but we have to know first."
"Thank you so much, Ellie," Sarah said, smiling warmly, but I could see that she really wanted Ellie to settle down.
"I'm so sorry. I'm sounding like the Awesomes."
"You just need to calm down, Ellie. I know that you can get really excited, but I'm actually enjoying the fact that you are and I can't right now, and that you can take the reins and go places for me," Sarah replied, sincerity in her voice.
"I'm really trying to work on not being so happy when something like this happens." Ellie began jumping in her chair.
"Ellie, it's fine. It's nice that you are letting me have my choice while still taking care of everything for me."
"Do you know where your father is? I was wondering if you wanted him to walk you down the aisle."
"Well, he's working for a business in France, and I haven't talked to him since I've graduated. I don't really need him to walk me down the aisle."
"Then who do you want to walk you down the aisle?"
"I'll try to see if my father will do it," I offered.
"I'll walk down by myself. It really is alright," Sarah corrected, leaning into the table to have a sip of wine. I watched her, and when she stopped, she smiled at me. I smiled back before taking my own wine and chugging half of it.
"Man, all I have is Anna, and we break up so often. It gets serious, but then she chickens out."
"No, Morgan, you chicken out, and then she leaves you. You still haven't moved in with her," I reasoned, bored of the same conversation.
"And you just did, with Sarah. I mean, why can't I ever have a steady girlfriend?"
"Maybe it's because you are so forward with girls, and you wave the freak flag too soon. You need to ease her into it," I responded. "Morgan, you know I'm right, so just go back into your own mind and ponder what you should do with Anna." It was harsh, but I was hungry and exhausted from wedding plans.
Fortunately, Morgan's attention was brought to the coming food. The caterers took over the kitchen and began to dole out the food onto the plates.
"First, we have some chicken dinners for you to try," the main chef said in a French accent (But he didn't own a French restaurant). "The first is Apricot Chicken."
It went on like this for another hour, trying this meat in different sauces and this meet in different sauces. We finally decided on Chicken Marsala with sides of rosemary potatoes and mushrooms. We then moved into their wide selection of dessert, deciding to pick out three: Raspberry Cheesecake, beet red due to the fact that it was covered in raspberry sauce, Chocolate Fudge cake, a five-layer cake of nothing but moist layers of chocolate cake with a large layer of fudge alternating in between them, and the main dessert, a Red Velvet Cake with too much icing, but deliciously moist where it melted in my mouth at room temperature. The caterers gave a ballpark estimate before delightfully bowing and exiting the apartment. Morgan, barely able to drive home in the DeLorean, left immediately without so much as a sip of wine. Ellie and Awesome, stuffed from all of the foods, went to their bedroom to sleep, leaving me and Sarah in each other's tense presence.
She slowly sipped her wine, finishing off her third glass of the night, albeit it had been a long one. I had finished my one long ago, and I watched her finish the glass slowly. But when she was nearing the end, she stuck it out in front of me and said, "Do you want a sip?"
I leaned forward and put my mouth to the lip of the glass, and she tipped it into my mouth. I gulped the rest down and sat back up. She set the glass down and turned back to me: "I'm going to take a bath," she declared, slowly getting up. I stood up instinctively and grabbed her just before she started wobbling. We made our way to the bathroom, a fight ensuing where she didn't want my help, but needing it with every step. "I can get it from here," she answered after I set her on the toilet.
"Sarah, you can't get it yourself. I would know because you only stood up and couldn't support yourself. You don't need to prove yourself to me." So, I once again helped her get her clothes off and set her in the tub. Ellie was finally able to get ahold of some medicinal bath salts, which were helping her burns heal all the faster.
Once again, she hissed when her thighs and calves hit the water, but she didn't say anything more. I (once again), sat down next to the bath, holding onto her now ringed hand. I turned her hand slightly to look at it again. It somehow managed to sparkle in the dimmed light in the bathroom. I noticed her watching me, and I chuckled softly at the momentary irony, broken by her question.
"It's just that I was watching you, and now you are watching me," I answered, staring her in the face. "I'm just a little bored, so I'm noticing little things like that."
"Are you bored of taking care of me? Because I don't need that much help."
"Sarah, you need help getting around. It won't last long. You have just lost a lot of muscle, so you need to regain it. It won't that long for you; I can tell that. But, yeah, I'm bored of waiting around for you to finish your bath, or wait for you to finish eating so I can go back and do what I want to do. I'm tired of constantly dressing you, and I know that it's hard for you, especially because I'm the first person you've been in love with that has seen you naked, but I know that I have to out of debt because of all of the times you have saved my life."
"How are my burns?" she asked quickly, trying to change the subject, and I knew that tears would soon come if she didn't change it.
"Because you were wearing clothes in between the pipe and your skin, they won't leave much mark. They were just first-degree burns, so it won't be that bad. Sarah, why ever did you say yes to getting married to me?" The last statement was in the same rhythmic business-like tone from the other two.
"Because I love you, Chuck. When we had that mission in the suburbs, I realized that it was my calling to be with you, whether it meant being at home or out in the world. That I was meant to marry you and be with you, no matter what."
"So you did it because you knew that it was right for you, not because you wanted to?"
"Chuck, in the suburbs, I realized what it would be have you in my life constantly, and make sure that you were taken care of before me. That would always be my priority. I knew that you were worth being married to because I would always choose you over anyone else, making your safety my first priority." She smiled at me again, in that small, unsure smile.
"And you are sure you really want to do this?"
"Chuck, I'm not bailing on this one."