A few weeks after my father woke up, he reassessed himself ready to return to work. He was up and walking and talking, and I was glad for that. The house was little more than a place to dump our depression. No matter how man windows I opened or flowers I brought in from the over grown garden the atmosphere was still heavy.
Deidara spent his time at a job he'd got at a convince store, I surmised it was just to get out of the house while I took care of my mom. She was awake, she'd woken up a day or so after my father, but unlike him she'd probably never walk again. I spent my days trying to take care of her and cleaning. Helping her get in and out of the wheel chair, cooking her meals, calling companies to get estimates for a ramp outside, a chair lift for the stairs, those bars to help herself use the bathroom, everything that went along with it.
My stitches had long since been removed ( with no nerve damage!) and Deidara had removed his own cast, claiming his arm was fine and it had had long enough to heal. Four out of six weeks looked like all I was going to get out of the stubborn blond. As long as he could use it I guessed it was fine.
I'd been learning a fair bit of accounting type stuff from my mom took I had a basic grasp on credit scores, how to deal with insurance companies and how to pay a bill, not to mention balance a check book.
When I wasn't taking care of my mother and the house I was painting. The room downstairs off the living room that had once been a sort of office for my parents became their bedroom and Deidara and I moved into the master bedroom. One side of the larger room was for the bed and dresser, but the other side became a sort of shrine to our work. My once nightstand was now a pedestal for clay workings and a paint palate. Eventually an old sheet had to be put out of its misery to be used as a drop cloth to keep spatter from ruining the carpet.
I was more diligent about laundry now (since I was doing it all) so the floor was otherwise clean, and each work of our art found it's way onto a wall or a shelf, neatly I might add. It was safe to say I'd become my mother.
I was in the middle of a portrait of Shep when Deidara entered our room. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he stripped off his work shirt and lay down on our bed.
"Long day?" I asked.
"Yeah," he replied flatly.
"Isn't tonight date night? We haven't been on a date in forever," I put down my paintbrush in a glass of paint remover and excused myself for a second to wash my hands. When I returned I lay down next to him.
"Where do you wanna go?" He asked, turning his head to look at me. I pressed my lips into a thin line as I thought. Where did I wanna go? Not a movie, not dinner. My lips unfolded from their crease and upturned in a satisfied smilie, this had to be my best idea yet. I knew exactly where now.
"Let's go to Vegas," the thought of it made me giggle. It was completely ridiculous but I was completely serious. I could almost see him pulling up information in his head like a filing cabinet to remember what I was talking about.
"I thought Las Vegas was only in movies," he laughed a bit too, "but yeah, right, that sounds fun."
I could tell by the way he spoke he thought it was a joke.
"No, really, we have a little money, we got our last pay checks from South Carolina, you have last weeks paycheck. We could sleep in my car, take turns driving," I paused for a second to think about if I really wanted to say what I was about to say, "we could get married."
He sat up on his elbows and looked at me very serious.
"You wanna run away and get married?" His eye brows were raised and his mouth parted slightly in disbelief.
"Yeah, I mean, not like were doing anything else," I joked," I'll leave a note if you pack a bag. We can cash the checks tomorrow morning and be there in a few days."
"You really wanna do this?" He asked, sitting up fully now with his right leg on the floor, his left folded under him.
"Now or never," I said firmly. That got him going. He went to the closet and started tearing down cloths and shoving them in an old school bag of mine. I found some of my college stuff on the shelf and wrote a note, telling my parents where we were going and apologizing, and telling them we'd be back soon. We were down the stairs in seconds, bypassing my sleeping mother, and were out the driveway in a few more seconds. My dad wasn't home yet, it wasn't quite five, so it was easy enough to leave.
"I'm so excited, oh my god," I gushed, "I can't believe were doing this."
My foot felt like lead as I got on the highway, heading south. We had three hundred and seventy five dollars, a car with good gas mileage and a full tank off gas and I couldn't give less of a shit about anything at that moment.
I didn't care that Christmas had been non existent and New Years had simply been passed off, I didn't care about the fit my mom would be having in a few hours or the heavy sigh my father would heave. It felt good not to care.
We drove all night on nothing but each other and rock and roll on our radio. At five am we rolled into a grocery store, cashed our checks and bought a big bag of chips. Dei and I shared a favorite flavor of chips, so the choice was easy. What wasn't easy was picking a route to Nevada, there weren't really any road signs besides the ones labeled south west. It was about thirty two hours nonstop to Las Vegas, though with our breaks, distractions and Ill-managed maps, it took about four days, each of us taking turns driving for two hours until we found a place to stop. Some truck stops offered showers, some free overnight parking and almost all of them were close to a McDonnalds. We had no schedule. We pulled off and slept if we got tired, drove though the night if we wanted, held each others hands and threw caution to the wind and the ever changing landscape.
"I think we should go to this red canyon national park first, so then we can roll into the strip at night and see the lights," I suggested from behind a pair of cheep gas station sunglasses. My fiancé, soon to be husband hummed in response.
US 70 had treated us pretty good. The highway crossed America by cutting straight through the center, taking us though state after state of farm land until it dumped us onto US 15. That highway took us into Nevada, an hour and forty minutes away from our first stop.
"On the way back we should see more stuff. Roswell is a real place right? With the aliens?" Deidara asked as he used his turn signal to get over. He'd become so confident, able once again to sit behind the wheel. I laughed a bit before I answered.
"Okay," and it was set, just like that in a fraction of a second. Maybe it wasn't life in Deidara's world I missed, maybe it was just the spontaneous nature if it all.
"Do you think their are jobs where we can travel all the time?" I asked, this was the first I'd spoken of jobs in a long time. I wasn't sure if it would ruin the mood or not.
"I dunno, I guess," it was then I noticed that my handsome blond lover had lost his speech impediment. I'd say something about it later, but not now.
"Let's get one, I love this," I sighed, content this time. I dug around in our car full of trash for the remainder of a two liter and one of those cupcakes with the little swirls on top. It was true that I was sore from being cramped up in the car and it was true truck stops did not have the greatest showers but none of that mattered to me. To a pervious me it probably would have, but pervious me wasn't here anymore.
We arrived at red canyon national park at four, parked our car and stretched for a bit before we hit the hiking trail. As the rocks crunched under our feet we were silent, looking around and enjoying the elevated breathing rates and sights. It was so nice to just be here together, to pretend we were the only people on earth. I held his hand and he held mine.
The dirt was as red as the rocks here, like god himself had taken a paintbrush and went crazy with one of his least used colors. Sometimes you could see for miles and other times it was hard to see up the walls of mineral slab on either side of you. Paths carved out so straight it could have been done with a dull knife.
A half an hour later we were perched on a rock overlooking the dry dusty low lands, about a hundred feet down was sage brush and cacti. With the farthest view we'd found all day this looked like a good stop to break from the hiking trail that only went up. A ways away what I could only describe as mountains sprung up from the flat, the contours and shadows of every rock that aided in it's creation made to look like you could reach out and feel the roughness, like when you pulled your hand back your finger tips would be covered in red chalk. We'd seen a few other people today, but not enough to bother us or distract from nature, something I didn't know I'd liked until today.
"May, look," Deidara whispered, slowly raising his hand to point at something on a close by ridge. Fallowing his finger tip I found a pair of horses skillfully traversing the difficult terrain.
"Oh," I gasped. We'd seen a few signs around asking people not to terrorize the wild life, but I had no idea that included wild horses. Lean bodies covered in clay dust made a mockery of tame horses. The sun set just right, creating light enough to shine over their bodies and cast lanky shadows of them and the surrounding rocks. They moved quick and nimbly though a pass between formations before they disappeared.
"There was a yellow one and a darker one, did you see?" prying my eyes away from the living canvas I turned to my fiancé.
"No, I was just watching them, oh my god, it was so pretty," I answered. That had actually just happened! He didn't reply, a smilie ghosting over his lips, corners up turning until he leaned in to kiss me.
It was short but very sweet, it left me gasping for breathe and I didn't know why. He was still smiling and I could feel it spreading to my face too.
"Come on, it'll take us a while to walk back, it'll be dark at six," he broke eye contact, more like forcing himself to, hopping down from the rock and holding out a hand to help me down. With a twenty minute drive, we'd be there right as the lights turned on.
I could see the glow of the nights before I could actually see them. The first noticeable thing was the miniature eiffle tower and then the billboards exhibiting girls and gambling. Hotels towered an uncountable number of stories high, lit by gigantic pink flamingos and advertising boards. We found time to get out of the car and watch the water show outside Caesar's Palace, grouped with hundreds of other people walking down the street. I wasn't entirely sure what time we resumed walking, it was almost as if time stopped, waiting for us.
It was hard to read everything, signs flashed faster than it took to waste three hours, I'd gotten so lost in strobe lights if failed to notice where we'd stopped. At first I'd thought the flashing red hearts were cute until I read the cursive writing plastered on them. My stomach knotted. The grip on my hand tightened and I knew Dei was feeling the same way.
"Are you sure you wanna do this?" He asked me, he sounded like his mouth was dry and his breathe was caught in his throat.
"Yes," I responded, having to clear my own throat before hand just so I could speak.
The neon lights from outside continued inside as I took a seat. This place looked kind if dated, from the seventies maybe, and I wasn't sure if it was genuinely old or if it was a theme. It was pretty early in the night, not too many people around and a fairly short line. My fiancé returnedrom the front desk with a piece of paper and a pair of pens. He flashed me a stressed looking smilie and explained that we were going to fill this out, the chapel was gonna send it in, and it's all set. We'd get our marriage certificate in the mail. I felt my hand shake as I signed my name. Copies of our IDs were made and all of a sudden we were in this room with a conservatively dressed man and being asked if we understood this was real. I guessed this man was the pastor after he started reading off some bullshit about eternal love. I felt somewhere between petrified, mortified and disoriented, my heart beating out of control in my chest. Was it too late for my otherwise blank mind to have second thoughts?
"May," I nearly jumped. Dei was speaking to me?
"I wanted to write you something beautiful, but uh, I didn't like it no matter what I wrote. I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you've stuck by me, were both crazy but you mean so much to me, I know you already know, but uh, I wanted to say it. You light something inside me that's better than any firework or piece of clay. I never want to be anywhere else but with you. Here's to forever," he was smiling weekly as his voice shook. I was on the edge of tears.
"You mean just as much to me," I whipped my eye with my wrist, fighting back tears to finish my vows, "your so, stubborn and, and foreword, and I know you really have to think about doing things for other people, and I love that. Oh god," I gasped, "I would love forever."
He was so gentle as he took my hand, having to let go of the one he'd previously been holding to take something that could only be a ring out of his pocket. He slipped the earth colored band onto my finger and let me admire it a second before he kissed me. Before the pastor man had even said it was okay. I fell apart, salty tears streaming down my face as he crushed himself ageist me. This kiss was so tender, so slow, his lips felt like petals as they pushed on my own, it was quick, just like the last one, and again left me wanting more. My chest could have exploded. The next thing I remembered was standing outside the chapel, ring on my finger with his last name. We faced the street, cars crawling by in traffic, hand in hand yet again. More lights had come on and The Strip was alive, but all I could hear was my heart still pounding.
"We just got married," I muttered, barely audible over the city.
"We just got married," my fiancé, no, my husband affirmed.
"I feel lucky," I breathed.
"I've seen a guy in a movie play roulette," I turned to him just as he turned to me, the look we gave each other describable as awe. The next thing I knew we were seated in some casino, surrounded by people, watching a tiny white ball bounce on a checkered wheel, ticking with every pass of every number. Slower and slower the wheel spun, looking down I counted the number of chips on the black spots on the table, and then the number on the red spots, a few red chips, a few greens, and then a single purple on unlucky thirteen. I looked down to notice we were the only ones out of chips and vaguely remembered getting a couple when we came in. That tiny, round, plastic circle was litterally our last hundred dollars with no way to get it back.
My chest tightened, my mouth was open in a silent scream. This couldn't be happening!
The people all around us shot up, cheering wildly, my attention snapped to the wheel which had come to rest. I felt an arm snake around my waist and pull me close, attached to the same man I'd spend the rest of my life with,
"I think we just won five thousand dollars."