The invitation surprised him. At first he felt more than a little unworthy, but finally he supposed that eight years were long enough to heal anything. Still, he felt weird about it. He couldn’t bring himself to decide if he should go until the very last minute, at which point he jumped into his car and drove the three hundred miles to Toronto and didn’t think about what he would do or say when he got there.
He arrived late and sat quietly in the back. The procession had already started and soon Emma entered his line of vision, radiant in her white dress and practically gliding on air as she floated down the aisle, making it nearly impossible to notice the groom at her side. An outdoor wedding with a feminist twist—Snake smiled at her public defiance of tradition.
The reception was awkward, as he expected, but Spike did acknowledge him even if she failed to hide her obvious shock at his presence. Snake noted that she had a date, but no ring. Then again, he had neither. He decided to refocus his attention; his eyes scanned across the crowd at a sea of mostly unfamiliar faces—Emma’s friends from college, coworkers, and just a handful of Degrassi alums that failed to include the one he was looking for.
The sun was setting as the party died down, and he walked leisurely along the road to where his car was parked—wondering, and not wondering. His breath caught when he saw her.
“Found you.” She had been leaning against a car that wasn’t his and walked towards him now with a bright smile and shining eyes, lovelier than ever. They stood facing each other in the middle of the empty road as pillars newly resilient to whatever forces might try to destroy them this time.
“How did you—”
“Manny mentioned it to me. And I thought… well. Here I am.”
Snake stared at her, dumbfounded. “After all these years…”
“Years never mattered to me,” she said.
Snake nodded. “You’re right.”
She studied him more intently, eyes searching. “You look exactly the same,” she concluded.
“Less hair.” Snake smiled. “More wrinkles.” He took a step closer to her and the sun was just dipping into the ground, painting the sky in a wild, fiery haze. “You look beautiful,” he added, and this time when she looked away shyly, the silence didn’t terrify him.
Finally Darcy looked up again. “So where were you going?”
It was a simple question, but he hesitated. Then he said, “I have no idea.”
She smiled and her eyes shone brighter than before. “Let’s go.”
His heart stirred a little as she reached for his hand and led him towards what he had been waiting his entire life to live.
1 comments:
Hey this isn't cliche. At least not as bad as you made it sound! CuTE! Still, they should have had sex and had babies.
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