Page 39 of Bind Me
It took her a second to remember. She glanced at the mat. “You were busy punching people.”
“Now I’m not.” His hand slid down her side.
She sighed. “I usually love spreadsheets.”
“And today?”
“Today I want to throw my laptop out the window.” She picked at a seam in her dress. “There are so many decisions, and they’re all urgent. Who agreed to this timeline?”
The mat reverberated with a heavy impact, followed by a grunt.
“So let Adriana decide.”
“I could. But I want to do my part.”
Rafael tilted her chin up so he could speak directly into her eyes. “Your part is to show up.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Fair?” he repeated, thumb dragging across her midriff. “For who?”
“You,” she said, as if it were obvious. She fished in her pocket and pulled out a clean tissue, blotting the sweat from his face.
“How is you stressing over napkins ‘fair’ to me?”
“It’s my contribution,” she insisted. “You pay, I make sure we get what we want. Fair.”
“You think I want fair? I just want you.”
He slid both hands around her waist, his fingers meeting easily at the small of her back. Bea went weak in a way she refused to analyze. “I’m already getting everything I want out of this wedding. The part where you walk toward me.”
Chapter Ten
They’d taken the video call in Rafael’s home office, which in hindsight might’ve been a mistake. His screen was massive. Ultra-high-def, surround-sound, fully immersive. The faces of all four of their parents were life-sized, and somehowlargerthan life in opinion, volume, and bandwidth.
On the left, Leon and Selene Griffin sat framed by orchids and marble in their Malaysian hotel suite, like the final bosses of luxury. On the right, Umma and Papa sat in their Toronto dining room, twin tea cups and an aggressively floral tablecloth between them.
Rafael sat beside her in a long-sleeve army-green henley, one hand on her thigh as though this were a casual catch-up and not a multi-continent broadcast.
“How do you feel about a combing ceremony?” Selene suggested, and it was not even the weirdest thing she’d been asked in the conversation.
“You have one of those, too?” Umma straightened like she’d just spotted a rival dish at a potluck.
“We brush hair, give blessings, pin something symbolic in,” Selene answered. “Leon’s mother did it for me.”
“We have something similar in Korea,” Umma said.
Selene leaned forward. “Then I propose a merger.”
“We do together?” Umma asked, intrigued.
Bea was starting to feel like a Barbie caught in the middle of an elite international styling challenge, except she actually liked the stylists and trusted them not to give her bangs. She raised a hand like she was in a lecture. “Umm, this is allbeforethe actual ceremony?”
“Yes,” both mothers said in perfect sync.
Selene turned to Leon. “Darling, do you remember that small silver olive-leaf piece your mother wore?”
Leon nodded. “She wore it to Mass every Sunday. And to yell at us in the car afterward.”
