Walking on Thin Ice: Chapter 25

"Thanks again, Terry." Mike said, clapping a hand to his friend's shoulder.

Terry shrugged. "No problem, Mike. And make sure you have lots of fun, eh? Can't have you coming back in a rotten mood with Gemma." He winked.

Mike laughed. "We were never in a rotten mood, I-well, look. I'll explain when I get back." He winked back elaborately.

For a split-second, Mike wanted to blurt out that he was going to marry her. Him! Of all people so lucky enough to get in a car crash and meet the girl of their dreams, he was the one! Just looking at Terry's concerned smile made him want to shake the man and yell in his ear. "ME! I'M THE ONE SHE WANTS!" A snicker escaped Terry as a smile spread over Mike's face.

"Puppy love," he murmured, and Mike smiled wider.

"Adios," he murmured and slipped inside his car, turning to go.

After dropping the car off in Noah's garage and hitching a ride on the bus to the airport, Mike walked into the terminal and began looking urgently for Gemma. He could see a bit of reddish brown hair in the distance, shining in the skylight, and when he jogged closer, he was relieved to see it was Gemma, perched atop a bench seat's back, her hair flowing to her knees as she impatiently braided it, all swept to one side. Once done she undid the braid and began again until Mike took her hand and led her to the boarding area, waiting for them to announce it was time to board. A friendly voice instructed them to have a wonderful flight, and they surged ahead with a few dozen others, waiting to find their seats and put bags into overhead compartments. Instead of a regular book to occupy her, Gemma had brought along an ancient camera, one that had rolls of film as big as her fist and were easily and quickly developed. Jonas had called it their express camera when he had bought it, and used it when there was a huge event to take pictures at and he needed multiple prints, such as the first time he'd dragged her on stage with him. She smiled vaguely and continued to blow dust from the compartments.

"I thought," she explained quickly, "we could send some photos from the wedding back to our family and such just to let them know what happened. Then we go away to Harrisville and we see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil until July fifth. How does that sound?" She asked, glancing up as the third party member of their row took her seat. Mike nodded decisively, kissing the side of Gemma's head.

"Love it,"

The woman that had taken her seat was dressed in an all-black dress suit, a set of intelligent black glasses on her face, her black hair tied in a tight bun. She stretched her short legs and pulled a yellow legal pad from her black leather briefcase along with a black pen with a strange insignia on it. She nibbled the end of the pen before carefully writing, in perfectly legible handwriting, "Travel Agency Thirty One has gotten me in a business class seating along with a few of the locals. They are friendly but generally quite reserved. The transit was impeccable if it were not for the many mammals that decided to spoil my descent from the hills to town. Next stop, Montpelier, from there, Chicago." She paused, then returned her legal pad and pen to her briefcase, casting a glance to Gemma and Mike, who were absorbed in the camera.

"Do you suppose that every piece in it should be back in it for it to work properly?" Gemma snickered and snapped a piece in she'd missed before, and then she lifted the heavy camera, testing by taking a picture of a very innocent-looking Mike. He smiled as the flash blinded him, and gave a thumbs up to the back of the seat, unsure exactly where Gemma had gone in his momentary loss of vision.

The woman retrieved her legal pad as the plane lifted into the air and she sat with a sigh, waiting for something to write about.

Gemma was next to the window, Mike in the middle, the woman on the end, and when the stewardess stopped in to see how they were doing, she couldn't have picked a worse time.

"Everything all right in here?" She asked with a thick Italian accent, and Gemma could only blush in horror as her foot slipped when the plane banked and she fell across her row's laps. Looking up into a stranger's eyes, she smiled blankly.

"Can I get out?" She asked, and the woman barked out a laugh before standing and letting Gemma out. With a quick thank you, Gemma scurried to the bathroom and took a hair band from her pocket, trying hard to put her hair up without a brush. A few times she thought she had it, but it wasn't until ten minutes later she felt confident enough to leave the security of the tiny room and carefully slid back into her seat. Mike turned to the stranger.

"So, what's taking you to Montpelier?" He asked in what he hoped was a friendly voice.

She eyed him with surprise. "I am a travel writer. I go all around the world for free and get paid to write about what I see and how people act in the places I go."

Mike looked flabbergasted. "They pay you?"

She smiled, American accent unplacable. "Oh yes! People want to know where to go if they want to be left alone, accepted, a place they can move to with little or no transition, you know, all that! And last year I went to Madagascar to tour the zoos-"

"What a great job," Mike muttered, easing back into his seat, surprised he'd sat up that far in the first place.

Gemma leaned forward. "Where are you from?"

The woman smiled. "All over the place. I was born in Indiana, if you must know."

Nodding, Gemma smiled back. "I was just trying to figure out where your accent fit with. You sound like you come from the newscaster land."

She laughed. "Wonderful; just when I thought I could pass off as a native I forget to apply my accent and get profiled. Perfect!"

Gemma applied her own accent, somewhat like a Canadian, somewhat like a native of Northern Wisconsin or Michigan. "Well, accents are the only thing that allows us to profile when nothing else can help you further. To you we must look like a couple of vacationers."

She nodded. "And are you?"

They both shrugged. "I dunno what you'd call us. We're running away for two weeks, trying to get away from our families, just having some time alone to think. Besides, we don't exactly plan to tour anything; we were in Montpelier at Mount Xavier in December." Gemma shrugged again.

The woman looked at her attire. "I look like a lawyer that runs a mortuary on the side."

"And are you?" Mike blurted, smiling as she laughed.

"Yes," she answered seriously, and they laughed again.

"What are your names?" She asked after a good pause.

"I'm Mike, and that's Gemma." He jabbed a finger over his shoulder to her.

The woman scribbled this onto her notepad, and extended a hand. "Karen Jenson."

The pause was supposed to include a welcome, but they had glanced at each other with silly grins, and suddenly Karen noticed that the man had his hand in a death grip with the woman's, and poking from her hand was a gem the size of a knuckle.

"Oh, eloping are you?" She smiled and felt a pang of jealousy stab at her as the woman, Gemma, peeled off into giggles.

"It was the last name that killed me," Gemma giggled again, "I could have just said Thompson, but I didn't want to!"

Mike laughed. "It all has to do with your middle name anyway. What is it?"

Gemma scowled at him. "Jane, blech!"

He snickered "Gemma Jane? Ooooh!"

She swatted at him as Karen frantically scribbled some of their antics down on paper. She'd already written a healthy paragraph or two about the caretaker of the inn she'd stayed in, and how ghosts and poltergeists weren't uncommon in the ancient place. Why not this adorable couple?

"Michael Edward!" She had retorted.

He made a face. "Ed. What a name."

"Better than Harry," she said wisely, and then she noticed that Karen was writing furiously.

"Are you writing about us crazy natives or what?" She asked, smiling as she looked up.

With a small smile, Karen nodded. "I have to mention some of the neater people I meet. You two have to be the most interesting thing that's happened to me so far."

"Must have been a pretty boring trip," Mike commented, and Gemma giggled again.

Gemma snapped her fingers. "I never got that damn article from Amir! Did you?"

He shook his head. "I got nothing. Probably forgot."

"Maybe he got sacked for trying to print a picture of us on the couch-" Mike held up a hand to cut her off.

"Please, Gem, don't mention that again, eh? It's bad enough we found out we'd been stalked, why rehash the fact half of L.A. may know what we were doing for a week?"

She scoffed. "We didn't do anything. Straight from the books, aren't we? Picture-perfect, UGH!"

A few people glanced at them curiously, and she shook a fist at them, unconcerned as they gave her alarmed looks.

For the rest of the trip it was paranormally quiet. It was like a cold dust had settled on them and no one moved or spoke for nearly half an hour, then Gemma stood up and grabbed her hair.

"No Toto! Don't get in the car with the clown! He's not right in the HEEEAAAAAD!" She wailed and tried to reach for "Toto," but Mike had stood and grabbed her shoulder with a blush. Once again Karen scribbled onto her legal pad, fighting laughter while the others flat out howled.

The unbearable silence broken, Gemma managed to fall asleep for the rest of the flight, awakening as Mike tried to buckle her in for the landing without waking her. She swatted his hands away carefully and buckled herself, giving him a look that clearly said, "I know you only cared because you got to touch me." It was a kidding face though, and he could only smile uneasily as she threw more of the same at him.

They landed easily after the runway had been cleared of geese, and walked into the terminal to scout for Joe and Martha, together this time they had promised. A figure ahead jumped up and down, and he urgently waved Gemma and Mike to them.

"You won't believe it!" Joe exploded, his face shining exuberantly, cheeks red from cold though it was about seventy at the airport.

Gemma hugged him and Martha before inquiring what the hell was going on.

He jumped again. "Amir is flying in tonight! He was hired as a travel consultant and he's redoing an evaluation of the resort, he gets the discount and everything!"

"Serves the little bastard right! He blew us off; we didn't get a bloody article in the mail or anything!" Gemma scrunched her face up.

Before Mike could point out that nothing bad had happened to Amir, Joe jumped and ushered them all to the old van again. this time they had four people and the back held a broken chair lift (in many pieces, almost a puzzle). Martha carefully sat herself on a foam cushion on the crack in the bench seats, leaving Gemma and Mike to squeeze in, though Gemma didn't try very hard to fit in before sitting on his lap and belting them in carefully.

The hour long trip was full of interesting conversation, but for Gemma it didn't get really interesting until they brought up the reason of the trip.

"Just couldn't stay away, eh Gemma?" Martha asked with a sparkling smile.

Gemma smiled and nodded a little. "That was one of the reasons, I suppose." She had her ring on, but she had also kept her hands in her sweatshirt pocket, hoping to keep them warm as they ascended into the mountains.

Joe was staring hard at the road, his eyes glued to the glowing red lights of a driver ahead of him. The sun finally dipped below the mountain and they were shrouded in darkness, a thin line of flourescent pink along the horizon.

"I'm glad to see you've stuck together." He commented, turning the wheel to avoid a small animal crossing the road.

"Well, I almost died, so we've gotten a bit closer." Gemma replied, and was forced to elaborate. Once that story was done, Martha was bouncing with joy, so glad to hear she'd reconciled with her family, glad to hear that they were living together, just plain happy with the world.

Just as Martha was sure she couldn't be any happier, she added the final detail.

"And after the entire near-death experience I chipped in the majority for a new car for him, and in return I got this lovely ring." She held up her hand and Martha's jaw dropped. "Getting married here, I do believe."

Comically in every sense except to the man himself, Joe lifted a finger to his ear, removed his hearing aid, fiddled with the adjustments, and returned it, imploring her to repeat the last part of that again. After the laughter stopped, she did. They told him of their hopes in getting a quick little arrangement at the chapel they had already passed, and Joe said he'd do everything in his power to make sure they didn't have to do anything overly special, especially since the dressiest thing Gemma had brought to wear was a full length denim skirt, and Mike a pair of khaki pants.

"Oh yeah, the minister down there wouldn't have a problem. Our own little Las Vegas almost," Joe smirked then gave Gemma very pleased look. "Where's the honeymoon?"

Gemma gave him a not-so-pleased look. "I don't mean to be offensive, but we're going to Michigan for the actual honeymoon part. Our plane reservation is for the day after tomorrow."

Joe parked the car with a thoughtful sigh. He had fixed his eyes on her as she spoke, and now he was stroking his beard, eyes tuned directly to a pair of skiers passing in front of the parked vehicle.

"I'll have Martha call tonight," he said finally. Gemma nodded thankfully.

Joe had always despised the phone. Instead of being able to look people in the eye, he had to turn the phone up, his hearing aid up, and still he couldn't hear as well as he would have liked. It annoyed him and the person he was talking to, so Martha had become a sort of interpreter for him.

The small building secluded in the shadow of Mount Xavier had been fully occupied for the last three days now, so Mike and Gemma were placed in another secluded villa, this one closer to the restaurants and souvenier shops than the last time. For the first section of the day Gemma disappeared with Martha and Joe to make sure arrangements worked alright while Mike loafed around the house, sporting a healthy bounce in his step. He couldn't stop whistling all sorts of ridiculous songs, such as "I Wanna Be Your Man" by the Beatles, and a few Elvis tunes he couldn't remember the lyrics to. Around eight o' clock he ventured to the main lodge and smiled to see a tall, dark-haired man standing at the registration counter while a young woman with her hair in a set of Swiss braids spoke. He took a quick picture of her and then smiled, extended his hand, and took a key from the girl with a smile. Mike could faintly see the flash from the square-framed glasses before he turned around and took a step backwards.

"I've followed you here," Mike said in a monotone, face serious.

A look of remembrance crossed Amir's face and then his smile burst through. "Mike! Hey! What are you doing here in June? Don't you have that TV show to-?"

Mike stopped him from speaking anymore. "I've got the next few weeks off. What happened with that article?"

Amir shuffled his feet. "That was the last article the paper let me publish before they sacked me and I got a job for the travel magazine. I now get four pages of technicolor. Mind if I get a picture?" He lifted the camera. Gemma bounced into view, taking a step back as a flash blinded her.

"Do you take good pictures?" She asked after she had given Amir a quick hug.

He shrugged. "They're in focus, usually aren't overexposed, and I find something interesting to take normally."

"You're hired!" She exploded before turning to Mike, not necessarily caring why Amir had thrown her a confused glance.

"I had the best idea on how to break it to our folks." She nodded while Mike lifted his eyebrows. "We have someone take a million pictures and we send them a few. We send about four to everyone that knows us and a note telling them what we've done. In a few weeks we get back, and they can throw us a party. We lose no money, they get their damn party."

Mike laughed. "Picture-perfect." He admitted and kissed the side of her head, seconds later lifting a threatening hand to Amir, who had snapped another photo.

"What's goin' on?" He asked. "Why am I hired to take pictures?"

Gemma silently sealed her mouth shut, throwing an expectant glance to Mike, who looked Amir straight in the eye and said, "We're getting married."

A sly grin spread across his face. "I knew it, I totally knew it!"

Gemma laughed and turned as a hand clapped on her shoulder. Her jaw dropped.

"Rich! Caroline!" She opened her arms in questioning.

The girl giggled in a bubbly way. "Hi!"

"What are you doing here?" Mike asked, shaking hands with Rich, who had a tired but bemused look on his face.

"We just finished our HONEYMOON!" Caroline jumped up and down excitedly, extending a hand to show off her beautiful engagement ring, and as Gemma took her hand to steady it, Caroline gasped and grabbed Gemma's hand.

Rich's face was overcome with the exact same sly smile. "You too, eh?"

Mike nodded slowly, a smile on his face as well. "Didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would, let me tell you."

"One of the lucky few. So, did you cart your whole family out here? We had to cart them all up to Providence where we live to make sure they didn't miss the event we've been talking about forever, and then we had to run off here." He lifted his eyebrows as Amir edged in and took another photograph.

"Actually," Mike had another bemused look on his face, "we've run off completely. My sister would have been a pain in the ass, and now that I think about it, my Mum would cry herself into an exhaustion, my Da would probably give me fatherly advice I already know, my cousins would all wink, get drunk, and pass out-"

"My brothers would beat the living shit out of him even after the ceremony, and my Dad would probably cry his eyes out..." Gemma added, smiling as Mike gave her a strange look.

"He'd really cry?"

She nodded. "I'm seventeen, you forget." She rolled her eyes.

Amir lifted his eyebrows. "How many brothers?"

"Eight," she replied, and when the awe passed, "and a younger sister."

"Where's your honeymoon? Or aren't you going to leave town?" Caroline asked, putting a possessive arm in Gemma's as they walked to the couches in the lobby.

They sat, and once again, Gemma took the floor. "We're going to this itty bitty village in Michigan called Harrisville. It's on Lake Huron and it's got all those beach-side motels. We figure we'll find a small enough one in town and stay there for about eleven days, then fly back."

"Individual huts?" Rich asked, then nodded in a good way when Mike nodded in assurance.

A woman entered the scene rather rudely, interrupting all the close conversation, but Amir stood and welcomed the woman with a wide grin, his perfectly aligned white teeth shining with a strange sparkle.

"Puja, these are some friends from the last time I was here. Mike and Gem are getting married while their here and Rich and Caroline have just gotten married and are finishing up their honeymoon. Now, Gemma's evil twin should show up to steal Mike away and Rich will confess he's been married all along, if we were to take the soap opera angle." Amir pointed to them one by one, then carefully put his arm around the woman in the flowing red top with long, black hair braided into neat pleats on her head, and the tell-tale red dot on her forehead. She was of the Indian heritage as well, and by the way she smiled and revealed a nose piercing and more straight, white teeth, she was all-American as well.

"Pleased to meet you," she extended her hand to all of them one by one, her accent a little off.

Mike gave Amir a sly look of his own. "So, we've all gotten hitched, when's your turn?"

Puja giggled and lifted her hand up, to which Gemma clapped a hand to her mouth. "You too? Jesus, let's just marry America!" She shook a fist. "And here I thought we were being original!"

Mike smiled. "Ah, but they're not going to do it here in front of all these strangers."

Amir shook his head in response. "Nope, the day I go back we'll be greeted with a, 'Hello, get into the suit, please. You, in the dress, we've got to be a domestically happy family in ten minutes GO GO GO!'" Amir switched into his perfect Indian accent towards the end.

Gemma laughed. "Hectic,"

"Indeed," Puja nodded.

Out of nowhere, Joe's head appeared around the corner of the front desk. "Gemma! When do you leave the day after tomorrow?" He shouted, and a phone was in his hand, Martha standing next to him, a nervous look as he started to drop it into her palm.

Gemma squinted then turned around. "The eight o' clock flight. At night," she added, and watched with amusement as Martha relayed this and smiled reassuringly.

"Seven o' clock at night sound good?" She shouted, covering the mouthpiece.

Mike felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as Gemma said in a happy voice, "Sounds heavenly."

"You'll be out early if you skip all the formalities, and then you'll catch your flight at eight and be in Michigan by eight, if my time zones are correct." Martha said as she walked to the couches.

"Sounds great, Martha. Thanks," she smiled again and squeezed the woman's hand before she disappeared and Gemma turned back to Mike.

"You have exactly one day left to be a free man."

"Bachelor party!" Amir exploded, and laughed as Rich stood with a gasp.

"Let's go! All tonight! Party, drinking, everything!"

Mike looked at Gemma. "I'm not drinking tonight," he muttered and stood, putting a nervous hand on his back.

"Go on, have some fun." Gemma urged. "Not too much, or you're on the couch." She warned, unable to stop herself, and she knew that Rich and Caroline had guessed they hadn't been able to stop sleeping in the same room since the fateful night the pipe had burst.

With the boys gone, Caroline invited Puja to help her throw a small party of sorts for Gemma, and Puja reluctantly relented. She hardly knew either woman, but she knew Amir well enough to know these two must be quite nice to still be friends after six months or more.

They stayed up late in Gemma's secluded little cabin with the skylight, watching sappy movies, watching horror movies, bonding like women will. Caroline, who had just had her hair sheared to just below her shoulders again, had unbraided Gemma and Puja's hair to measure. Gemma's was only a few inches longer, but Puja's was a great deal thicker. Pony tails revealed the truth of the matter, and compared to Puja's thick, coarse tail, Gemma's looked sickly. Caroline, who was a hair fanatic by that point, had begun to braid Gemma's hair into cornrows, but gave up about three hours later, just as the door opened at the front and in stumbled three men, laughing uproariously.

"I'm not stupid!" Mike insisted, and peeled off into laughter again as Rich dropped to his shoulder with weakness in such heavy laughter.

Gemma glanced up as he gently lowered the still chuckling Rich into the nearest chair, looking over with a bland look. He smiled at her and waved, a little tipsy maybe. She was about to give him a scolding look when he walked over and kissed her, not a trace of the taste on him. She smiled.

"Aren't you proud of me?" He joked, and she shifted into his lap with an evil smile. "Very proud," she admitted.

There was a flash, and Mike once again lifted a threatening hand to Amir.

"Oh! You two can't sleep here tonight!" Caroline exclaimed, her hand leaping up to her mouth again.

The day had been spent as it had the first time they had been in Vermont; skiing, snowmobiling, swimming. It had been rather eventful, and now, as they all started to collapse back into Gemma and Mike's little villa, Caroline was becoming annoyingly persistent.

"Why the hell not?" Gemma whined, clinging to Mike with a pout.

She made an annoyed face. "Because of tradition! The bride and groom don't see each other the entire day before the wedding! If you wake up together you curse the marriage!"

Rolling her eyes dutifully, Gemma kissed Mike once more. "Crashing with newlyweds, grrreat." She collected some clothes and was led out the door by a very tired Caroline, an unexplainable sort of person. Normally bubbly and ditzy in every way, she was quiet, but still smiling.

Amir send Puja back to their hotel room with an apology, opting to stay to give Mike company. In the end Rich ended up staying too, and the next morning was spent getting Gemma all ready for her "big day" while Mike snored on, an empty space in his arms that he was starting to loathe with a passion.

They slept through the night, though they weren't particularly happy about it. It wasn't until the next morning Gemma realized how little time she really had left for mental preparation.

"I have...a white top with a....black skirt?" Caroline started going through her clothes like a whirlwind.

Gemma lifted her bag. "I have a denim skirt. And a Beatles shirt."

Caroline clucked her tongue. "Shame, Gemma! You're getting married! You can't just wear a pair of jeans, you know!" She shook out the top with the bell sleeves that hung down well past Gemma's waist when she pulled it on. It was more like a kamono, but she liked it and agreed to wear it and return it. Next she had to find something nice to wear with the top, and after going through all of both of their things, Puja came to the rescue with a white sarong with smybols running up the sides. Once that was all set, they rushed around the souveneir shops looking for some real flowers. A boquet was found and for the rest of the morning Gemma felt ready. The flowers were being preserved in the refridgerator, her clothes were pressed and ready for wear, shoes settled with as her purple sneakers.

Mike wrinkled his nose as he awoke. It was past one in the afternoon when he first opened his eyes, and now it was past four. He hadn't stayed up that late, and now he'd overslept by a vast amount. He would need the energy for the jetlag he had and jetlag to look forward to at the end of that day, too. He sat up and walked out into the kitchen, smiling as he noticed Amir hunched over the stove with a half-asleep look on his face. Rich wandered out from some hole in the wall, his hair stuck in every direction.

"You have to be ready in two hours, man." He said with a yawn.

They sat and ate in a whirlwind, tea, coffee, cereal, all together at once. It was like blender-breakfast, and it wasn't good. It did wake Mike up a bit, and by the time he started getting ready, he felt much more alive.

"You know what would kill her?" Amir asked with a grin. "All you have to do is drop your jaw when you first see her, look just at her face, and she'll be like this." He turned and wrapped his arms around his own shoulders, head flying back and forth for effect. When he turned again, his glasses were skewed, and his grin was wider. Mike nodded with a grin.

"I've done this before; you forget." He felt that odd pang of wondering again. Was it alright? What about Gemma? It was the first time she'd been so close to a marriage. He'd have to plow through now, he wanted to, but it wasn't about that anymore. Once it had been established that he was sure that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, it needed no more thinking. Now he busied himself with thinking about what Gemma thought about, which was only him. Sickening, almost, was the amount of time they fretted over one another, and yet a simple smile from either would hush fears and anxieties with one foul swoop.

"Come on, man, we gotta go!" Rich thumped Mike on the head. Lifting a comb to his head, he did the best he could to make it look respectable before ducking out the door and out to the waiting van where Joe sat, his face a friendly neutral, amused through it all. They piled in, and as they drove, Mike felt his anxieties kick in. Gemma had both rings, didn't she? Did he have to go back? Oh shit, he mused, and began to consider begging someone to call and make sure everything was going according to plan. Before he was ready, before he felt like he should be even close to ready, the van parked and he noticed another was already there. In the car park there were at least four other cars, and once inside, Mike noticed a few other people hunched in pues, faces down in emergency sin redemption. The bells chimed and all the strays began to herd together, edging towards the back until one of them noticed a woman sitting in a small room in the back, her friends flitting over her obsessively, combing her long, waved hair.

The minister's second-in-command, a full-grown man who volunteered most of his time at the church, sat himself at the organ, took a draw from a flask at his side, then played a ragtime song on the organ, warming his fingers up. Mike sat in the nearest pue and put his feet up on the back of one, slowly steadying his nerves. The chapel was tiny, and it seemed to resonate every sound. The marriage liscense had to be signed by at least four witnesses, and suddenly Mike was grateful he'd run into Rich, Caroline, Amir, and all the rest. Puja ran from the back room, took a small compact from her purse, and gave Mike a small look he almost couldn't read from the distance between them. It seemed for a moment, dirty, then just like she knew something she shouldn't, but at the last second before her eyes drifted behind a cedar wall, he'd seen a small smile.

"Sex," the word drifted into his mind on its own accord, making Mike jump straight up, feet falling to the ground with a thump. DUH! He felt like slapping his head until the sense came back to him. Of course! What else was everyone thinking? They were going to be good little Catholic kids and sit around with hands clasped, perfectly content?

"No," Mike said aloud to himself, as if deciding. No, he wouldn't be content. It was almost sickening to the perverted male genes that he knew he possessed, but he felt almost satisfied to know the thought hadn't been with him since the morning of his birthday when she'd practically-well, the point was he wasn't obsessing over dirty thoughts.

Puja was back at Amir's side, and he was holding her hand and compact accusingly.

"Virgin powder, Amir. She wears it tonight and by morning it will be gone. Old Indian blessing, you know this!" She wrenched her hand from his grip, snatched her compact back, and frowned at him, the small red spot on her forehead glowing with imagined anger.

She crouched by Mike's side. "She's going to have a spot like mine; don't be alarmed. It should be gone by morning. Let her wear it all night; she likes the idea." Mike nodded and stared at the spot on her forehead, wondering just how he was going to think of it in five minutes when she walked from the back room and he was allowed to look at her for the first time in just under twelve hours. Rich leaned backwards and let his own jaw drop just as Mike started to feel like the old wives' tale was just a hoax. He opened his mouth to ask Rich just what she looked like, why he was looking so amazed, but a small girl with an older, tired girl had appeared with two woven baskets of some white thing. The summer weather at the bottom of the mountain had made for good rose blooms this year, especially the rare white rose. This combined with pink roses left for wonderful confetti at summer weddings, and they had arrived under resquest from the minister, baskets in hand.

"Hi," the little girl chirped, sitting at the end of the pue with Mike.

He smiled at her carefully. "Hello."

She wrinkled her nose. "You sound funny. Do you have a cold?"

He shook his head. "Nope, do you?"

She shook her head. "Nope! Why do you sound so funny then?"

"I come from another place; everyone talks like me there. It's how I learned to talk, just like you learned to talk this way here. Understand?" He cocked his head.

She nodded viciously. "Uh huh! I'm Rachel," she added, smiling cheerfully again.

"Pretty name," Mike mumbled, and smiled again.

"What's your name?"

"Mike," he nodded as if that was the extent of his name, and turned to look the little girl in the eye.

She was looking around the room with a worried _expression. "I saw the bride, but the man in the tux isn't here yet. Brooms aren't supposed to be late, Mama always scolds them when they're late."

At the word "broom" Mike had been tempted to laugh out loud, but he felt a heavy thud in his chest. "He's not late," he croaked.

"Where is he?" She asked, giving him a surprised look.

He jabbed a finger towards himself. "Next to the pretty little girl with the pretty name."

She blushed, an adorable little rose color coming to her cheeks, and she turned and placed the wicker basket on his lap. "We're going to throw these on you when you leave the chapel."

The rose fragrance lifted up into the air and wove lazy curls into Mike's hair, leaving a small, airy smell with him. He felt another smile tug at him.

"Rachel!" Hissed the girl's tired looking, impossibly young mother. "Get over here! We aren't guests here; we have to go outside and wait!"

With an almost apologetic sigh, the little girl, Rachel, turned back to Mike and collected her basket. "See you later, Mike!" She waved once, the ever-optimistic smile of an innocent child leaping on her face again. Mike grinned and waved back, hardly expecting to see everyone else scrambling for appropriate seating. Joe and Martha stood at the end of the front pues, reprimanding looks on their faces as Mike scrambled for the front of the altar. The minister smiled at Mike warmly.

"Father Mitch," he shook Mike's hand and then craned his neck over his head. "We've got everything worked out now, if you don't mind that one running around with a camera-" He was scowling at Amir.

Mike shook his head. "That's the only way my parents find out; I need him to be running around with a camera."

Father Mitch gave him a bemused look and pointed discreetly just past Mike's left shoulder. "Behold the bride,"

It wasn't slow motion like Mike expected; he turned at normal speed, and there stood Gemma, her hands at her sides, bored look on her face while Puja hysterically played with the flowers before tossing them to Gemma and taking a quick seat and covering her slowly reddening face. The organist began a jazzy rendition of the traditional wedding march, and Gemma, totally unconvinced she could ruin anything, took normal steps to the front, hands dangling at her side normally. The slit of the sarong was dangerously high on her thigh, but it was clean enough. As soon as the finished the ridiculously long walk to Mike's side, she handed him her ring, which he pocketed with a snicker. The minister shook his head at the two, and commenced the never-ending ritual of droning on in a bored voice until they started to respond.

Mike could only stare at her face, nothing else. She wasn't looking anywhere in particular, he head cocked in a bored way, the smallest of smiles on her face. Every once in a while her gaze would drop to his eyes, and the smile would grow for a split second before she moved on again. Soon they were repeating carefully prepared vows from the minister, and then it was the "I do" and the "let's go" part.

"By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife." There was the traditional pause and then, "You may now kiss the bride."

Needing to goof off, needing to move, needing for all the other things he normally would have done to kick in, Mike pretended to lift a pile of veils off Gemma, a frown on his face before finally finding her there. Once "finding" her face, he grimaced, closed his eyes with a clamp, and kissed her. She laughed as soon as their lips touched, and before long the clicking that they had grown used to was plugging along at a ridiculous rate; they didn't care.

Joe gave Gemma and Mike a very sly look. "Just in time! Now, we have your getaway car out here. Just park it in my lane at the airport and I'll pick it up later this week..." He trailed off and pushed open the door. Amir darted out first, standing at the bottom of the stairs just outside the quaint little chapel, and as soon as the newly married couple stepped out and the snow-like petals began to settle in Gemma's hair and on both of them, he took a few dozen more pictures of them at first hunching down with stupid grins, then a rather cheesy one of them simply staring at the other before the final few shots of them kissing in the rain of flowers. It was truly a Hallmark moment.

Once their vision had cleared, Mike noticed an all-terain-vehicle parked in front of the chapel. In crude letters was the traditional sign of "Just Married," along with a few cans tied to strings. Gemma squealed, threw her boquet over her shoulder, and leapt onto the four-wheeler, waiting for her husband to join her. A little more cautiously than Gemma, Mike boarded. Joe shook both their hands, gave them a good luck, and informed them their luggage was already at the terminal. Gemma gave the throttle a little go, and they peeled off into the backroads, laughing with the sheer stupidity of it all.

"Now, if it was at the top of a cliff, or in some fancy cathedral, I'd be less happy. This is just the best thing ever." Gemma laughed as she turned around a tree stump and continued on her merry way, loving the feel of Mike's nervous hands on her stomach, clutching her tighter every once and a while to make sure he wasn't sliding off. The concrete roads surrounding the terminal were rather intimidating to Gemma, who carefully and sneakily skidded up to the before-mentioned reserved parking spot. The boarding of the plane was also ridiculously easy, the only hitch being Gemma's stop in front of a mirror in the terminal to check the position of the dot on her forehead, and then to catch herself mid-reach to see a ring stationed on her finger. Upon seeing it she had abruptly turned to Mike and kissed him again, smile uncontainable and uncontrollable.

They did receive a few odd looks as they sat in their row, this one a two-row plane. Mostly it was the flower petals and the dots, but it was also the fact that they had appeared just before the plane took off, and literally had just buckled in when the plane started to move. The stewardess had assured them that all carry-ons and regular luggage had been stowed carefully, now as they sat, waiting eagerly for the plane to land at the tiny air-force station just inside the sleepy town called Oscoda, it was obvious they were newlyweds. Once again the feeling of shouting to people-strangers and friends alike-that they were married, overcame Mike. He smiled at a single woman on the plane with her small son, and she smiled back with a knowing look at Gemma, who was staring out the window anxiously.

Unconsciously Mike's mind drifted to Rachel, the little girl that had helped her mother douse them with flower petals, and before had asked where the broom was. He smiled and looked up to the overhead compartment as the plane touched down. So began the honeymoon.