Chapter Twenty: Ceremony

I don't know how he got the wedding dress, but he did. We picked up the matches at a hardware store, as well as a can of kerosene. We went back to our hotel room, where we found the writer and a pristine white wedding dress, complete with veil.

"Put it on," he said to Tulip.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Please?" he said.

"Fine," she said and took the dress into the bathroom. The writer took out his notebook and started scribbling in it again.

"Do we really need to do this for a shortcut?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I can just write us there. But there needs to be a journey, steps taken. Otherwise it won't mean anything. Just words on a page. Besides, this is a place nobody's seen yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind," he said and scribbled more. "I think she's ready."

She was. She stepped out of the bathroom in the white wedding dress and smiled and suddenly she was more beautiful than I realized. "Not the way I wanted to first wear one of these," she said. "But considering my life path before this, it's probably the last chance I'll have anyway. So, what's next?"

The writer stood up and said, "Parking garage."

We walked to the parking garage and I tried not to stare at her. I'm afraid I failed miserably.