this was pulled from a collection of oc-based short stories. this makes a million times more sense with proper context... but it's fine enough without.

From Nightbird, a post-mortem memoir by Melody Abernathy, 1986:

You know, there’s really nothing quite like getting married.

Legal disclaimer: Noelle and I are not actually married. God, if I had to change my name to Melody Callaway and the Callaway was Noelle specifically, I think I’d kill myself again. I am a lonely woman, but not a tasteless one.

Sunday, fourteenth of September, fittingly holy—the sky was a sick yellow-green like nausea that day. The wind was picking up, and the whole time he was driving us down that gravel road, I kept thinking a cyclone would descend on us and whip us out to Oz.

I’ve never seen Noelle look so clean in my whole life—even at a real wedding, he probably wouldn’t change much. He was in all white, shirt actually buttoned (can you even believe that!), wearing so much silver that he jingled with every jolt of the Aspen on the road, hair detangled and twisted after braving another visit to Miss Webb. Of course, he couldn’t really straighten himself out, didn’t want to; his hands were stained with blood and something metallic and his clothes were all wrinkled and he smelled like nicotine, although he wasn’t smoking at that time, which might as well mean something.

“You look nice,” I told him, staring out my window at the endlessly rolling nothingness of Saskatchewan.

“Do—” He paused and cleared his throat. “Do I really?”

“Well, yeah, you don’t look homeless.”

“Well, you look like you’re gonna put a fuckin’ curse on me. Couldn’t you have worn white?”

“You’re wearing white.”

“Am I the bride, Mel?”

Clouds of dust trailed us and lighter clouds of dust were in the car—Noelle had done a damn good job fixing up the Aspen, seeing as how he had no experience fixing cars other than their stereos, but something wasn’t sealed quite right. It wasn’t too pressing. At least I hadn’t worn white; Noelle had insisted that he wanted to wear white because I looked better in black and it would be weird to wear proper wedding colors, so now I was in flowy black like some sort of sorceress and he was gonna have to beat dust off his clothes when he got out.

We had this planned for about a month, a roadside wedding that was really just a hangout in nice clothes, because what were we supposed to do? Marrying Noelle was the only way he’d stop running from me and the only way I knew I wouldn’t lose him. I told him it meant the same for me, and then he was on board like it was his whole destiny. I still feel bad when I wake up and think about him and think about eating him. All he’s ever wanted was just to be sure someone valued him.

“This is gonna be the worst wedding I’ve ever attended.” Noelle angled his vent down to the floor.

“‘Cause you have to be sober?”

“I have no problem being sober for an hour.” A terrible smile came across his face. “But no guests, no gifts, not even cake? We suck.”

“Are you buying cake?”

“Are you buying cake?”

“I’m saving my money.”

I was considering buying something sweet anyway, just because I had seventy bucks and nothing to do with any of them, but Noelle suddenly became very focused on the road. “White girls!” he muttered. “Greedy as hell!”

The blackberry air freshener was swinging from the rearview mirror, and every time the car jostled, I could hear a tin of something rattling in the glove compartment. I’d asked him what was in there and he’d said nothing, but if I opened it to see for myself, there’d probably be a sea of cigarettes flying all over the place out of a busted box—I speak from experience here. I imagined it was fruit drops.

We passed somebody’s cow pasture. For no reason at all, I thought of walking through Glenburnie, finding it was just an empty extension of Kingston, because Kingston was a never-ending city trying to trap me. I really had taken one hell of a trip; I’d been an accessory to grand theft auto on the way to Thunder Bay, I’d spent a week on heroin writing poems in Winnipeg, I’d taken on a whole new life and identity just to buy a bottle of sauvignon blanc in Lacombe, I’d let the angels take my heart right out of my chest just for some peace. Now I was getting married, and it was probably going to storm the whole time.

“We could have a nice country house,” I said out of nowhere. “Live somewhere real, where the air is fresh and the sky is clean and stuff. You can hear all the animals you want.”

“We’re not farmers, Mel.”

“I wasn’t suggesting we farm. But it’s pretty in the country.”

“You call this dead-ass grass pretty?”

“Why are we getting married out here if you think it's ugly?”

Noelle was gripping the wheel like it owed him money. “Cause we're ugly. We're ugly, our personalities are ugly, we're two overgrown kids on drugs who'd kill each other to save ourselves and kill ourselves to save each other. You think anyone's gonna know about this? We're not even really marrying each other. I'm just gonna antagonize you for an hour straight.”

“At least you're honest.”

The sky wasn’t looking any better. I was praying we’d get out and get it over with soon.

The car turned onto a different road, this one lined with trees on one side with a pond on the other. I’d started wondering if I should’ve worn some makeup, just because Noelle was unusually clean and I looked even more dead in witch’s black. Then he suddenly slammed on the brakes. My seatbelt damn near bisected me when I lurched forward.

“Is here fine?” he asked, and I could feel his eyes on me, wide like a deer’s.

I’ve never fallen in love, you know; I once had a crush on Noelle for a few months when we were kids, because no boy is hotter to a fourteen-year-old girl than a boy who’s a troublemaker, but I wouldn’t know real love if it was staring right at me on a map. I’ve told people I just like to wait for the right one. Here’s a lesson for you, reader: whenever you start doubting there’s a right one in the first place, go marry your best friend for an hour. No love involved, but it gives them an even higher place in your life. See, love isn’t the be-all-end-all of relationships. There’s a comforting reminder.

How do I describe the wedding?

Nothing happened, for starters. Everything I said about it being a glorified hangout was perfectly true and also an understatement. We got out of the Aspen and he almost blew away in the wind and I looked like a wraith in motion; he gave me a smoke by the trees and for the very first time in my miserable life, I didn’t throw up; he told me a story of dubious truth about how he once drove to BC when I was still alive and got roped into teaching bass to a bunch of dusty pothead teenagers. It was the same thing we always do all the time, just out in the middle of nowhere to get away from the rest of life.

“How’s it feel to be turning twenty next month?” he asked me.

Really, I forgot I still had a birthday. Noelle turned twenty back in July—I firmly believed he’d been unaware he still had a birthday as well.

“Fucked.” I was staring across the street at the power lines the whole time, sitting in the grass. “What do you do when you’re twenty?”

“Same thing you do when you’re nineteen.”

“And what’s that?”

“Have a drink.”

Noelle was sitting with his legs stretched out and his feet on the road, smiling like a dumbass. The great ugly scar across his throat had foundation melting and running off it.

“Do the drinks change when you’re twenty?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“You’re twenty, you lush.”

He stared at me in genuine disbelief. “No way. Since when?”

“Since July 12th, 1986.”

“God.” Noelle shook his head and laughed a bit. “Twenty fucking years old. I used to think I wouldn’t even see fifteen, and now I’m dead and I’m twenty. What are we doing out here, Mel? We’re grown now. We should be doing grown shit.”

A raindrop fell on the back of my hand. I didn’t move—if it was about to rain, fuck it, we’d be married in the pouring rain. Maybe it could wash us clean.

“Like paying bills,” I suggested.

“Yeah, and working nine to five.”

“What a way to make a living.”

“Don’t make me stain my Aspen with your blood. I just cleaned her.”

The wind got colder. We’d been outside half an hour or so already, just smoking and talking and fighting with the wind; we wouldn’t know we were finally married until something broke. Something had to give. It was probably going to be the weather.

Nothing much happened, so I’ll just cut right to the very end and say it was, in fact, the weather that broke. Also, it is very strange to make out with a smoker.

Hail started pouring down, hail the size of baseballs, splashing into the pond and bouncing off our heads and ricocheting off Noelle’s poor Aspen. It was all so sudden—it had been fine only a minute ago, and now the sky had opened up with the intention to pummel us into a frosted disaster. I’d jumped to my feet immediately. Noelle had been rooted to the ground.

“Holy shit!” Two pellets bounced off his head at once.

I grabbed his sleeve and yanked him to his feet. “Get up, asshat! Let’s go!”

“No way!” He got up just fine, and then he started laughing. “I’m tellin’ you, it’s an ugly fucking wedding! We won it! We won!”

“Do you have a concussion?”

It sounded like the car was being beaten and dented back to the way it was when we found it out in the bush. He didn’t even care. “No, no, it’s life! This is how it goes when you’re married! Why do you think my mom went back to Nevada?”

“Cause she’s an alcoholic like you?”

“Besides that!”

“I don’t know!” We were getting pelted like mad, and the ice had officially knocked whatever was left of Noelle’s brain out of his head and into the grass somewhere. The road was soaking up all the pellets that had already melted.

He grabbed me by the shoulders then, staring dead into my face. I figured it would be best to play along. “Why’d she leave, then?”

For a few long moments, all he did was breathe hard, wind blowing his twists to the west. Then he was grinning again. “I don’t know either.”

“Waste of my damn time. I thought I’d hear you say something smart.”

“I’m always smart.”

“We’re standing out in the hail while your Dodge gets flattened like a Coke can!”

“Fuck, you want me to drive in this? Smash the windshield?”

I said it’s strange to make out with a smoker. I can’t even begin to describe it without sounding as though I’m turning this memoir into a terrible romance novel. All I know was that he started it and my sternum was on fire the whole time, not from love but some other thing that weighs you down worse but keeps your time free. I’ll never say I love him; love doesn’t begin to cut it.

It ended up being a tin of fruit drops rattling in the glove compartment after all when he finally stopped kissing me and gave up on being a hardass and got in the car. I said he was a half-decent friend after all. Really, what do I call it? Friendship is too weak. Romance isn’t right. I ask him so much what we should be. He doesn’t answer me.

That was our wedding day. Not the most exciting story to share, really, but I lay awake and think of it and I want to do it a million times over, because we’re never gonna split from each other again.