Page 50 of Break the Ice
Picking up a fine black marker, I add details to the song sparrows swooping around the Christmas tree painted on the edge of the page…
“Jake and Jenny?” Elijah laughs at the names I plucked from thin air as I twirl the two feathers that dropped from the song sparrows’ nest up in the tree.
“They sound good together.” When I roll onto my side to face him, he’s watching me intently. “What would you call them?”
Elijah shrugs, focusing on the sparrows soaring in circles around the willow tree.
Since he returned from Ohio with his parents, he’s been quiet. I overheard my parents talk about him being introduced to one of the Elders’ daughters. Although Mom didn’t sound enthusiastic about it, Dad kept telling her they had to find me someone high up too.
“Do you think you’re going to marry her?” The question blurts from my mouth unexpectedly so that he stiffens beside me. “Is she beautiful?”
Elijah frowns, combing his fingers through his freshly trimmed hair. I don’t think I like it this short and neat.
“She’s a girl.” He shrugs again.
“What’s her name?”
“Umm, Naomi.”
“She sounds pretty.” The thrum in my chest turns sluggish as I roll onto my back and stare up at the nest with him.
I can only imagine what she looks like with a cute name like Naomi.
“She’s just a girl,” he says, blowing out a long breath.
His hand splays beside mine on the cool grass so that our fingertips brush together, sending a shock straight to the middle of my chest.
“Did you like her?” I attempt to swallow down the raw burn behind my eyes.
“No,” Elijah answers gruffly. In contrast, his pinkie finger wraps around mine as he murmurs, “She’s not you.”
The fear of losing him sputters out of me. I know every day we get older is another day closer to being torn apart. It feels like only yesterday we sat beside each other across the school bus aisle on our first day to The Fellowship’s selected high school in Portland, and now he’s a few years away from college while I’m closer to being stuck here on my own. Training to become a good, obedient wife to a boy or man I won’t ever love.
“Elijah?” I whisper, keeping my eyes trained on a speckle of light burning my eyes.
“Yes?”
“Would you marry me?” My chest hiccups.
“Yes,” he answers quickly. “Would you? Marry me?”
“Yes.”
The warmth of his hand, calloused from all the time he spends working on his stick technique, eclipses mine before he threads our fingers together. His grip is tight and gentle at the same time as he tells me, “I would never hurt you.”
“I heard the girls in school talk about it in the restroom. One of them said it hurt a lot, that it wasn’t nice, and she bled. Do the boys talk about it?”
“Not to me,” he says. “They talk to Presley about that stuff.”
“Sex stuff scares me.”
His hand squeezes mine tighter while our bodies shift closer together until our arms and hands are squished between us.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
It’s not what they teach us in homemaking classes. His grandma says that a wife should always be ready and willing for her husband in all things. I think that means sex too.
“Would you want to do it with me?” I ask, turning my head so that I whisper it into his ear.
