Deflower

Chapitre Vingt-Huit

Two large doors open wide, and in came a few men, carrying a black casket with atop of it a single red rose. Tears well up in very few pairs of eyes, though the church was filled with an audience; and do take the term literally, for most merely attended out of curiosity or even entertainment. Behind the men trailed a man and a woman—the latter breathtakingly morose in black and her dark hair tied up in an impressive bundle of braids and curls. The man beside her, the woman's husband, much resembled the young boy within the mahogany-made coffin; sharp features emphasized by a beautiful color of the skin, according to her, anyways, for many others thought differently, and a black coat that matched with the lace headpiece that decorated his wife's pretty head.

The girl sat in the second row, next to her mother and her aunt, and before three boys that, though all three pretty much indifferent, feigned as much care as any other placed in the chamber; in which it was unbelievably cold, despite the fact that it was in the midst of the summer, and the mingling breaths and closed doors and windows of the church, too, had inevitably arisen the temperature. She could not bring herself to look at him—to the older man that extended his hand for her shaking one to hold. He looked too much like the boy that she had seen in her dreams; she'd begged him to stay away, for they weren't rose-colored dreams where they spent their last sunsets with one-another, but he returned every night. Other times, during the nighttime, when she wandered around her house aimlessly, she could swear that he sat upon her doorstep. But when she ran outside to see, there was nobody or nothing besides the cold wind against her skin and warm tears making their relentless way down her cheeks.

"You must stay strong, little girl," the man spoke, taking no offense in the way the girl did take his hand in hers but averted her gaze elsewhere; Vincent had talked to him about her, and he understood very well that to her, her life had come to an ending the moment that Vincent's had. The man related to this. The girl nodded upon his words, though she doubted that she would ever be able to—and she didn't want to. That was exactly how much power Vincent had over her; in the pursuit of their relationship, Lourdes didn't even look at any other person.

Because truthfully, other people were not ugly compared to him, or less attractive, but, other people did not exist in comparison to Vincent.

"You have to do it, for Vincent. He would die again, seeing you like this."

With that, the man let go of her hand before delicately stroking it once more, and joined his wife in the front of the church. Lourdes sat tightly pressed against her aunt, and her mama found herself more annoyed than concerned by her daughter's endless weeping. "Act normal, Lourdes—he was just a boy; you'll find another one day. Better ones, too." Her mother rolled her eyes inwardly as she whispered, and Lo only wondered how she could speak such way of a boy that had nurtured her daughter more than she had in all of her time of being a mother. How she could speak such way of the boy that remained the last left thing standing keeping her beloved daughter from ending it all—the miserable existence she knew as life—before her mother did. Lo's aunt furrowed her brows and pinched the delicate flesh of her sister harshly, subtly, before speaking.

"She was in love with him—have some mercy on her, for Gods sake." And although Lourdes found comfort in her aunts word, she had been mistaken in one part; Lourdes was still madly, helplessly, and desperately in love with him, and she would be until the end of time. He would be the only person she would ever love—for each time she did allow her heart to break down the walls she had once carefully built around it, they left her lonely. And must she have been truthful, she did despise loneliness, but she would never be interested in others. Many would have deemed such thoughts unwise, certainly as possessed by a girl of but seventeen summers, but, they were anything but the sort. She knew that no bright future lay ahead of her. She would perhaps marry a rich man under her mothers command who would take care of her and with who she would live an uneventful life amidst too much money and other women for no rich man could keep it at one—when all she wanted was to be her own rich man and fly upon her own like the angel she was without having her wings cut each time she attempted to do something without the approval or influence of her man.