Jaxon started jumping up and down and the stadium erupted in cheers while I stood up, slid the ring onto her finger and kissed her like I meant it.
The rest of the night was a blur of congratulations, camera flashes and phone calls from family members. By the time we got back to Addison’s place, we were exhausted and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning, I was the first one up. As much as I wanted to stay in bed snuggled next to my fiancée, yes, I said it . . . fiancée. Wow. Anyway, as much as I wanted to stay in bed snuggled next to her, the season had just started so I couldn’t start slacking off quite yet.
I cracked open my laptop as I sipped on my first cup of coffee, anxious to see what was being said. All of the articles talked about how we met and the unlikely relationship that all started with Jaxon. But one article in particular caught my attention. The article itself was pretty standard, but the title and picture are what caught my eye.
Below it was a picture someone had taken after I had proposed. Addison and I were standing next to each other, arms wrapped around each other and somehow Jaxon was standing behind us, maybe on top of a chair or something, I wasn’t sure. He had one of his arms around each of our shoulders, with the widest grin I’d ever seen on his face. It was a fantastic picture of all of us.
The caption below it said it all . . .
Yes, yes they did.
And I never wanted it back.
I stood looking at myself in the full-length mirror by the window, admiring my appearance. It had taken a long time to feel confident in myself again. Confident in the way I look. Confident in the way I’m built. Confident in who I am. But Jason did that. Jason came into my life completely unexpectedly and showed me a love that I had never felt. Not even at the beginning of my marriage to Austin.
There was a quiet knock on the door and I turned to look as it opened and my best friend Tracy’s head peeked in. “Are you almost ready?” she asked.
I turned back to look in the mirror one last time. I couldn’t get over how beautiful I looked. My dress had a fitted bodice with delicate spaghetti straps. The entire top was covered in shiny little jewels making me shimmer in the light. The bottom flowed out like a dress Cinderella would have worn but not as poufy. My hair was pulled into a loose bun at the nape of my neck with tiny strands of Baby’s Breath weaved into it.
Being that this was to be my second marriage, Jason and I had talked about whether or not we wanted the wedding to be a huge ordeal. I had already done the two-hundred-fifty guest reception with a four-tiered cake and live band. I wasn’t all that excited about being the center of that much attention again.
So we decided to head across the pond and have the ceremony is Scotland.
It was a gorgeous country. It sounded so cliché, but there really were lots of mountain landscapes and green, rolling valleys. The first day we were there, we were stopped in the middle of the road for about thirty minutes while we waited for a herd of sheep to cross the road.
All of our closest friends and family members, and managers of course, came with us. We spent the first few days getting over jet lag and doing some general sightseeing. It was a wonderful vacation. And the only pictures taken of us were taken by us. That was a nice bonus.
Jason had rented a beautiful villa that sat on top of a rock quarry overlooking the ocean. It had enough rooms to sleep all twenty-eight of us and a giant gazebo to hold the ceremony. We were bringing in caterers and a local DJ for the party afterwards.
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m ready,” I said to Tracy as I walked toward the door.
“Good,” she giggled, “because that man of yours is getting impatient! He wants to marry you so bad!”
A wide grin spread across my face. “I wanna marry him so bad, too.”
We walked down the stairs to the foyer that led out to the garden where the gazebo was.
“You look so beautiful,” my sister Natalie said, blotting a tear from the corner of her eye before it could fall.
My four-year-old niece, Shannon, stood in front of me, eyeing me up and down. “Are you a Princess?” she asked with wide, fantasy-filled eyes.
“Today she is, Munchkin,” Samantha said as she did some last minute adjustments to my hair and handed me my bouquet.
Samantha, Natalie and Tracy were all in red dresses of different styles. I didn’t really care what the dress looked like as long as they were all the same color and they were flattering on each person. The three of them would stand up with me as my bridesmaids. Shannon and her big sister, seven-year-old Christina, were the flower girls.
We thought about making Jaxon the ring bearer, but we decided we really didn’t need one. Besides, Jason had another role for Jaxon to play . . . the role of best man. That’s right. The two loves of my life were going to be standing side-by-side as we made this commitment in front of God and our families to create a family together.