“I’ll never stop loving you,” I tell her, hoping she can hear and feel and believe and know every word of it.
“Not ever,” she replies, then gives me a soft kiss, her lips barely brushing mine.
And that’s all we get before Logan and Julia, preceded by a bounding Oliver, appear into the room, the rest of the small crowd hot on their heels.
“Get moving, lovebirds. We’ve got a cake to cut,” Julia says, ever the chair of the prom committee.
“Please tell me we don’t have to do the feeding the cake thing,” I plead, ready to be free of the pomp and circumstance of this day. I just want to be alone with Cadence.
“The faster you do what she says, the faster they all go home and you can get me out of this dress,” Cadence whispers into my ear. The thought makes me hard, and it’s all I can do not to hustle her off to our bedroom and say to hell with all these people.
But Cadence is a good hostess, and so we head downstairs to what was once the den but is now the Cabot Essex Maxon law office conference room. We cut the cake and smile for photos and dance a few numbers to whatever Logan threw on the stereo. Cadence dances with her father, and I dance one with Brenda (who, for the duration of the song, manages to smile and act quite pleasant).
And when the party begins to wind down, I give Logan the eye. Despite serving as the officiant, he’s still my best man, and it’s his job to get me laid this evening.
“Alright, anyone who’s up for a drink can meet us at the Pour House on Boylston, the rest of you are welcome to give your final wishes to the happy couple so that we can leave them to their lovely home.”
Mr. Fallon appears before me to shake my hand and welcome me to the family a final time, with Brenda smiling serenely at his side in a way that makes me wonder if Julia didn’t slip something into her champagne.
And when the last of them is finally gone (Oliver trotting after Logan and Julia, where he will be camping out for the night), Cadence collapses into my arms.
“I can’t even imagine what that would have been like if we hadn’t kept it small,” she says, her fingers already walking their way down to my pants.
“Hey, calm yourself,” I say, swatting her hand away. Then I bend down tuck an arm beneath her knees, sweeping her into my arms. “I’ve got to carry you over the threshold.”
“Well by god be quick about it,” she quips before kissing me again. “I don’t want either of us to be clothed for very much longer.”
CADENCE
“Levi, Ms. Gonzalez is on line three, and you need to return the Fair Housing Project’s call before close of business,” I say, leaning against his office door jamb.
Levi looks up from the stack of files on his desk. His tie is missing in action, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Can you take a message from Ms. Gonzalez? I’ve only got –“ he glances at his watch, “shit, give minutes before close. Tell her I’ll call her back right after, if she’s still available.”
“Will do boss,” I say, which always makes Levi laugh, because we both know that I run this place.
It took exactly two weeks after we got married for Levi to convince me to stop temping and come on as Cabot Essex Maxon’s office manager.
Lord knows they needed one. After just a few months in business they already had a healthy slate of nonprofits they represented, the firm consulted with about a dozen more, and their list of pro bono clients was growing by the day.
Add in the fact that Levi had signed on to adjunct a class at Boston University in the spring, and his schedule was about to get completely insane. Levi told me that he needed someone to manage both him and the business, and he said that he knew there was no one better than me for the job.
After all, he claimed I’d inspired him to do all of this to begin with.
The truth was, Levi knew that this was my kind of work.
I love running the office. It keeps my mind clear, so that when work’s over, I can wander up into our attic studio and paint for until my heart’s content.
In fact, I’ve been so productive in the last two months since we got married that I’ve already set up my first post-graduate show at a gallery in the South End near Logan and Julia’s apartment.
But that’s not all.
Soon after I came on to work with Levi, we discovered the added bonus of being together in the office all day…
We could easily disappear upstairs at lunchtime, and once, I even came into his office, shut the door, and fell to my knees beneath Levi’s desk.
Even thinking about how amazing my life has been with Levi, still brings tears to my eyes. But then again, I am emotional lately, and for good reason.