"Two of your greatest influences." She shrugs her slim shoulders under the brightly patterned silk. "It wouldn't be the same without them. You wouldn't be the same without them, and for that I'm grateful."
She opens the door and shoves me into the hall. The door is closing in my face when I stick my foot in to stop it. I peer around the heavy wood, needing the last word.
"The next time I see you," I say with a smile, "you'll be Mrs. Marlon James."
She pauses in closing the door long enough to lean forward and drop a quick kiss on my lips.
"I can't wait," she whispers. "I love you."
The door slams in my face, but if those are her last words, I'll let her have them just this once.
27
Bristol
I'm just beyond the entrance. I can see Grip. I can see in, but no one knows I'm here yet, and I take in the ethereal beauty of the small chapel. A mix of artificial snow and white roses, a juxtaposition of blooms and blizzard, sprinkles the aisle from the chapel door to the altar. Potted trees march along the wall, naked of leaves, branches adorned with snow, warmed with tiny lights. Lanterns suspended from the ceiling cast a glow over the old chapel, hallowed by years and a thousand services and ceremonies before this one, but to me, none more sacred.
I absorb all the details, happy to see the small group of people assembled, our closest friends and family. This isn't a day for selfies or pictures that will be sold to magazines. It's a day for us, for Grip, me, and the people who mean the most to us.
Well, most of them. Ms. James and Dr. Hammond are here. Rhyson stands at the altar as Grip's best man, and Jimmi is already there as my maid of honor. Amir, Shondra, Kai and Aria, Luke, Charm-all here. Jade is noticeably absent, but I won't let that cast a cloud over today, not with all these people here celebrating our love.
"Are you ready?"
My father's question draws my attention. He's handsome, and Rhyson looks more like him every day. I considered not asking him to give me away, but that thing I can never shake, that need for my family to be family compelled me to include my father. My brother has forgiven him. My mother is in marriage counseling with him, and seems to have set his infidelities to the side. Today is a day for steps forward, and as the first strains of "Wedding March" herald my entrance, I answer my father with a nod and step forward with my arm through his.
The guests rise, some gasping when they see me framed in the arched entrance with my father, some teary-eyed like Ms. James and Kai, most smiling. It's my mother's face that almost makes my steady steps stumble. There is such pride in her eyes, like of all my accomplishments, marrying a good man-a man she didn't necessarily see for me in the beginning but has come to respect-is my crowning achievement. When I consider what a failure her marriage has been in the past, how much pain my father has caused her, maybe me marrying for love, finding the true happiness I have with Grip is more than she knew to hope for.
Finally I allow myself to look at my groom. People always talk about that first glimpse the groom has of his bride, but no one ever mentions the first glimpse the bride has of her groom. They really should warn a bride about this. No one told me my heart would float up in my chest and hover in my throat, or that the tears would instantly gather at the corners of my eyes when I saw him.
Maybe no one else has ever had a groom like Grip.
I always think of his as the face of a king, one sketched with an artist's skilled hands. A careful thumb smudged the sooty brows over dark eyes that see so much and can give so little away. The regal rise of bone in his cheek and the taut line of his jaw, the luxe lips generously drawn and precisely lined take my breath away. The closer I get, the more in focus his features become. I see the wedge of thick lashes, the softest thing in a face comprised of rugged planes and carefully hewn angles.
When he turns his head and our eyes meet on the threshold of forever, his jaw drops and he blinks quickly, like this first sight of me stuns him. The hours I spent searching for this dress when I should have been working were worth it. It's not white or ivory, but the palest shade of blush ever to exist. It's watercolor pink, so sheer a hue that it's barely perceptible as color at all. It's strapless, and the mermaid shape molds my curves, baring my shoulders, cupping my breasts, nipping at the waist, tapering down my hips and legs to flare just below my knees in wisps of organza as frothy as meringue.
When my father releases me to stand in front of Grip, I look up, uncovered and exposed for his inspection. Instead of a veil, I opted for a simple shoulder necklace, a string of Swarovski crystals clinging to a silver chain that drapes across my throat and collarbone, dips just shy of my cleavage and drips between my shoulder blades. Grip's eyes wander over my face, his smile growing wider as he catalogues the details of my appearance. When he sees my shoulders, his smile falters and his eyes zip to mine, startled and awed. Along the top of one shoulder, following the narrow bone, is calligraphy sketched so delicately the letters look like flowers blooming on my skin, proclaiming that my heart broke loose on the wind.
He looks out into the audience until he finds Mateo, his friend who is the only one he trusts with his ink, and now the first person I've trusted with mine. Mateo gives him a wide grin and a thumbs up. A slash of white teeth is Grip's only answer before he turns back to me, and breaching the invisible wall between bride and groom, not asking for permission or waiting for the preacher to grant it, he touches me. His fingers trail along my shoulder, along the words Neruda penned decades ago brought to life on my skin. The words that, shared on a Ferris wheel high above the ground, unlocked a door between us that has never really closed. A smile widens on my face at the pleased look in his eyes, exactly the way I envisioned when I approached Mateo about the tattoo as a surprise. Keeping Grip away from me for the last two days so he wouldn't see it was the hardest part of planning this wedding.
I barely hear the preacher's words, barely register that a roomful of people is listening. It's not until I hear the word "vows" that I remember I have to speak and this isn't some dream where I soundlessly spectate. The things I've rehearsed for days are nowhere to be found in my mind. They're like spilled grains of sand on the shore, lost. It doesn't help that I insisted on going first, but Grip is the best writer I know-no way I'm going after him.
"I had so many things memorized," I say with a self-conscious laugh. "But I'm so overwhelmed, I can't think of them."
I glance up at Grip, who looks at me like every word coming out of my mouth, though unrehearsed, is pure gold.
"So I'll tell you all the things I didn't plan to say, but are true."
I pull in a steadying breath, willing my voice not to shake and my tears to wait until I get through this.
"Grip, I guarantee that I will disappoint you at some point in the next fifty years," I say. "I'll infuriate you. I promise you'll want to strangle me more than once."
A ripple of laughter through the audience makes me smile, makes Grip smile, too.
"But you'll be stuck with me," I say, the smile sliding off my face and the tears pricking behind my lids. "Because I'm never letting you go. I'd be a fool to let you get away. You're the best friend I've ever had, the biggest heart I've ever known, the one who sees me when no one else does and hears me even when I don't speak. I'm sure at some point I simply wanted you, maybe I even simply loved you, but we are well past that. Now I need you. You are as fundamental as the breath in my lungs, as much a part of me as the blood flowing through my body. To let you go would be to let go of life, and that's how long you'll have me. You'll have me for a lifetime, a lifetime of laughter, disagreements, battles, triumphs. No matter what comes, know I'll never leave your side."
I shift the simple bouquet of blushing tulips and white roses to one hand so I can swipe at the tears streaking down my face. My voice, my words hang in my throat for a moment, crowded with emotions even deeper than the words I manage to utter.
"I vow to stand with you through every circumstance. I promise to pick you up when you fall, to cherish you beyond reason, and to love you without walls."
When I'm done, I release a heavy breath, relieved to have gotten through it with just a few tears. With a kind smile, the preacher says a few words and encourages Grip to share his vows.
"I feel kind of silly now," he says with an almost bashful grin, completely incongruous on his handsome face. "After that, something so obviously from your heart, I almost regret writing my vows."
Here goes. I'm so glad I went first.