Yeah. I like my new friends. I could see myself hanging out with these guys.
There’s even a little dude called Edwardo who is gonna carry our rings.
Haven’t seen the rings yet, but from the looks of this wedding so far, I’m fairly confident that they’ll be expensive and maybe even tasteful. Hell, we might even keep them. I’m sure Fingers will mark them up two hundred percent, but you can’t put a price on memories, right?
Well, you can. I know this because Joey, Huck, Wald, and Brooke bought a whole lifetime of memories when they were trying to get custody of Maisy. But that’s not the point. I think we’ll probably keep the rings. I think this wedding is gonna be something we’ll want to remember for the rest of our lives.
There’s some fussing at the chapel entrance as the bridesmaids begin their walk and then… there. There she is. My bride.
I start grinning like a madman. I can’t help it. I’m bobbing my head from side to side, trying to see past all the bridesmaids—and then… well, shit. Then I actually catch myself looking for Jack. Because he should be the one walking her down the aisle.
Now… now I feel bad about this wedding.
Jack should be here. Silvia should be sitting right up front where that middle-aged Italian mother-in-law stand-in is. And even though I kinda dig Marco, Giovanni, Leonardo, and Edwardo—it should be Joey and Johnny standing up here with me. Huck and Wald too. And fuckin’ Lonz. And Tony and Luke and…
Fuck. Fuck! My best man should be Zach!
But just as that regret begins to simmer in my head, the bridesmaids all make it to the altar and the wedding march begins. A little flower girl appears, tossing peach and yellow flower petals—and dammit, that flower girl should be Maisy.
But then…
“Holy shit,” I mutter. Because I see Emma. Emma. My bride. Not dressed up in jeans and t-shirt like she was for the rollercoaster wedding, not dressed up like a pirate princess like she was at Treasure Island, not dressed up in a jumpsuit at the skydiving wedding—but dressed up like a proper I’m-gonna-lose-my-shit she’s-the-most-beautiful-bride-ever kind of bride.
Her dress is… a little Cinderella. And I know she probably wouldn’t have chosen that style if we were in charge of this day, but it’s beautiful. And she looks gorgeous. All of the day’s catastrophes have been washed off and her face is bright with happiness.
Marco elbows me, muttering something in Italian I can only assume is probably along the lines of, Your woman is sexy hot and I bet the lingerie she’s wearing underneath is gonna blow your mind , but I can’t even shoot him a disapproving glare, because he’s right.
My bride is sexy hot.
And no, the man whose arm she’s holding onto as she walks isn’t her father. And none of these people here are our people—but in this moment I do not care.
Emma.
Emma is the only thing on my mind.
I want this woman by my side right now. I want her next to me for the rest of my life. I want her in sickness and in health. I’ll take all the bad with the good. I want to love and cherish her so hard, she will forget the thirteen years we spent apart and only think of the ones we spent together.
Her veil only covers her eyes. It’s a very tasteful, very understated veil. But the best thing about that veil is that as I watch her walk towards me—as I see her suddenly realize that this is it, we really are gonna make it all the way through this ceremony—I catch her checking me out. I catch her eyes wandering down my body, then back up to meet my gaze again.
She smiles and bites her lip.
And man, that little lip-biting thing? Yeah. I’m gonna picture that every time I make love to her for the rest of my life.
My stomach flips with excitement once they reach the steps and all I want to do is rush down those steps and pull her into my arms.
But I wait.
I force myself to stand still and wait as her fake father pauses to look lovingly at her—nice touch, fake father-in-law—and then she ascends towards me.
Emma’s eyes find mine as she slowly approaches the altar. And then she shrugs up her shoulders as if a tingle went up her body.
God, I love her. I love her so much. And even though I still have regrets about missing out on all those years when we were apart, I know—I just feel it in my heart—that this is just the beginning for us. We have so much to look forward to. And pretty soon none of those missing years will matter anymore. We’ll be too busy making new memories to even think about the ones we never had.