Epilogue
Quentin – Six Months Later
I paced back and forth in the hallway, occasionally smoothing my jacket or reaching up to adjust my tie. This was where I’d been for the last forty-five minutes, and I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I turned to the sound of footsteps coming toward me and saw Darren.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “The girls scurried off into Merry’s office, and I haven’t seen them since.”
I reached up and wiggled my tie again.
“You all right?” Darren asked.
“This tie is just really uncomfortable. I don’t know what’s going on with it. It’s like it’s pushing into something wrong on my neck,” I told him.
“Not having second thoughts, are you?” he teased.
“Not even in the slightest,” I said. “Well, possibly about the tie. But not about anything else.” I adjusted the knot again, but it still wasn’t any more comfortable. “How does it look? Does it look right?”
“It looks like you’re wearing a suit and tie,” Darren said. “You wear them all the time.”
“I know, but the difference is when I wear them it’s because of work. This is my wedding day. Shouldn’t I feel more… like me?” I asked.
Just then, Cole came into the hallway.
“Not to pressure you or anything dude,” he said. “Your wedding started twenty-five minutes ago.”
“I know,” I said. “Not exactly sure what’s going on. I haven’t heard anything from her in almost an hour.”
“I’m not worried about the dress!” Merry’s voice suddenly shouted from down the hall. “I just want to be married before I give birth. So, can we please just get on with this?”
I turned to the others with a grin.
“There’s my Merry,” I said.
Her attitude didn’t really surprise me. She was obviously cranky, but she was always cranky at this time of day. Carrying a baby was hard work, and she’d been doing it for eight months now. She was doing a great job of it, right up until around six every evening when she got hungry and angry. Really angry. Which begged the question of why we decided to schedule our wedding for five-thirty.
The door to her office opened down the hall, and Olivia’s head popped out.
“Quentin,” she called. “Can you come here for a minute?”
“Be right back,” I said.
“All right,” Cole said. “I guess I’ll go back out and tell more jokes to the crowd.”
I laughed. He was teasing, of course. At least, I hoped he was. My best friend was many things, but a stand-up comedian was not one of them. Besides, there wasn’t really a crowd out there. After I proposed to Merry three months ago, we talked about what we wanted for our wedding. I told her she could have anything, anything that she wanted or envisioned or dreamed of. I wanted her to have the perfect wedding day, even if we waited until well after the baby was born.
She immediately shot down that idea. Not because she didn’t want the baby to be at the wedding, but because she didn’t want to wait that long for us to get married. We both agreed a small ceremony with just family and close friends sounded ideal. But now it seemed a wrench had been thrown into the plans.
I slipped in through the partially open door to the office and closed it behind me. Merry was standing near the desk, her hands behind her back.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She whipped around and dropped her hands.
“My dress ripped,” she said. “I guess I put on a few pounds.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Her saying she put on a few pounds was an understatement and she knew it. She joked about it all the time. After taking the first five months of her pregnancy to even begin to show, Merry made up for lost time over the last couple of weeks. Her belly grew round and beautiful, and there was no denying she was very close to delivering our baby boy. Which was good considering her due date was in only three weeks.
“I don’t care,” I told her. “We could paperclip you into it and hope for the best, and I would still think you are the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s really sweet of you and I love you more than I could possibly tell you for saying it, but it doesn’t take into consideration one important little detail,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She took a few steps and the dress opened further, revealing her panties. I laughed harder.
“I can try to fix it,” Olivia offered. “I have a sewing kit in my maid-of-honor bag.”
“Do you have about a yard and half of extra white satin in there, too?” Merry asked. “Because if not, there’s no getting me in this thing. This is a sun’s out, buns out situation I don’t think anybody in those seats out there is prepared to see today.”