Chapter 47
chapter forty-seven
Natalia
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but my wedding was the best damn wedding I’d ever been to, and it wasn’t even close. While I might have planned it with the sophisticated tastes of the richest Russos in mind, there were enough personal touches that the black-tie dress code still felt cozy and casual.
There were long elegant dining tables and string lights that swept above our heads from tree to tree. A dance floor was laid for an all-night party and cocktail hour was currently buzzing, which I was sorely sad to have missed the majority of while our bridal party took photos out on the beach. There was delicious expensive champagne in a seemingly endless supply. Every time I finished a flute there was another to replace it, and the music had even the oldest Durans spinning in circles between meal courses.
My heart had never been more full.
This was that feeling I’d been trying to convince myself that I deserved. As if speaking it into the universe made it real, I manifested this moment, this life, this love after such a long time standing in the dark. Once I started believing I could have it, something miraculous took over. I was closer to my sisters than ever, my relationship with my mother was mending, my father was sober, my friends were happy and healthy, and Mateo and I were husband and wife.
My world was healing itself, patching up the holes, rubbing dirt in the scratches, sewing thread through things that had torn and needed attention. I was coming out on the other side of these six months a fuller person than I was before it.
Natalia Duran.
Fuck, I loved saying that. It made my entire body giddy like it was hopped up on Pop Rocks. It just felt right .
The best part of the wedding though, by far, was watching my gorgeous husband float around the reception in that perfectly tailored suit that made my limbs feel weaker by the minute. He was so confident and charismatic, the perfect host, the most adoring partner, and I should have been focusing on other things, like chatting with guests or dancing with my bridesmaids, but all I could think about was the way his dress shirt hugged his chest and how I was going to run my tongue down every inch of skin behind those buttons later.
It was only a matter of time before Mateo caught me staring at him from the other end of the table, and his face lit up, a playful, wicked grin tantalizing me. He put his hand on the shoulder of the older woman he was talking to and she squeezed his arm back gratefully before he turned, in my direction.
“See something you like, Mrs. Duran?” Matty slid into the seat beside me at the head of the long table. There was a centerpiece in front of us that said Mr. and Mrs. and our chairs were draped in floral and gossamer ribbon. He laid his arm over the back of mine and rubbed soft circles over my skin until I erupted in goose bumps.
“How much longer until the consummation?”
His eyebrow lifted at the same time the corner of his lip did. “Good to know I’m not the only one who’s been thinking about how quickly I can get that dress off you.”
Heat and anticipation stirred in my lower half. I tugged his wrist toward me and made a show of staring at the watch he was wearing. I’d gifted it to him for his birthday last August and he almost never took it off, but it wasn’t ticking at all. “Hey, I think your watch is broken.”
Mateo was unsurprised. He glanced down at it and back up at me, shaking his head with a boyish grin and warm eyes. “It’s not broken,” he said. “I did that.”
“Did what?”
“I stopped it from moving the second you said ‘I do.’ I wanted to immortalize it.”
The shock of that curled around my lungs and impacted a place deep in my chest. I was speechless trying to process something so sentimental and romantic, and that he even thought to do it at all. He was still wearing it regardless of how useless it had become when he could have easily left it at home for another functional watch.
“In Vegas?” Emotion scratched up my throat.
“I’m surprised it took you this long to notice.”
“I’ve been a little busy,” I croaked. “I don’t even know what to say.”
There were no words proper enough. When I thought I’d reached the epitome of my husband, and there were no other things he could do to make me love him more, or respect him deeper as a person and a partner, he went and proved me wrong over and over again. There was no end in sight. Happy little surprises followed him in every direction we weaved.
This, though. This was something out of a movie.
Mateo laced our fingers on the table and leaned into me. Our noses brushed and our foreheads tilted together, boxing us out from the reception into our own little world briefly. “That’s the thing, Tal. I’m never looking for anything in return. You love me loudly enough without words. Let me love you quietly too.”
“I love you every way humanly possible.”
He kissed me tenderly, feverishly, with a sweeping tongue and a moan on the cusp of his lips that only my ears could hear. It was over too soon, and when we sat back he felt miles away when all I wanted was to melt into him again.
Metal tinged against a glass softly and stole our attention, and we tracked it to Frankie in the center of the dance floor with a microphone in his hand.
“A little birdie told me I had to say something tonight as the best man.”
Mateo sat up straighter, tugging the leg of my chair closer to him until I was basically sitting in his lap. Our other bridesmaids and groomsmen came shuffling back to the table to sit beside us, and the guests quieted for Frankie to continue.
“I’m generally a man of few words, and I don’t do well with lots of eyes on me like this, but if there’s anyone in the world I’d suck it up for, it’s you, Cap.”
Matty smiled wide enough to show off a dimple.
“For those of you that don’t know, my name is Frankie, and up until January, Mateo and I lived together for almost fifteen years in and out of the military. So it’s actually a miracle that it’s not the two of us up there making out at the end of the dinner table.”
Laughter erupted around us, and Frankie’s shoulders dropped away from his ears. “Some people thought we were swinging the other way for a bit, so I’m glad Mateo decided to propose and finally clear the air about that. I was running out of ways to defend the length of his shorts to the neighbors next door.”
“Nothing wrong with showing a little thigh!” Matty called out.
“Either way, to keep this short and sweet, because there’s dancing to be done, and drinks to be had, and an ice sculpture by the oyster bar melting at a rate absolutely everyone in here saw coming—” He sobered, taking a deep breath, and then began again. “I’m so glad you found your person, Cap. There is no one more deserving of happiness in the world. You care so hard and so much for the people around you, and it’s beautiful to see Natalia be that counterpart for you, and make you a better man, give you hell, and provide you new purpose all at the same time. And I knew it was you, Tally,” he addressed me and my heart lagged a beat. “The day Cap saw you in the bank was the first real day of his life, and he never looked away again. If you’re lucky, you guys will live a thousand lives together. I'm just honored to be here, a part of this one, having seen the two of you grow together from the beginning. I want to be there for every milestone, because you both mean the world to me. I’m going to say it was fate all along, because your happiness gave me mine.” Frankie’s soft smile and deep gaze swept to Ophelia. “I guess giving my best friend away isn’t so bad if I’m giving him away to you, Natalia.”
My nose stung all the way up to my eyes and I placed my hand over my heart, so grateful that we had such amazing people surrounding us. That peace of mind was worth more than Frankie knew. He picked a flute of champagne off the table and raised it, and Mateo’s fingers tightened around mine.
“To the Durans!” he cheered, and a chorus of applause and clinking glasses followed.
Ophelia’s chair scraped lightly against the wood floor as she pushed away from the table beside me with a folded piece of paper in her hand. “Who let him go first?” she grumbled. “I’ve been working on this for three months and he just winged that off the top of his head with nothing but a Red Bull and vodka.”
“You’ll do great!” I slapped her perky little ass on her way to the center of the floor where she stole the mic from her boyfriend. He looked both enamored and terrified of her all at once, and it was the most satisfying enigma to watch. She was the world's most conscientious woman and fell in love with the man who flew by the seat of his pants; they would balance each other out until the end of time.
“I’ll rough him up for you, O,” Tyler shouted, tugging Frankie down next to him and putting him in a headlock that split a grin across her face. What was it about weddings that made everyone sentimental? It wasn’t like the boys weren’t rowdy together in their own ways—we’d seen enough of that to outlast ten weddings—but there was a sense of something deeper between everyone.
Family.
Well, maybe not everyone. Definitely not Mia and Angelo, who hadn’t so much as snarled at one another over their steaks the entire day. It was honestly for the best.
Ophelia tapped on the top of the microphone. “ Hellooo ,” she sang into it, adding a curtsy that put a winsome smile on my face. Her long light brown hair curled over her shoulders and the pearls around her neck were the perfect timeless edition to her strapless black dress. “I’m Ophelia, the other best friend. We decided to do this funny little thing where we dated another pair of best friends, and now here we are in Key West making speeches.”
A mumble of laughter washed over the tables. She looked down at her paper briefly and then folded it back up in her palm. “I was going to read this long-winded thing I wrote, and tell you all about how Natalia was in college and the way we became friends, and our embarrassing corkboard in our dorm room with pinned photos of Chris Evans on it. Which is equally as embarrassing when you think about the fact that Mateo was probably somewhere in a desert trying not to step on an IED at the same time.”
“Are you calling my husband old?” I poked at her.
“I’m calling this all miraculous.” She gestured around. “That we’ve all made it here to this exact moment, a series of perfectly timed events and circumstances that truly makes love feel exactly like magic. What happened for the two of you can only be described as that. I always thought Natalia would end up with someone who was the male version of me, to be quite honest.” Another humored murmur sifted across the floor. “Someone who would make sure she doesn’t sleep in too late, tell her she can’t live off of iced coffee and the passing carb, and remind her that an inappropriate joke has a time and place, and one of those places is not while getting a bikini wax. But it turns out I was so wrong.
“What she needed was the person who was going to slow down life to be with her, not try to get her up to speed. The guy who would sleep in beside her until eleven, order that late-night takeout with no remorse, and be the Bob to her Lucille, even if it means traumatizing an unassuming esthetician. And Mateo is that man.
“You are absolutely perfect for each other. There are some things in life that find you when you expect them the least and need them the most, and sometimes you don’t know what you need until it’s standing right in front of you, and I think both of you ended up in the right place at the right time. I know every single person at that table agrees with me.” She pointed to our wedding party, and everyone reacted with a smirk while biting their tongues.
“Before I screw this up, let’s toast to you both.” Glasses lifted into the sky. “For a love that lasts forever, and a party that lasts all night.”
A whoop shot out of the crowd. It was Tyler; it was always Tyler. He was like a human ball of serotonin, but he worked the room as effortlessly as Ophelia nailed that off-the-cuff speech. Tyler stood like he was about to take his turn with the microphone but Sam grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him back down into his chair.
“I love you so fucking much.” I leaned into a hug from Phee, squeezing her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. “Both of you.” I reached for Frankie next. “Seriously, this wedding wouldn’t have been half as special without the two of you long-distance directing the entire thing and showing up every single time we needed you. We promise to repay the favor.” My eyebrows wiggled at Frankie and I swore there was a faint blush and a hidden smile in return.
“If it weren’t for everything I tried to plan going wrong, I don’t think anything would have gone this right,” she mentioned humorously. “It’s been perfect, and you should reap the benefits of a well-earned reception by getting so drunk you pass out on the beach later. I’ll be right there with you.”
“Can I bring my husband?” I joked. Mateo’s hand slid from my hip to my ass and gave it a small squeeze. I still hadn’t stopped wondering what he’d look like naked with nothing but his wedding ring on his finger, so the gesture stirred something awake inside my lower belly again.
Shoving him into a cabana closet for a blow job was not entirely off the table.
Phee twisted her lips. “I guess he’s invited.”
“Then I’ll be there with a bottle of rum and my pirate boy.”
We danced for hours, laughing, drinking, and fumbling over one another in the bathroom as my sisters and Phee tag-teamed unbuttoning my dress in the stall so I didn’t pee myself—on more than occasion. The music was so electric that it thudded through our bones and roused our tipsy, satisfied friends and family to their feet. Even my parents, who I was pretty sure hadn’t shared a dance since their own wedding, ventured out onto the floor to sway in each other’s arms when it was time for Mateo and me to have our first dance. Tyler took my sisters with him on a conga line into the thrum of cousins and coworkers, and even my father-in-law came out with his shirt unbuttoned down his gray-haired chest to twirl Anna in circles under the twinkling lights.
I tossed my bouquet into a very energetic swarm of women, and like the fate she spoke about in her maid-of-honor speech, Ophelia caught it. She stuck her hand out and closed her eyes and the bramble of flowers landed perfectly in her open palm. So when Mateo sat me down in front of the entire squealing reception of people to slide his deft hands up the inside of my dress and work my white lace garter belt down to my ankle in the most lethally antagonizing way possible, he didn’t even bother flinging it. He walked it right over to Frankie to fulfill the tradition.
“I think now is the perfect time to have the boys pay up for losing the scavenger hunt.” Mia saddled up beside me with a sinful grin. Her body was glistening with a sheen of sweat from the dance floor, and her hair was clipped on top of her head, keeping her shoulders cool.
I’d completely lost track of time. It’d been at least an hour since I’d slow danced with Dad, and more than that since I had a conversation with Mateo. I searched the outside venue for our bridal party, counting them off on my fingers like sheep. Bella and Cami were sharing a conversation with our aunt Loren, Ophelia was with my mom, Mateo was already in a little huddle with his brother and Tyler and Frankie near the bar, and Sam was nowhere to be found—though he was presumably with his date, Hailey, who was also missing when I glanced around for her, which could only mean one of two things.
They both excused themselves to the bathroom separately, or they excused themselves to the bathroom together, and there was only one way to find out.
I borrowed the microphone from the DJ and he cut the sound that was playing with the scratch of a record. “I’m requesting a much-anticipated group dance from the groomsmen,” I called out. Mateo and the other three at the bar deflated on a whim, like pulling a pin out of a balloon. “You didn’t think we’d forget about the bet, did you?”
Mateo did the same cursory glance I did a minute ago, scanning the entire reception space looking for Sam. His results were the same as mine. “We can’t do it without Wink.” He shrugged, delighted by that change in fortune. “Sorry, baby.”
“Sam Swan, you are being summoned!” I announced through the speakers. “You can shove your tongue back down her throat later!”
There was a yelp by the oyster bar, and then a commotion of dishes and silverware that whipped me and everyone else around toward the noise, seconds before the unthinkable happened and the massive flamingo-shaped ice sculpture crashed legs over feathers onto the floor. Shards of ice ricocheted as far as the toe of my heels.
“Well, throwing a temper tantrum about it seems a little dramatic,” Tyler commented.
Hailey was standing there in her long red dress, reaching her arms out toward the mess, eyes wide and mouth agape. She looked a second away from breaking down in tears from embarrassment while the venue staff rushed around her with a broom to sweep it off the platform and into the sand. “I am so, so sorry,” she managed to squeak out. Sam stood behind her, fingers laced together at the back of his head. His pale cheeks were dusted pink, and his neck corded on a long swallow.
The sculpture falling left me momentarily speechless, but then the shock turned into pure, unbridled amusement and a cackle bubbled from my throat, cutting into the awkward, pregnant silence. As soon as I started laughing, everyone else did, too, as if they were granted permission. Hailey’s body relaxed slightly, though she was still clearly mortified by what had happened, and I couldn’t blame her for that. I would have felt the same way in her shoes. Getting caught doing whatever I was doing with my date, and then taking out an expensive, frankly obnoxious wedding decoration, was going to go on her list of most embarrassing moments, if not shoot straight to the top.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less about the damn thing. Three months ago, this would have sent me into a spiral. But letting go of the expectation around the wedding had made even a pretty massive flub the least of my worries.
“Hey, at least it wasn’t the cake,” I said to her, throwing a shrug and a warm, understanding smile. “We were just going to send Pinky off to sea later anyway. This was so much more Shakespearean. I personally live for theatrics.”
“I swear I’ll pay for that,” she promised. Her fists were balled together, and she was looking at Sam with such hopelessly apologetic blue eyes it made me want to drag her behind the ice sculpture and kiss her, too.
“I’ll take care of it, Tally. It was my fault.” Sam took the blame. I’d never seen him so frazzled in his life, and not by the unfortunate accident—by the woman in front of him. I could nearly see his pulse beating out of the vein in his neck. He reached out to put a hand on the small of her back, but decided differently, and my brows pinched together. I’d make my own assumptions and leave the rest alone; these things always had a funny way of working themselves out.
“I’m collecting payment right now, Casanova.” I beckoned him over and Mateo and the rest of the groomsmen made their way to the wide-open dance floor, ravenous for the opportunity to give him hell. Frankie and Tyler took turns shouldering Sam until he was so beet red and blushing that I was worried for his health. Eventually they split into two halves facing one another, Mateo on one side with Sam and Frankie, Tyler and Angelo on the other.
“Don’t say I never did anything for you,” Mateo tossed my way with a sweet smirk. Little did he know that taking the loss for the Elvis impersonator had earned my selfless husband a free pass to anything he wanted for life. Which was just as thrilling for me when I thought about it, because that man lived to please.
I joined my sisters and Phee back at the table to watch the reward of our hard-won scavenger hunt with a front-row seat. The music sparked to life, playing the first few jazzy notes of a classic Beyoncé song.
“Don’t blink, ladies,” I said.
My chest swelled with nervous, excited anxiety, the overwhelming kind that felt like adrenaline but wasn’t quite. Cellphones around the room were lifted and recording, and our photographer was zeroing in on the dance floor.
Someone, somewhere, was fighting with their significant other to hold open a door for them. Mine was dance battling against his military buddies like the Wayans brothers in wigs in front of two hundred people to see me crack a smile.
And they really fucking did that.
Or something vaguely reminiscent of that. They might not have synchronized at any given point during the entire thing, and I was pretty sure the threads holding Tyler Swan’s pants together split while he was trying to do a flip that would feel like a train hit him in the morning, but the comedic timing was worth every muscle ache and back spasm. Sam committing to breakdancing after a few too many liquor drinks and a filet mignon dinner was really the cherry on top, proving all the expected effort was there.
It would have been tragic if we’d lost the bet, based solely on the fact that there was nothing we could recreate that would top watching my brother-in-law erotically slap his own ass in front of his grandmother.
We were on our feet applauding them, making it metaphorically rain, and when the music hit its final beat Mateo looked right at me with my favorite smile, a crinkle of happiness creasing his eyes, and blew me a kiss.
It felt like a lie now every single time I said it, but I had never loved him more than I did in that moment.
Mateo led me to a small round table at the far edge of the reception space where our wedding cake was on display. Just beyond it, the floor let off into the sand and a small private beach. Waves broke gently onto the shore, illuminated by the string lights hanging off the trees. You could see every star in the sky, each blinking light of a passing plane, the full, spectacular moon. All the noise around us dulled.
“Was it everything you ever wanted?” he asked.
What a loaded question. This day? Our week? The last six months? Or maybe the past year and a half of my life that was like something out of a storybook? Not the Disney kind, the kind you had to ask the bookstore clerk about without looking them in the eyes. Still storybook, technically.
With any of those, though, my real answer would be, no, it wasn’t. It was nothing like what I wanted when I was sixteen, or eighteen. Definitely not at twenty-two, or even at twenty-five. Because I hadn’t known what I wanted until it happened exactly the way it did. I hadn’t known I wanted hard love. The kind you worked at and fought for. The kind that made you question why you ever settled for anything less than it before, and made sure you never settled for it again. We were two completely flawed people, and that hadn’t magically ended when we met. We just learned how to love each other through those things. Not in lieu of them.
Everything I’d ever wanted was standing in front of me.
“It was more than that,” I told him. “Even after the hair, and the sculpture, because it wouldn’t have been us if everything went right. Too boring.”
“Entirely.” Matty picked the long knife up off the table and the soft white linen napkin it was wrapped in. Two little people embraced on the top of the two-tiered, marbled buttercream cake.
It was bittersweet, watching it all come to an end after the roller coaster ride to get here. One day went by in the snap of a finger after what felt like years of work, and tomorrow we’d go back home and continue life as just the two of us. The quiet solitude was already creeping in like the Sunday scaries. As ready as I was to resume our life and be able to enjoy one another fully, I could feel myself already mourning this unique time in our lives that we’d never experience again. As if it was a time capsule we’d been filling and now it was time to bury it.
I was somehow nostalgic for the present.
That would change. I knew the feeling would wash away, because our future was already building its blocks in front of us. Anna and David would be living down the road, and all the wheels were in motion for Angelo to join us when the time was right. There was a brightness ahead making up for lost time with my family, and turning the house Mateo and I lived in into our home. We had clients to make magic for, ideas to see through, dreams to bring to life.
The possibilities were an endless, invigorating blank slate, and I couldn’t wait to get started.
“We did it,” I said. “Butt naked and screaming, but we did it.”
“Don’t get me hard while I’m cutting the cake, Tal. Everybody’s looking at us.”
My mouth twisted into a grin, and I put my hand over Mateo’s on the knife as he guided it to the cake and made the first cut while our closest friends and family gathered watching. He swiped a dollop of icing onto his finger and held it out in front of my lips for a taste.
“Didn’t you just say not to get you hard?” I murmured. He plopped the buttercream onto the tip of my nose with a deep chuckle and dark eyes challenging me, and his perfect teeth split into a full, breathtaking smile. The sweet smell of sugar wafted through over me. “You don’t know what you started.”
I swept some more icing off the top of the cake and dabbed it onto Matty’s nose, smearing it down and across his cheek. He gasped, breathy and amused, and tried to wipe it off but got even more of it on the sleeves of his dress shirt instead. “Oh, come here, baby. Give me a kiss.”
Mateo caught me by the wrist when I turned to dodge him and planted his lips smack onto mine, rubbing his nose and his cheek across my face in a messy waterfall of kisses. I reached out blindly and took a handful of the cake and smashed it into his hair, giggling like a maniac. He grunted out a complaint though I felt his smile against my skin, and a moment later there was another generous helping of our delicious and expensive wedding cake being rubbed into my face and neck.
“Man, you look good enough to eat,” he joked, running his lips down my neck and licking icing off my chest until I was laughing so hard I could cry.
“Tally, your dress!” Phee called out. She was smiling and laughing, too, hanging onto the moment like a thread the same way I would if it were her and Frankie. The front of my dress was covered in cake and getting more ruined by the second and I threw my hands up, too happy to care.
“We can wash it off,” Mateo suggested. “I could use a bath, too.” There was mischief in his expression, a light in his pupils that only sparked that way when he was about to get himself into trouble. I recognized it and took two steps onto the sand, back out of his reach, but it was too late already. He came after me with a wicked smile dimpling his face.
I shrieked and turned, running in the opposite direction, as if I could somehow outlast him in a race, and it took no time at all for my husband’s strong, tight arms to wrap around me and lift me straight off the ground and over his shoulder, headed toward the waves.
“Mateo Duran!” I cackled.
His sweet laugh filled my ears as he kicked out of his dress shoes and flung my heels off my feet. I weakly lashed against his back with my tiny fists. “Yes, wife?”
Then we were submerged in sand and saltwater, suit and dress and all. I clung to Mateo and wrapped my legs around his waist. So much for the dress, for the hair and makeup, for the cake, the perfect wedding, the drama-less bachelorette party. So much for keeping all our secrets, and walking through life unscathed. I liked this version of it much, much better.
“Full moon tonight,” I pointed out.
“I wasn’t going to admit it, but I told the sky guy that I wanted to give my girl the moon, and he’s shown up every single time.”
My fingers swept into his damp hair. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Natalia Duran.”
Mateo’s eyelashes were wet, and the moonlight highlighted his lips and jaw so perfectly when I leaned down to kiss him. Our mouths parted and our tongues swept carefully and intentionally against each other. My senses were consumed with him, brain blank, chest heaving. I gave him all of me. It was a kiss that said, I’m home.
Hooting and shouting came from the beach and we parted just in time to watch our entire wedding party—Frankie and O, Angelo, my sisters, the Swans—in all their clothed glory break the water's edge and follow us into the waves.
My cheeks hurt from laughter but I threw my head back and laughed some more. People believed in magic because of moments like this. Love was magic. Love was family. It was earned, found. Love was simple. It hurt, it healed, it made you crazy. Love was raw and untamed. Love was whispers in crowded rooms, broken glass, crying so hard you couldn’t breathe. Love was howling at the moon.
Mateo sunk his hand into the wet hair at the nape of my neck and pressed his forehead into mine. “I think this is the second best day of my life.”
“So far,” I said.
“So far,” he agreed.