Chapter 30
Thirty
Victor
As much as I want to tumble Jason into bed and peel him out of the suit he just put on, we have a wedding to attend. Not just attend. I have a wedding to officiate. Jason is supposed to walk Kelsey down the aisle.
I kiss him until my lips tingle, then reluctantly grasp his upper arms and step back. “Kelsey will be inconsolable if we don’t show up for her big day.”
Jason honest-to-god pouts and it’s all I can do not to drag him back into my arms. I adjust his pocket square once more—which is what got us into this position in the first place—and force myself to let him go.
I grab my stole, folded up into a small, neat package, and the brown leather folder with my speech and the wedding script, then lead the way from our casita.
To my surprise, when Jason catches up, he reaches out and clasps my hand.
We walk hand-in-hand along the resort’s winding paths and he doesn’t let go until we approach the girls’ casita.
There’s no one along the way who sees us, but even this small step—holding hands with another man in public—is a big thing for Jason.
It doesn’t mean he’ll want to continue anything more than co-parenting with me after this week, though.
Adrienne answers my knock at the cabin door.
“Oh, thank God,” she says. Her dark curly hair is smoothed back from her face and twisted into a more elaborate bun than her usual workaday one.
A couple of large purple orchids are tucked into one side of the bun.
These are guaria morada, Costa Rica’s national flower, which are supposed to bring good luck and the promise of fulfilled dreams, a perfect choice for a wedding.
She’s wearing a peacock blue suit, the same color as mine and Jason’s, and minimal makeup except for a bold red lip color.
She looks beautiful. There’s just a hint of frustrated impatience in the tightness of her jaw.
“What’s wrong?” Jason immediately asks.
“I have no fucking idea. She keeps saying that she needs something borrowed and something blue and she won’t explain why it’s so important, just that she’s annoyed with herself that she didn’t think about it before.
” Adrienne lifts her head and gazes off in the direction of the overlook where the wedding will take place.
“She’s cried to the point of ruining her makeup three times now. ”
Jason reaches into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and withdraws a black velvet box. “I’ve got this.”
Adrienne blows a big sigh out. “Great.” She steps out of the cabin and grabs my arm. “Buy me a drink at the bar, Victor. I’m not saying I plan to get hammered before I get married, but I’m not not saying that, either.”
I look at Adrienne, then at Jason, torn between letting Jason manage Kelsey and rushing in to fix whatever’s going on. Jason gives me a quiet, knowing look. “She’ll be fine, Victor.” He checks his watch. “Give us half an hour and I’ll text you when we’re ready to start.”
Adrienne tugs at my arm. “Come on, Victor. What we need is liquid courage and lots of it.”
I escort Adrienne to the restaurant’s bar, and when we’re settled at the end opposite the pool, I wait until she’s ordered us double whiskies with a splash of ginger ale to ask, “Do we really need liquid courage to do this today?”
It’s ten in the morning and while we’re on vacation, it’s also kind of an important day.
All Adrienne has to do is show up and repeat after me, but the critical portion of the marriage ceremony is where the parties declare their intent to join their lives together. If Adrienne is having second thoughts…
“No,” she says. She swirls the amber liquid in her glass.
“I love her, even when she’s catastrophizing like this.
I think she’s just nervous. I’m sure Jason will be able to calm her down.
” She takes a thoughtful sip. “I’m…okay, I guess I’m nervous, too.
And being around Kelsey freaking out was making me even more nervous, so thanks for indulging my excuse to get out of the cabin for a bit. ”
“Of course,” I tell her. I open my leather folder and scan the ceremony script. The words on the page blur as I try to read them in preparation.
My mind is not on the words in the folder.
My mind is on the way Jason looked at me in the shower an hour ago, water streaming down his face, eyes dark and vulnerable in a way that made my chest feel too small. The way Jason touched me after.
Not urgent or hungry, but lingering.
Tender.
Like he was trying to memorize the shape of my body.
“What about you?” Adrienne asks.
I shift in my chair, trying to shake off the memory. “Me? What about me?”
She gestures at the folder with the glass in her hand. “Are you nervous?”
Not about the ceremony.
I smile at her and tap the folder. “Just, you know, getting in the zone. Making sure I don’t accidentally marry you to the wrong person.”
“Ha,” Adrienne says drily. She takes another sip and her glass is dangerously close to empty. “I never thought I’d do this, you know.”
“What, get married?”
She nods and lifts a finger at the bartender, who glances at me. I shake my head and she turns away to pour Adrienne a second whiskey.
“Yeah. It’s such an outdated, heterosexist institution, you know? So many ridiculous traditions that all stem from when women were given as property from one man to another and children had to carry their father’s name in order to be accepted as legitimate.”
Kelsey doesn’t have my name and Leah and I weren’t married when she was born. After a second, Adrienne realizes what she just said and winces. “I’m sorry, Vic—”
I wave my hand. “Don’t worry about it.” It used to bother me. That Leah’s father convinced her to keep her pregnancy a secret from me and pressured her to change both her name and Kelsey’s when she married Jason. But what’s that Shakespeare quote? A rose by any other name…
Kelsey is my daughter, as well as Jason’s, and whatever other feelings Jason has or has had about me, he upheld my right to a relationship with Kelsey the entire time he’s known her. That she has his last name doesn’t matter.
“Are either of you changing your names?”
Adrienne spits the sip of whiskey she just took across the polished bar top. “Oh, fuck, no.”
I hand her a cocktail napkin and she pats gingerly at her painted lips. “Sorry, just…what a ludicrous idea. Not that I mean you’re ludicrous, but—”
I raise my hands in mock surrender. “I’m sorry I asked,” I say with a teasing smile. “I’ve known some gay and lesbian couples who merged or hyphenated their names, that’s all.”
Adrienne snorts. “Kelsey suggested it once and I probably reacted the same way. I’m thirty-fucking-seven years old. I’ve built my entire career using this name; I’m not changing it and starting over with a new one no one will recognize.” She casts a sideways glance at me. “Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Change your name if you ever get married?”
“Hell, no,” I say instantly.
“See?”
I reacted without thinking, and yeah, I see. My name is part of my identity and I can’t even fathom having a different one. Except that the name Victor Perez floats immediately to the top of my mind and, I gotta say, it has kind of a nice ring to it. Perez-Hendricks? Hendricks-Perez?
Christ, I feel like Kelsey when she was a teenager, scrawling practice signatures with the last name of whatever crush she had at the time all over her math notebook.
Anyway, there’s no chance of that happening.
Not just no chance of me changing my name, but no chance of me getting married.
Despite the number of weddings I’ve performed, I don’t think marriage is in the cards for me.
I stand up before a couple and tell them that marriage isn’t just about the big moments, but about choosing each other in the small, everyday moments.
About showing up, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
Except that I’ve never been good at showing up when it’s hard. When things get heavy or complicated or uncomfortable, I pivot. I find a distraction, an exit. I’ve been doing it my whole life. With relationships, with jobs, with anything that starts to feel like it might pin me down.
I did it with Leah, even. When I finally found out that she’d had a baby, I panicked.
I didn’t really step up to be a dad until Kelsey had a new dad in her mom’s new husband.
When Leah got sick, I was there, but I kept things light, kept her laughing, because the alternative was drowning in the weight of losing her.
And with Jason…God, with Jason, I’ve been doing that for fifteen years.
Even this week—these stolen moments at the resort, the sneaking around before Kelsey caught us, the incredible sex—I’ve been treating it like an adventure. A fun, temporary escape. Nothing serious.
Nothing that would follow us home.
Except that somewhere between the hot springs and the way Jason whispered my name last night while fucking me, it stopped feeling temporary.
Which scares the hell out of me.
Saying goodbye to Jason the day after tomorrow is going to be harder than it was fifteen years ago. Not that it was easy then, or at any of the other times over the years when our paths almost crossed. I just got good at pretending it was.
Adrienne downs the last of her whiskey and checks the delicate silver watch at her wrist. “We should probably head down.”
I close the leather folder and tuck it under my arm. In less than an hour, I’m going to stand in front of everyone my daughter and her fiancée have gathered here and talk about commitment and forever and the courage it takes to choose love.
The irony isn’t lost on me.