Chapter Twenty-Eight
TWENTY-EIGHT
DARIO
A chocolate maker and a soon-to-be tattoo apprentice walk into a courthouse.
This sounds like the start of a joke, but rather, it is the start of a lifetime.
The late-August heat gives way to strong air-conditioning as they march, hand in hand, toward the Marriage License Office. They have an appointment, both with an official there and with their future.
Mr. and Mrs. Moore along with Grandpa Al and Grandma Opal all come as witnesses wearing their best dress.
Emilio, who dashed off to New York for most of the week to meet with some friends and begin the legal process for his divorce, returns in the nick of time to hold up his phone; his mother shines on video chat from a bustling dressing room in some other country, looking the part of the happy diva, exclaiming, “Please don’t make me cry too much.
I don’t want to have to redo my show makeup before the opening scene. ”
The plain room and the monotoned officiant do nothing to mire the happiness sparkling within his chest. How could they when he’s entrapped by Charlie’s already gleaming eyes?
His tattooed American cleaned up nicely.
There was no time to rush-order him a Gabriele tux or get Michelle’s design custom-made, so Charlie borrowed one of his dad’s old black suits that somehow fits him perfectly.
He dyed his hair back to blond. Crouched over the bathroom sink, he said, “I don’t want to cringe when I look at our wedding photos ten years from now. ”
A warmth seeped through Dario at that. Charlie imagined revisiting photos from this day ten years from now, and envisioned them still happy and in love. That meant the world to him.
Even he had to settle on whatever he packed for what was meant to be a brief trip to America.
Never did he imagine wearing jeans to his wedding, but the casualness seemed all too fitting, for he was done keeping himself always buttoned up and cordoned off.
From this day forward, he shows the world the Dario underneath it all.
“Do you, Dario Cotogna, take Charlie Moore as your lawful, wedded husband?”
“Si. Lo voglio. I do,” Dario says with a smile.
“Do you, Charlie Moore, take Dario Cotogna as your lawful, wedded husband?”
Charlie grips Dario’s hands tighter. “I do.”
“And now, with the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I pronounce you partners. You may kiss.”
The pronouncement may come out lifeless, but their kiss is anything but.
It says everything they would’ve said to each other in vows they didn’t have time for in the fifteen minutes allotted for the ceremony.
Who cares? This no-frills, no-flash wedding rings more authentic than any big party ever could have.
Sometimes, the simplest recipe yields the sweetest results.