Epilogue III
“What the—” I cut myself off and wrestle with the damn stupid piece of fabric. “How the hell does it—why the fuck can’t I tie this piece of shit?”
My eyes catch on movement in the floor-length mirror in front of me. Javi stands behind me against the doorframe to our room. His reflection looking at me with that sexy half-smile on his face. “Having trouble?”
I roll my neck and try to get rid of the irritation flowing through me. Turning toward him, I attempt to calmly answer while pointing to the limp bowtie hanging around my neck. “These things are fucking stupid and I don’t know how to tie them.”
He laughs lightly and saunters toward me. “You know, this is how you first got my attention. You being frustrated and cussing out inanimate objects. You remember that? Your locker? Apparently, a hot, angry guy still does it for me.”
I smile as he approaches, my eyes running up his form. He’s just as built and strong, even though he’s not playing football anymore.
After he graduated with his business degree, he pretty much forgot about football and focused on being there for his mom while trying to figure out what to do with his life.
Javi and his mom worked hard to keep her afloat during the divorce.
Scott did everything he could to try and keep any shred of money or comfort away from her.
But all of his work proved to be useless.
Once Javi and I testified about the mental cruelty Scott inflicted on his family, Natalia was finally set free and with a hefty payout.
So now there wasn’t a need for Javi to work himself ragged anymore, but he still didn’t know what to do with his degree.
It was in that limbo period that the car wash he had been working for during college went up for sale.
It had been suffering for a while and Javi had suggested a billion ideas to help the business come back from its deathbed, but they were never taken seriously.
So, with his mom’s help of a down payment, he decided to take a risk and buy it for himself. Put those changes into action.
He flourished as his own boss. Brought the car wash back to life. And now he’s opened up two other locations in town and is looking for more.
When he reaches me, he spins me around, his hands gently gliding down the black tux I’m wearing to settle on my hips. We stare at each other in the reflection.
“You look so pretty, munequito.” One of his hands comes up to caress my cheek, and I can’t help but lean into it. “I love the purple shit around your eyes.”
I scoff a laugh at him. “The purple shit?”
He shrugs and starts tying my bowtie for me. “I don’t know which it is. Eyeliner? Eyeshadow?”
“A little of both,” I say, leaning toward the mirror to rub some of the purple glitter that strayed from my eyelid.
He tsks. “Stop moving. I almost got it.”
Finishing, he rests his hands back on my hips and stares at me in our reflection. “Wow,” he says, his eyes never leaving mine.
“What?” I say with a slight whine in my voice, breaking eye contact to fidget with my dinner jacket, which looks absolutely fine, but I don’t know what to do with myself when he looks at me like that.
“I know you’re on edge today, but I can’t believe how gorgeous you are, mi amor.”
“I’m not on edge,” I reply, trying to keep a straight face as his lips find the sensitive skin under my ear.
“You are.” His mouth migrates, finding a slow and delicious path down my throat.
“Mmmmm. No,” I moan. “We-we don’t have time for that right now.”
“There’s always time for my pretty little doll to come.”
His hand sneaks around, undoing the front of my pants to palm my growing erection through my underwear. “I don’t know…” My words trail off. His touch is so fucking good.
His hand pulls at the elastic waist of my underwear and snakes inside, immediately finding my leaking head and swirling the wetness around.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuck,” I groan, leaning more of my body weight against him.
He keeps sucking and kissing at my neck, surely leaving a mark that I’ll have to cover up at the wedding as he begins twisting his hand around my desperate cock.
“Look at yourself,” he whispers hotly in my ear.
I raise my eyes, finding the reflection. My eyes are barely open, lips parted as I pant through each stroke of his magical hands.
I whine again, because it’s the only thing I can manage right now.
“Shh, munequito. You have to be quiet. Just look at how wrecked you are. Why do you try to resist? My pretty boy loves when I touch him.”
I barely hang on to sanity as he lowers my pants and underwear, pulling my cock free and jerking me faster and faster until I can’t hold on anymore.
“Javier. Javier. I’m gonna bust, baby.”
“Come, munequito. Give me your cum.”
I come hard, biting my lip until I feel a sting of pain to keep myself quiet. He catches every ounce of my release as he strokes me through it, keeping my body from collapsing because I’m now fully propped up by him.
“See?” he purrs in my ear as I watch him bring his hand to his mouth and start licking away the cum with long swipes of his tongue.
My knees quake from the bolt of lust that careens through me while I gaze at the display.
“There’s always time for coming,” he mumbles against my neck once he’s finished.
I snort, shaking myself out of the trance that watching him eat my cum put me in. “You’re the best man. We can’t be late,” I chide, turning my face into a more serious expression.
He gently lifts me so I stand back on my own two feet. “Aww. Are you still butthurt that you’re not Landon’s best man? You’re still a groomsman.”
I sigh and start rearranging my pants, tucking my satisfied dick away. “I’m not butthurt. At all. Not even because I’m standing behind Danny and Simmons. Aka, I’m the last groomsman. I’m in last fucking place.”
Okay. That sounded a little butthurt.
He opens his mouth, most definitely to say something to placate me, but I beat him to it. “And I have to sit there and watch Danny and Simmons be all weird and awkward because of what happened at Landon and Grant’s bachelor party.”
“Oh… yeah,” he says, grimacing as we both silently recall the shit that went down when we were all in Las Vegas for their bachelor party.
He shakes his head. “Just ignore them. You’re there because Landon loves you.”
I grunt. “I would’ve made him my best man.”
He smiles really sweetly at me despite how irrational I’m being. “Well… he still loves you.” He shrugs.
We’re both silent as I rearrange my hair in the mirror, trying to slick back the lavender locks for a more polished look.
“Do you ever wish we did something like this? You know, the big party. Cake. Dancing. All of that.”
I ponder that, twisting at my ring while my husband analyzes my expression.
We didn’t exactly have a traditional ceremony. We were only twenty when we got engaged, so I think we both assumed that it would be a long engagement, full of planning until we got around to actually getting married a few years after.
But, it turned out that we really couldn’t wait.
Well, me specifically. I tried to do the whole planning thing.
I really did. But every time we talked about the ceremony or the flowers or the food, I got this uncomfortable itching underneath my skin.
It made me have to get up. Walk around. It screamed in my head.
Sometimes just a meaningless shriek but sometimes it was words.
Now! Now! Now!
One day, I just exploded.
“No! No more. No more planning. Fuck it all. Let’s get married now. I don’t want a fucking party. I want to be your husband. On a fucking Tuesday or Wednesday. Who gives a fuck? Let’s just get married.”
We had been discussing venue locations on the couch in our just-moved-into apartment when said explosion happened.
Javi looked at me from where he was still sitting, a look of confusion and shock on his face before smoothing out into his half-smile. “Okay, munequito. Tuesday.”
So, on a random fucking Tuesday, we called up Natalia, and Harold and Nancy, and made our way to the courthouse.
We got married right then. Nothing fancy. No party. No gourmet meal. No formal clothes. I was wearing sweatpants and a crop top, actually.
None of that stuff mattered. I knew that, but it was solidified for me when Javier lifted me up and kissed me in that gray cubicle while our parents quietly cried behind us.
I had him and he had me. We didn’t need anything else.
I turn around and throw my arms around his neck, standing up on my tip-toes to do so. “No. What we did was perfect.” I press a kiss against his lips. It’s gentle and chaste, but when he pulls his lips away, I chase after them, driving my tongue into his mouth.
“Again?” he chuckles in between my hot, needy kisses.
“Well”—I grab at his pants and start hastily undoing the button, lowering the zipper and reaching inside—“I just think it’s only fair for me to return the favor.”
I drop to my knees in front of him, fishing his cock out of his boxers and letting it hang heavy and drooling in front of my mouth.
His chest rises and falls rapidly as he cards his thick fingers through my hair. “You know what will happen the moment you put your mouth on me.”
I look up at him, shaking my head while I flick my tongue out at his dick, the head angry and purple beneath his foreskin. “I don’t think that’s actually true.”
He hisses and tightens his hand in my hair. “Okay, fine. Try. But I promise you, it’ll happen.”
I wrap my hand around his cock. It flexes for me as I gently slide the foreskin back, revealing all of his glistening mushroom head.
I lean forward and close my lips around the tip, taking a leisurely roll of my tongue, making him let out a contented sigh.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Daddies! Can I have a cookie? Abuelita said I can’t when I’m wearing my dress, but I really want one.”
Groaning, I sit back on my haunches to look up at him.
“See?” He lets out a little laugh that’s half sincere and half annoyed as he tucks his rapidly softening cock away.
“Hold on,” I yell to her as we both rearrange ourselves to look more presentable.
He walks to the door and opens it. “Iris.”
She smiles sweetly up at him. Her black hair in a thick braid piled on top of her head, adorned with little sparkly pins, while her baby hairs are artfully gelled against her skin. “Daddy. I need a cookie. I won’t get anything on my dress. Abuelita said it will get on my dress, but it won’t.”
She pulls at the white tulle skirt of her flowergirl dress, showing us that there is in fact nothing on it. “Look!”
“Well, I know there’s nothing there now. You haven’t eaten it yet,” he argues.
“I know, but when I do, I won’t get anything on it. Promise.”
Natalia walks up behind her, an exasperated look on her face. “I’m sorry. I told her she couldn’t and to let you both get dressed.” She looks at Iris and smiles. “But la Princesa is stubborn.”
Javier nods at his mom, who walks off, then looks at Iris. “No cookies in your dress.”
Her face instantly sours and she bursts into tears.
I never thought I would be here, married and a father to a four-year-old at twenty-five.
When I got my degree in Social Work and got a job, all I really wanted to do was make as much of a difference as I could. Make the journey of being in foster care a little bit better however I can.
Two years went by. The job is hard. It’s demanding. It’s emotionally exhausting, but during those moments where you can truly see that you’ve changed the course of someone’s life—in a good way—it makes it all worth it.
Then I was assigned to the case of this tiny human. Abandoned by her family, much like I had been.
I like kids enough. I’m not one of those crazy baby-fever people that must coo at a child if it’s within ten feet of me. But something was different when I laid my eyes on this one.
Something shook me when I looked at her. Reminiscent of the feeling I get looking at Javier but laced with some different unknown… something.
The only thing I could really think was that I needed to take care of her.
She belonged with us.
And on top of that, they gave her the fucking name Iris.
Iris.
Whatever is in control of the universe was showing me the biggest sign they fucking could.
When I had first brought up the idea of fostering her to Javi, he wanted to have me committed.
We were twenty-three at the time. So young. He had just bought the car wash. We both had no idea how to care for an almost two-year-old child.
All of that was true. And admittedly, it did sound like I was a little batshit.
Maybe I should’ve been committed.
But I managed to swindle a meeting with her out of Javi. And from that moment, he was completely smitten.
I walk over and scoop her up. She wraps her little arms tightly around my neck, continuing to wail about the lack of cookies in her life.
I rub soothing circles on her back. “Cálmate. Cálmate,” I chant over and over until she slowly begins to quiet down.
A warm hand lands on my shoulder. “Your Spanish is getting much better, munequito.”
I tilt my head to smile back at Javier, but I’m not sure how true that statement is.
Ever since we got together, I’ve wanted to be able to speak Spanish with him. I was passively studying before we had Iris, but once she was around, I kicked it into high gear.
She was young enough to still be developing her language skills when we started the process of adopting her, so Javier would speak to her in mostly Spanish, and I would speak to her in mostly English. That way she could be bilingual.
I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to understand and be able to talk to Javier and his family in the language that they first formed.
So, yes, I’ve come a long way. But my accent still sucks balls.
Iris pops her head out from my neck. “Hey! You call Daddy munequito, but what about me?” she says with a pout on her tear-streaked face.
He grabs her out of my arms with a huge grin on his face and holds her up towards the ceiling, sending her into a fit of giggles. “You’re mi Princesita.”
She giggles even harder while he sends her zooming around the room in his arms, making obnoxious airplane noises until he stops next to me.
I’m not the first person to get sappy, but fuck if my heart doesn’t feel so fucking full when I realize that this is my life.
And to think, I tried so hard to cut Javi out of my life.
I don’t think I ever had a chance.
“Ready to watch our friends get married?” he asks me.
“And me!” Iris chimes in. “You get to watch me walk down the aisle too!”
I smile. “Of course. So excited. Let’s go.”
“I love you,” he says, those warm brown eyes staring intently into mine, giving me the kind of comfort and love that I could’ve only dreamed about before meeting him.
“I love you too,” I echo as we walk out of the room.
THE END.