FIRST LOVE
MCKENZIE PORTER & JAKE ETHERIDGE, THELMA & JAMES
EMORY
I'm marrying Jordan Love today.
It's the first and primary thought I have when I open my eyes to a freshly painted, buttercup yellow ceiling, framed with the wooden rafters Jordan installed last week. It’s warm and cozy, and when I look up every morning, I think of daisies in summertime and bright sunshine after days of rain.
Dr. Love was adamant that yellow could not go on the walls of our bedroom, but he sure changed his tune when Molly lost her mind over this particular shade of yellow, what she calls Princess Buttercup Yellow, of course.
But I think it was me offering to wear a certain yellow sundress to the party today that really sealed the deal.
The rest of the walls are a shade of ivory called Hopeful Beginnings, which feels like a really good mood to surround ourselves with. Even if my fiancé did make a fine case for one called Sexy Silk when we were debating on color palettes.
The second, equally prominent thought filling my mind is, I smell brownies.
They’re most assuredly the breakfast brownies Jordan bakes once a week.
The very same brownies that he hides veggies inside of so Molly and I eat a more balanced diet, because he loves us so much and we eat like trash pandas.
It’s what I do for the animals when I need to sneak medicine into their food. So I know he cares.
Molly’s snoring lightly, snuggled up between Dinah and me, and obviously still exhausted from my wild bachelorette party. We stuffed ourselves with fried mozzarella sticks, pretzel bites, and ice cream sundaes and introduced Molly to one of our mom's favorite romcoms.
Spoiler alert. Kate Hudson starred, and of course, there was a happy ending.
But I still wouldn’t call myself a romance convert yet, and I’m definitely not itching to get my official H3B2 membership card anytime soon.
Because eight-foot-tall MMCs and tropes and pirates who fall for viking princesses—that’s all fiction.
It’s fun to read, if you’re into that sort of thing, but this is real life.
It’s ugly, sometimes, and hard, yet still, somehow, so much sweeter.
If you’d asked me ten years ago if I’d ever get married again, I would have laughed in your face, then retreated to my bathroom for a good, long, shower cry.
If you’d have said I’d be walking down a matrimonial aisle towards my husband’s best friend, I would have slapped somebody silly. Probably the man in question.
It’s funny what looking in the rearview mirror does when you’ve finally made it down the road you were convinced would never end. Sometimes, I’d get lost in that view. Wondering how that newly widowed girl would have done things differently, where she would be if she had, and who she’d be with now.
But who’s to say if any of those options would have led me to the man currently standing shirtless in my kitchen, cradling a duckling to his bare chest, pouring coffee into my favorite mug, and gazing at me like he’s the lucky one. Not me.
To fall in love once, amazing. The dream. A worthy goal so many people are after.
To fall into deep, abiding, your-soul-matches-mine type love twice… that’s a miracle. One I won’t squander.
Which is why when Jordan asked three weeks ago, it was my easiest “yes.”
There was nothing special about the date on the calendar.
No fancy, romantic outing or super sexy interlude.
In fact, we’d been walking back from the barn, cranky after an afternoon in one of the fields doing weed control in the summer heat, covered in fresh mosquito bites, and arguing about where the soon-to-hatch ducklings would be sleeping.
I’d only just pleaded my case for a kitchen kiddie pool for our new additions—with Molly fully on my side, by the way—when Jordan dropped to one knee in front of Molly, took her hand, and slipped a precious, ruby ring on my daughter’s finger.
“You know I want to marry your mom, Little Red, but I want to make you a promise first,” he’d said.
“I love you, Molly. I’m not your dad, and I could never ever replace him, but it will be the honor of my life to step in where he isn’t able.
I promise I will love and cherish you every day of my life, if you’ll allow me. ”
After witnessing their friendship blossom, and their love for each other grow so naturally and so fiercely, it was no surprise to hear Molly’s fervent, “Yes, Ace! I’ll love you forever, too.”
The fact that the next words out of her mouth were, “Does this mean I’m getting a baby sister?” and her bff, Jordan’s, response was a resounding, “Oh, we’ll certainly do our best, kiddo,” were just par for the course at this point.
So there was no question in my mind what my answer would be when my turn came.
No further words or declarations of love Jordan could have possibly said, no length of time that would change what I knew so deeply in my soul.
I wanted to spend every day I’d be given with Jordan as my husband.
I wanted to be a family and to make one with him.
He knelt, with tears shining in his eyes and the bashful smile I love so much written across his face. And when he said, “Red… Sweetheart… do you want to marry me someday? Soon?”
My only answer could be a resounding, “Yes.”
Eight feet tall. Chiseled Jaw. Tattoos. Glasses. Loves my kid. Loves me. Is my very best friend.
How’s a girl to say no?
Now, here we are, three weeks later, on the morning of our wedding day, about to eat brownies out of the pan and, if I have anything to say about it, make out against the kitchen counter before our kid wakes up to interrupt. Exactly how things should be.
And if there were any doubts in my mind, Jordan saunters towards me with a fuzzy, sleeping duckling cradled in the nook of his tattooed bicep, and I’m overwhelmed with how right this all is. I’m more than ready for our life to start.
I’m marrying Jordan Love today.
“Morning,” I say, doing my own sexy saunter in a silky pajama set with Jordan’s face printed all over them. However happy Jordan may be to see me, when he narrows his eyes and keeps the coffee in his hand rather than offering it to me, I know I’m in for a scolding.
“Sweetheart.” He’s so adorable when he’s irritated.
“Hmm?” I pet the little tuft of hair at the crest of Marigold’s head. Though we tried to sway her with the names of the Spice Girls, Molly named each of her ducklings after yellow flowers. Marigold is Jordan’s favorite.
“I thought we agreed that the babies were going to sleep in the mudroom.”
“We said they wouldn’t sleep in the kitchen.”
“Because poultry bacteria is real.”
“Yes, that.” I kiss him for giving the right answer. Job well done, sir. “But you never specified how you felt about the living room. I would have had to move the pool to the mudroom. And today’s bath day, so…”
“Of course, it is.”
“It just didn’t make sense.” I plant another kiss on his exasperated smirk, then push his glasses up the bridge of his nose for good measure. “And I like them close to me.”
“Ya know what else doesn’t make sense, Red?” I don’t think he’s actually looking for an answer. “Attempting to sleep on a couch… in the same room as eight ducklings who have their nights and days mixed up.”
I pout out my lips. “I thought you said you loved the couch?”
This precious man takes a solidifying breath. I bet he’s wondering exactly what he’s gotten himself into. Too late, though, he’s mine.
“I slept with Daisy and Pansy chirping on my chest all night…” As if hearing their names, the ducklings nearby begin to peep wildly. Jordan returns Marigold to her sisters, then stomps back to me, but not before giving them each words of praise for being “such good little duckies.”
The poor guy has no chance of me doing things any differently, because now I have a visual of him cuddling chubby, little ducklings all night, and I’m having a difficult time not dreaming up more baby animals I can bring into our home.
What would Jordan look like with a lamb in his arms? Or a racoon kit? Or, my newest, most vivid fantasy, what would he look like with our baby on his chest? God willing, time will tell.
He cages me against the countertop, in a move that says he’s not letting me go anywhere, so I think things are about to go exactly where I’d like them to. “I love you, Red. The couch provides good proximity to you, therefore, I tolerate the couch.”
“But not tonight,” I whisper, letting my hands trail up his chest where my favorite of his tattoos lives, until they’ve slid around his shoulders and my hands are buried in the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Not tonight,” he echoes, pressing a kiss to my temple. The anticipation of our first night together might have me speeding this whole ceremony up. “Finally.”
We’re about to get down to kitchen business, aka kissing and brownie eating—my two favorite hobbies, as it were—when Dinah and Molly join us.
Molly speeds by us in her matching Jordan Jammies—trademark pending—with barely a “hello” and Buttercup in her arms, racing to the dry pool of ducklings.
When she hops in, greeting each of them by name, the babies waddle and chirp endlessly around the confused bunny, waiting impatiently for their turn to be snuggled by their mama.
“I swear, you never have a shirt on,” Dinah says, entering the kitchen in jammies with Jack’s face all over them.
I made a matching set for Lola and Chipper, the cat. Jack is absolutely going to hate it so much. I smile just thinking about it.
“I was holding Marigold.” Jordan grabs his shirt from where it hangs over the couch and slips it on over his head. “Keeping ducklings warm is a challenge and skin-to-skin contact can be comforting.”
Amen.
“Jackson, Griffin, and Bill are on their way to set up the chairs,” he says, sadly abandoning our previous pursuits to wash his hands in the kitchen sink.
Dinah and I glance at each other with delighted approval.
If a man washes his hands after duck holding, surely he does so after using the bathroom.
“I’m guessing I won’t see you girls for about”—he checks the watch on his wrist—“a hundred and eighty minutes.”
“Correct,” my sister confirms. “And we will need all of those one hundred and eighty minutes to primp. So say goodbye, and make it quick.”
“She’s so bossy.” Jordan smiles, but obeys, calling over to Molly first, “I love you, kiddo. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Molly jumps out of the pool just as quickly as she entered, hurrying for a hug before he leaves.
I wonder if Jordan notices that the proud smile she gives him is entirely James’.
His dimple. His grin. His adorably crooked teeth.
What once would have made me sad, feels more like a happy reminder that, even in the womb, she’s never known a day where she wasn’t entirely loved.
“I can’t wait until you see my dress. It’s so pretty. ”
“It’ll be pretty because you’re wearing it, Little Red.” He kisses her cheek, then turns to me. “And you.”
“Yes?” I approach them, getting in on their snuggle and absolutely loving when both Molly and I are wrapped into a Jordan hug. “Your dress… We had an agreement.”
“We did.”
“And will I see you in it today?” He uses his thumb to tilt my chin up, placing a kiss on my lips. Molly squeals and tries to get out of the snuggle, but he’s not having it. If anything, his hold on us only grows tighter.
I happily respond, giving him one last kiss before the altar, and whispering in his ear so that our daughter isn’t completely scarred for life, “You’ll see me in it tonight. Just after you get your very own, custom jammies.”
Because I get to marry Jordan Love today.
“Finally,” he says again, then reluctantly heads towards the fields to meet our setup crew.
I follow his path at the window, watching Jordan walk through the rows of lavender we planted over ten years ago, on his way to the altar site where we’ve chosen to promise forever to each other.
It’s crazy to think, it wasn’t long ago that this land was bare.
Covered in nothing but fields of grass and wildflowers.
Lavender farming has been a lesson in patience, if there ever was one.
A labor intensive, sometimes painful and often frustrating practice of persistence and endurance, when on many of those days I would have rather given up.
Even after the arduous task of planting acres and acres of seeds in meticulous rows, the plants didn’t mature into the full, flowering bushes they are now for years. All that time of wondering if we’d ever see the beauty of their blooms across the land. Whether they’d grow into anything at all.
But today, looking out at the fields I love so much, and the man I’m building a life with walking through them, I wonder what beauty will come from the next adventure.
What would James do if he knew where we ended up?
I think he’d smile that dimpled smile I adored and say, “Live, Red. Dream new dreams.”
And that’s exactly what I intend to do.