✧･Epilogue #2
"But I think maybe that's because I've spent so much of my life trying to understand what loving someone was supposed to look like."
Her eyes glisten. "I thought it was supposed to be simple. I thought you met someone, you fell in love, and everything after that just made sense."
She gives a tiny, almost embarrassed laugh.
"Then I met you."
My chest tightens.
"And nothing made sense."
A few people laugh softly and Mae smiles through her tears.
"You were stubborn. You were annoying. You were entirely too confident. You made me laugh when I didn't want to. You saw things in me that I wasn't ready to see in myself, and somehow, without even realizing it, you became the person I wanted to tell everything to."
Her voice catches. "And then I got scared."
The room is completely silent now.
"I was scared of what loving you meant. I was scared of what it would cost me. I was scared of disappointing people, of disappointing my family, of disappointing the version of myself I'd spent years trying to be."
She swallows, blinking away a tear.
"And I hurt you because I was afraid."
I feel my throat tighten.
"But you still loved me."
Her voice drops quieter. "Even when you had every reason not to."
She pauses, and I can see her trying to steady herself.
"You left, Claire. And I let you."
A tear slips down her cheek. "I spent years telling myself that was the end of our story because admitting it wouldn't have meant admitting that I had made the biggest mistake of my life."
Her fingers tighten around mine. "And then you came home."
I smile through my tears.
"And somehow, after all that time, you looked at me like you still knew me."
Her smile trembles. "You still knew when I was lying about being okay. You still knew when I needed you to stop teasing me and when I needed you to keep going."
A quiet laugh escapes me.
"You always knew me."
Mae looks at me for another long moment. "And that's when I realized something."
She takes a breath. "I didn't fall in love with you again."
My heart skips.
"I never stopped."
I close my eyes for half a second because the tears come too quickly.
When I open them, she's crying too.
"I don't want to promise you that our life will always be easy," she continues. "I don't want to promise that we'll never argue, or that we'll never hurt each other, or that there won't be days when one of us is impossible to live with."
I raise an eyebrow and Mae smiles.
"But I can promise you this. I'll keep choosing you."
Her voice steadies. "On the easy days. On the hard ones. When we're young and stupid and think we know everything, and when we're old and gray and can't remember why we walked into a room."
Someone laughs quietly behind us.
"I'll choose you when we're dancing in the kitchen and when we're sitting in silence. I'll choose you when you're teasing me and when you're exhausted. I'll choose you when life is beautiful, and I'll choose you when it isn't."
Her eyes don't leave mine. "I'll choose you when we're surrounded by people, and I'll choose you when it's just us."
She takes another breath. "And I'll keep coming home to you."
That one hits me harder than I expect and my lips tremble.
Mae's voice softens. "Because you are my home, Claire."
A tear falls down my cheek.
"I spent so much time being afraid that loving you would mean losing everything."
She squeezes my hand. "But loving you gave me everything I was too afraid to ask for."
She looks down at our hands for a moment before lifting her eyes to mine again.
"So I don't promise you a perfect life."
Her smile is small and sincere. "I promise you ours."
My chest aches.
"I promise to love every version of you. The woman standing in front of me right now, the woman you were when I first met you, and every version you're going to become."
She takes a shaky breath.
"And if I get the privilege of growing old with you, I'll spend every day grateful that somehow, after everything, you found your way back to me."
She pauses.
"I love you, Claire."
Her voice breaks slightly.
"I always have."
The room is silent and then I can hear someone quietly crying behind me.
Mae smiles through her tears.
"And I always will."
She finishes, but neither of us moves. I'm just standing there, staring at the woman I love, completely overwhelmed by the fact that these aren't promises we're making because we're hoping we'll keep them.
The officiant gives us a moment before turning toward me. "Claire."
I inhale shakily.
"Whenever you're ready."
I inhale shakily, trying to gather the right words.
For once... I don't have any.
I've spent so much of my life knowing exactly what I wanted to say and exactly how to say it.
I can walk into a room full of strangers and make them believe I'm completely in control.
I can talk my way through almost anything.
I can make a joke when something gets too serious and change the subject when someone gets too close.
But standing here with Mae's hand in mine, looking into the eyes of the woman I've loved for most of my adult life, I have nothing prepared.
So I stop trying to find the perfect words.
"I don't have a speech," I admit, and my voice comes out rougher than I expect. "I had one. I wrote one, actually."
Mae's smile grows through her tears.
"You did?"
"Yeah."
"What happened to it?"
I glance down at our hands before looking back at her. "I realized it sounded like something I was supposed to say instead of something I actually wanted to say."
Her expression softens.
"So I'm just going to tell you the truth."
Mae gives my hand another little squeeze.
I take a breath. "The truth is, I loved you long before I understood what that meant."
My voice catches, and I pause long enough to swallow.
"I loved you when we were friends. I loved you when I was pretending I didn't. I loved you when I was angry with you. I loved you when I was halfway across the country telling myself that leaving was the smart thing to do."
A tear slips down my cheek.
"And I loved you when I came home and realized that six years hadn't changed a damn thing."
Mae lets out a tiny, tearful laugh.
"But you taught me something."
Her eyebrows lift slightly.
"You taught me that being afraid doesn't mean I have to run."
Mae's lips part as she takes a shaky breath.
"You taught me that home isn't necessarily a place. Sometimes it's a person. Sometimes it's the person who knows exactly how to annoy you before breakfast and leaves paintbrushes everywhere and steals your hoodies and somehow still manages to make you want to come home faster just because you know
they're there."
A few quiet laughs move through the room. Mae laughs too, wiping beneath one eye with her free hand.
"And somehow, that's you."
I smile. "You've become every part of my life I didn't know I was missing."
My voice gets quieter.
"You're the person I want to tell things to. You're the person I look for when something funny happens. You're the person I want beside me when something hurts. You're the person I want in my kitchen, in my house, in my bed, in my life."
Mae's eyes fill again.
"And I don't want a life that doesn't have you in it."
I squeeze her hand.
"I don't promise that I'm always going to get it right. I'm still going to be stubborn. I'm still going to overthink things. I'm probably going to tease you when you specifically ask me not to."
Mae gives me a look.
"Definitely."
I laugh softly.
"Definitely."
The laughter fades, leaving us standing there in the quiet again.
"But I promise I'll stay."
I feel the words settle somewhere deep inside me.
"I promise that when things get hard, I'll stay. When we're angry, I'll stay. When we're tired and life gets messy and we're not sure what we're doing, I'll stay."
I look down at our hands.
"I won't run."
Then I meet her eyes again.
"I promise to keep choosing you, too. Every morning. Every night. In all the ordinary moments that nobody else will ever see. I'll choose you when we're eighty and arguing about something ridiculous. I'll choose you when we're dancing in our kitchen.
I'll choose you when we're sitting on the porch and neither of us has anything to say."
My smile trembles.
"I'll choose you when we look nothing like the people standing here today."
Mae's tears are falling freely now.
"And when we're old, I want to look across the room and still recognize the woman who made me feel like the luckiest person alive."
I take a shaky breath.
"Because that's what you are, Mae."
My throat tightens.
"You're the best thing that ever happened to me."
She shakes her head slightly, already crying harder.
"And I know we lost time."
I glance around the room for just a second before looking back at her.
"I know there are years I wish we could have back. Years I wish I could rewrite. But if I changed any of it - if I went back and took away every mistake, every fight, every terrible decision, every year we spent apart..."
I pause.
"I'd be afraid I'd change the part that brought me back to you."
Mae's face crumples slightly, and I smile through my own tears.
"So I don't want to change it anymore."
I bring our joined hands a little closer between us.
"I just want what's next."
My voice is barely above a whisper now.
"I want the boring mornings and the late nights. I want your paintings taking over every room we own. I want your shoes in the hallway and your coffee cup on the counter. I want arguments over what we're having for dinner and dancing while we're cooking.
I want vacations and bad days and birthdays and ordinary Tuesdays that nobody else would think twice about."
I smile at her.
"I want all of it."
Mae's thumb brushes slowly over my knuckles.
"With you."
The room feels impossibly quiet.
"I don't know what the rest of our life is going to look like."
I glance down at the ring on my finger from earlier, then back at her.
"But I know who I want beside me while I find out."