Epilogue
Hazel
“If rain on your wedding day is good luck, what’s snow?”
“Frozen good luck,” Kristen answers authoritatively.
I look at my best friend in the reflection of the vanity mirror as she tweaks my hair, wrapping a strand of brown hair around the curling wand and then spritzing it with hairspray until it’s a satisfactory combination of “elegant and playful.”
Her words, not mine.
As my maid of honor, she’s been here for me since the beginning.
When Vincent and I got back together, I expected her to react with shock.
To try to talk me out of it, reminding me of the violent scene in the laundry room of the hotel at Startup Week NYC, reminding me of the painful breakup I’d endured a year before.
But my best friend was surprisingly understanding about the whole thing.
Even more so after she met her own fiance, a close friend of Vincent’s who just happens to be his best man today.
Together the four of us make quite the group.
Two powerful men with unimaginable wealth and influence…
and two curvy women blazing a trail of their own, determined to get their business off the ground organically, without the men in our lives pulling any strings to help us get ahead.
That’s right. Though Vincent and his friend offered multiple times, we refused to take their investment money. We trusted that our app would take off on its own, just by its own merit, by the fact that it’s a good idea with a lot of women who need it.
And we were right.
After Startup Week last year, we had investors flooding our email and phones. We got our pick of the lot, and went with a female-led VC firm that enables us to call the shots and maintain majority ownership over the company.
I think we made the right choice.
“You. Look. Amazing,” Kristen sighs, sitting next to me and looking at me in the mirror. “I can’t believe it. How is it already your wedding day? It seems like just yesterday, you were telling me how Vincent is dead to you, how you’re so totally over him and ready to date again.”
I shudder.
“I was wrong,” I say, thinking of the creep who spilled his martini all over my dress back in NYC. The same night that I went to see Vincent, knowing he’d be in that familiar hotel room - the room that we’ve come to call ours.
The door of the bridal suite opens and the wedding planner pokes her head in.
“Oh, you look lovely!” she gushes. “It’s time. Remember - kick your dress out as you walk and -”
“And don’t walk too fast,” I complete the sentence automatically, remembering her lecture on walking down the aisle properly from the rehearsal.
“Two minutes,” she says. “And I’ll come back to get you. We’ll line up in the back room and wait for the music.”
When she’s gone, I turn to Kristen. My mouth has gone totally dry and my hands feel cold and clammy.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I say numbly.
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” she asks me.
I shake my head. It’s not even a question. There’s no doubt in my mind that Vincent is the man for me. After all that we’ve been through. The heartache. The danger. Everything. We went from lovers, with him holding me at arms length for my own protection, to partners and trusted confidants.
And now, soon, husband and wife.
“I’m ready,” I breathe, picking up my bouquet off the nearby table. “I just hope he is.”
Vincent
“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the - ”
I don’t even wait for him to finish the sentence, pulling Hazel into a long, slow kiss.
The damn preacher talks too slow, I’m not waiting on him.
And Hazel’s been standing there, looking so fucking beautiful.
She’s temptation in a white dress that flatters her curvy silhouette, somehow looking sexy and modest at the same time.
It’s a teasing dress, a dress that I plan to tear off of her as soon as I get her alone.
“Where are you taking me?” Hazel asks, trailing behind me as I drag her by the hand through the wedding venue.
“Somewhere quiet,” is all that I say as we follow the narrow hallway behind the reception hall, turning left and then right until we hit a flight of stairs. I let Hazel go up first, helping her hold her dress as she climbs the steps, careful not to slip.
When we reach the top, we’re in a dark room. Not much light except for a small round window located at the crest of the angled wall attached to the pitched ceiling, which only allows a few muted rays of sun inside.
“Vincent, are we in…are we in the attic?” Hazel asks.
I don’t reply. Technically we are. But it’s so much more than an attic. I find the switch I planted here last night, flipping it on.
Hazel’s gasp of awe is all the reward I need for spending hours up here, planting this surprise.
“Oh my god,” she says, taking in the floor to ceiling twinkling lights that line the walls. In the center of the room is a small table with two chairs. Atop it are two flute glasses, and a bottle of the finest champagne money can buy, over ice.
“I thought we could have our first toast up here,” I say, coming closer and wrapping my arms around her. “Alone. A few minutes of privacy to recharge, before we have to go back out there and face the crowd of well-wishers.”
Hazel laughs.
“How do you know me so well?” she asks. “But, won’t people notice we’re gone?”
“I told the wedding planner to stall,” I reply with a shrug. “Photos, catering delays, whatever else. It’s a wedding, unexpected things happen. Fuck everyone else. The only person I care about today is you. This day is about you.”
Hazel turns around, her eyes glowing up at me. It’s that expression on her face, the look of complete trust and admiration, that keeps me going. That makes me sure of my decisions, sure of my path to becoming a reformed man. A better man, one worthy of a woman like her looking at me in this way.
Every day I work hard to earn that look. And every day I fall short of worthy. But if you ask Hazel, she’ll tell you otherwise. To her, I’m perfect. Her hero. And now, her husband.
I pop the bottle of champagne and pour each of us a generous glass. We toast, our glasses clinking happily.
“To marriage?” Hazel asks.
“To forever and always,” I say.