Chapter 40
JASON
I need about two more cups of coffee and a shot of something hard to deal with this ceremony. We’re already twenty minutes late.
Jackson and Alex are standing in as groomsmen. My parents couldn’t make it. Their flight got delayed, and they are stuck in New York. My sisters are also here. Because even when Mar is a pain in the ass, we love him. He’s like a brother.
“The ceremony hasn’t started,” Jack mumbles under his breath.
“I called it,” Alex mutters. “You owe me something.”
I roll my eyes and shake my head. I’m not thrilled about being close to an altar waiting for a fucking bride. Do they have to behave this way? I check my phone, but there’re no texts from Eileen. If Charlie had run away, she’d have told me.
But, after the ten-minute mark, I volunteer to go looking for the bride. If she flakes, I’d prefer to find out sooner rather than later.
I have to walk around half of the venue to get to the bridal suite. As I approach, everything starts to make a lot more sense.
I can already hear Charlie pitching a fit, which is to be expected honestly.
What I don’t expect is Eileen’s voice, shouting right back.
“—Jason, myself, and a shit ton of your friends and family bent over backward to make today happen for you. Something your mother didn’t even offer to help with.,” Eileen says.
True. I’m surprised she’s pointing it out though.
“You ruined my graduation day,” she continues.
Wow, we’re going there.
I stop in front of the door—no use interrupting when Eileen’s finally telling them what’s up. I lean against the door frame, impressed as fuck.
“Sweetheart—” her mom says.
I roll my eyes.
“I don’t care,” Eileen yells, and I wonder if the wedding guests can hear the throw down.
Who cares? The smile on my face is so broad it hurts. That’s my Eileen, tough and capable.
She deserves to know her worth. What’s reasonable to ask of her, and when she deserves care and support.
It feels like she knows it for once.
When the door swings open, Eileen is pulling Charlie through the threshold.
“Everything alright here?” I ask cautiously.
Eileen huffs, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I think so.”
I look at Charlie, who’s kind of a wreck around her eyes. Good thing Jossie has shit to touch her face up before the reception.
“You ready to get married?” I ask Charlie.
She sniffles, looking at Eileen who refuses to meet her gaze.
“Yeah,” Charlie says. “I’m ready.”
The wedding finally gets underway. A harpist begins playing softly in the corner. All the decorations and people are set, and the wedding party goes down the aisle seamlessly.
Then, it’s Eileen and me walking down side by side.
“Nervous?” I whisper and link her pinky with mine.
“Not anymore,” she says with a smirk.
“You’re a fucking badass,” I say. “You should be proud of yourself.”
“Takes one to know one,” she says.
Just as we part at the front of the room, I squeeze her hand and walk to my side.
It’s sort of a Catholic ceremony. The minister is Lutheran. Which, Eileen explained to me is… different. Mainly he added more readings, but not so many that it’s as long as Eileen’s grandparents expected it to be.
Which, thank God, because I don’t know what we’d do if they don’t approve since I’m not helping, or paying, for another wedding.
“And now,” the minister says at some point. “The bride and groom have elected to recite their own vows.”
My eyes catch Eileen’s as she hands Charlie a piece of paper. I swallow thickly. This... this could be good. Unless Eileen didn’t do what we agreed on.
3 days ago
I bang my head against my coffee table. “They’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I wish,” Eileen says, lying on my area rug. Max is just right beside her, belly up sleeping.
She’s hiding her eyes under one of her checklists. It’s kinda cute.
“There was a list, and that list had a sublist,” she mutters. “I gave her three things to do. Tell me who your bridesmaids are, pick your wedding dress, and write your wedding vows.”
“I’d say two out of three ain’t bad, but she barely did one of those,” I joke.
She groans. “How the fuck do we write vows for someone else’s wedding?”
We sit there in silence for a while. How in-fucking-deed. This is way beyond the job description.
Then again, we could get creative with this.
I nudge her shoulder with my foot. “Hey, Eileen.”
“What?”
“What if we act while we write these?”
She sits up, blinking at me. “I gotta be honest, that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard you say, and I won’t pretend it made any sense.”
“What if... we pretend we’re in love with someone or something. Talk about love, embellish it a little bit. Let them edit it last minute and boom, corny vows that no one will ever remember anyway.”
“I could live with that,” she says.
She pulls out a notebook from her bag, handing it to me with a pen. “Let’s try to go for one page, front and back.”
I stare at my paper for a while, waiting for the muse to strike me.
“Uh, I know I suggested this but... how do we actually do this?” I ask.
Eileen looks up from the paper she’s been furiously scribbling on for a while.
“I don’t know,” she says with a shrug.
“What? You’ve been writing like a maniac for—” I check the clock on the wall. “Twenty minutes.”
“Yeah, kind of,” she mutters.
What does she have there, a three-page essay on coffee?
“Let me see,” I request.
She clutches her notebook close to her chest. “No, that’s okay.”
“Come on, Eileen,” I say, reaching over. “Show me.”
“It’s not done yet!”
She scoots away from me. I get on the ground for a better angle.
“It can’t be that bad!” I say, making a grab for her notebook.
We tug back and forth a little bit. But finally, I get the upper hand.
Yanking it just hard enough to get it into my hands—
—Which causes Eileen to land on top of me.
“Finally—”
Her paper is a drawing of me.
“Are you kidding?” I ask pretending to be upset but actually amused. “You’ve been drawing?”
“I was stuck! What do I know about love?”
I shrug, inspecting her drawing more closely. It’s a little cartoonish, but so accurate. She’s got all these great details of my hair, my eyes, my nose—
“I don’t have this many freckles,” I say, pointing to the drawing.
She looks between me and the paper, shrugging.
“They look cute on you,” she says.
Her eyes, those are cute, I think distractedly. Her eyes and her voice, plus the way she keeps tucking a pen behind her ear and then immediately forgets where it is. The way her hands flit across a page as she draws is super cute.
It’s strange the things people can find beautiful in the odd and mundane.
“Why don’t we start over? Together,” I suggest.
Eileen nods. “You’ve been engaged before. What do you know about love?”
I laugh. “Not as much as I thought I did when I first proposed but—listen, love is complicated, and it changes. It changes all the time. What matters the most is that you care about someone or something else a whole fucking lot and are willing to put the work in to figure things out.”
“Like compromising,” she surmises.
“Sure, but it’s only a compromise if everyone’s happy and comfortable with the changes. If couples just meet somewhere in the middle for the sake of saying they tried, it’s kinda bullshit and no one’s happy.”
She nods, taking down some notes.
Then she looks at me a strangely, kind of like with all these questions but also with secrets.
“Okay,” she says after a long silence. “But we need to write about big sweeping love that makes people cry at a wedding. How do we do that?”
I shrug. “It’s not about them. Cool if they get emotional, but it’s not about what other people think. It’s about seeing this person in front of you and thinking—”
I glance at her bright, inquisitive eyes.
I clear my throat. “Thinking wow, this person inspires me. This person makes me feel good shit about myself, and I want them to feel that all the time. I wanna be around them for as long as they can stand me.”
“Alright,” Eileen says. “I think I can figure something out.”
“Marek,” Charlie says, reading the paper Eileen handed to her.
“I can’t begin to tell you how much this day has made me feel. Excited, nervous, joyful, hopeful, and a little sad. Sad because every day you’re in my life is the best day of my life. I just cannot believe it took us so long to find each other.
“There are so many things I want to say to you, but I’m scared that if I get them all down, we could be here a while.”
The crowd laughs.
“But I will say this,” Charlie says. “You are so witty, lively, and charming. You are a bright light in a very dark world that I would do anything to protect. You’re so free-spirited yet so measured. I promise to never discourage your smile or ambitions.”
Marek’s the least ambitious person I know—
Oh right, Eileen wrote this.
I tilt my head to get a better look at her. Her eyes catch mine, almost instantly looking away as her cheeks go red.
“You’re more than the tangible things, and you’re so much more than the sum of your parts. You see something in me that I can only hope I live up to. You cherish the little things in a way I’m only starting to learn. I want to spend the rest of our lives learning from each other.
“I want each moment to be as breathtaking, exhilarating, and entertaining as the last. I want to see the world through your eyes because they hold the kindest mind and most profound soul I’ve ever known.”
Wait a minute. Eileen said I’m the kindest person she’s ever met. Shit, she wrote about me?
She wrote what she thinks about me? I’m her inspiration for wedding vows.
A breath gets lodged in my throat and I realize, this is the most important wedding I’ve ever been to.
“You’re an entire universe of love, hope, loss, and perseverance.
I know the big things scare you sometimes.
I know you aren’t sure of yourself. But I’m here to say that if I could be even a portion as good and wonderful as you’ve been in our time together—I’d be the happiest, most fulfilled person on the planet. ”
Charlie slows, clearing something in her eye.
“Because anything, or anyone, as good as you is truly amazing. Every day we’re together, I feel myself growing into the person who supports you better, and makes you laugh harder.
You’re a love song I never want to stop playing, and a dream I never want to wake up from.
“With that in mind, I promise to take the new and the unexpected in stride. To treat you with the patience and respect you deserve,” Charlie says.
“I promise to always take you seriously and respect the things you value. I vow to give you back the comfort, confidence, and love you’ve given me tenfold.
I vow to be your partner-in-crime and your best friend.
I vow, through good times and bad to be by your side.
I love you and will gladly spend the rest of my life proving that. ”
When Charlie finishes, she bites her lip and laughs.
She says, “I love you, baby,” to Marek.
Eileen’s wiping something out of her eyes.
My heart thunders inside my chest. She really meant it—all of it. She wants me. She loves me. We could have everything, and that would make her happy.
Fuck, life is so confusing, and love is just a fucking curveball we’re thrown. I sigh. I think I’m less scared than I used to be.
Love is scary as fuck, but what I feel for Eileen isn’t. It’s exciting. It’s the best fucking adventure of my entire life.
She finally looks up as Marek clears his throat. I flash her a reassuring smile. Pretty sure it wobbles a little. My gaze is steady and that’s what matters.
I nod, pointing my head to Marek. I’m trying to tell her “Listen up, this one’s dedicated to you” without using my own voice. Just the words I wrote for my cousin’s vows.
“Charlie, Charlotte, Charlie Bear,” Marek says.
Ad libbing, huh? I definitely didn’t tell him he could do that. It’s fine, I remind myself as long as he doesn’t fuck up my speech.
“Every day that I get to wake up and see you, talk to you, and feel you is the best day of my life,” Marek says.
“Every time I turn around and don’t see you, I get turned around because you’re my compass—my guiding light. You give me so much, and you ask for so little.”
Eileen bites back a smile. She knows that can’t be about Charlie, good.
“You see the very best in me. Sometimes that scares me because I’ve never seen someone so amazing have so much optimism for other people.
I want to spend every moment we have reminding you of all the things you’ve already given to me—the laughs, the love, the support, and the happiness that comes with being by your side.
“I want to be the person that reminds you to take a break, to be more loving to yourself because you’re so deserving of love. You’re so much braver, kinder, and tenacious than you give yourself credit for—I vow to spend the rest of my life reminding you of that.”
Marek pauses. “I vow to make every day we get together as incredible as you. I vow to remind you whenever possible that you’re—
Beautiful, intelligent, hilarious, vivacious, creative, and warm-hearted, I mouth to Eileen.
“And you deserve all the love you bring to this world,” Marek says.
Eileen’s lip wobbles. I would give anything to be able to cross this aisle and kiss her right now.
“I vow to listen, speak clearly, and be as patient as you need me to be,” Marek smirks. “Within reason, of course.”
Everyone, minus Eileen, laughs.
She smirks at me. Yeah, that was me being serious—I know my limitations.
I’m impatient as fuck.
“But I’ll always try for you,” Marek says. “I vow to never give up. Even when things get hard. You’re the Hall to my Oats, the Simon to my Garfunkel. You’re my partner-in-crime, and my wildest dreams come true.
“I vow to spend every day cherishing everything you are and everything you bring to me. I love you more than life itself.”
The minister asks for the rings. One of Eileen’s cousins walks toward them holding the pillow. Charlie and Marek fidget putting them on and once they are done, the minister pronounces them husband and wife.
And while all this happens, my eyes are only for Eileen.
My beautiful woman. If she’ll take me.