33. Imogen
Imogen
Saying yes on a kitchen floor under a backward banner turned out to be the easy part. The hard part came an hour later, once Luke had run off to tell his sea creatures the news and it was just the two of us and the cold coffee.
Ashton offered me a long engagement, and I turned it down flat. He’d been right about the big thing, that when you know, you know, and I wasn’t going to make either of us wait a year to prove what we already knew. I just wasn’t going to say that to his face and let him be smug about it.
“We can take our time,” he said, the morning after the pirate ring went on my finger. “A year. Two. Whatever you want. No clock on it.”
“You don’t get to propose with a whole speech about how when you know you know, and then hand me months to think it over.” I jabbed a finger into his bare chest, which was a mistake, because it was a very good chest and I lost my own point for a second. “Pick a lane, Fraser.”
“I’m trying to give you an out.”
“I don’t want an out. I want a date. Quit managing me, Fraser, that’s literally our whole problem.”
He grinned at that and said “four weeks” like he’d been holding it ready.
“Four weeks,” I repeated.
“Four weeks,” he confirmed.
“You already knew.”
“I had a number in mind, yes.”
“That’s managing.”
“That’s having a preference,” he said. “There’s a difference.” He was already smiling, and I let him have it, because four weeks was exactly what I wanted and we both knew it.
So now I’m barefoot in the sand at the coast, in a dress that doesn’t quite hide the small curve that’s started showing, and the same ocean that watched me build crooked sandcastles with a six-year-old is rolling in behind a little arch somebody strung with flowers.
The tide pools we raided are down the beach.
Lori the starfish is out there somewhere, living her best life, with no idea she helped get me here.
It’s small and intimate, the way I wanted. Just the people who count, in folding chairs in the sand, the wind ruining everyone’s careful hair.
Luke’s been put in charge of the rings, and he’s taking it more seriously than anyone has taken anything ever.
He’s got them on a little cushion, holding it dead flat with both hands like it’s full of explosives, walking so slow down the sand that Bex openly checks her watch.
He picked his own suit, navy, because he told us weeks ago that navy’s the most serious color a person can wear, and he stops every few steps to make sure the rings haven’t escaped.
“They’re still there, bud,” I murmur when he passes me.
“I’m checking anyway. Rings roll. You can’t trust them.”
“Wise,” I say.
“I know.” He marches on ahead and plants himself at Ashton’s side, guarding that cushion with his whole body, and I have to look away before I tear up on him, which he’d absolutely find unprofessional.
My father walks me down the aisle, which is a sentence I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to say.
He’s in a suit, obviously, but he’s left the boardroom smile at home, and for once his hand on my arm isn’t steering me anywhere.
It’s just resting there, letting me set the pace, which from my father is basically a religious conversion.
Halfway down, he stops. It’s not in the program. He turns to me with the wind pulling at his hair and his composure both, and his voice drops somewhere I’ve heard maybe twice in my whole life.
“I’m proud of you,” he says. “I need you to hear that part first, before anything else. Not of the wedding, or of him, though I’ve come around on him.
Of you. The whole stubborn, impossible, remarkable person you made of yourself, and you did it without letting me lay a single brick.
I used to resent that. Now I think it might be the best thing about you. ”
“Dad, you’re going to make me cry before the part where I’m allowed to.”
“Let me get through it, I practiced in the mirror like an old fool.” He takes a breath.
“I’m sorry. For all of it. For treating your life like a problem on my desk instead of something that belonged to you.
I never once wanted to hurt you. I told myself I was building you a wall to keep the bad things out.
What I built was a cage, and I’m too old now to keep pretending I can’t tell the difference between the two. ”
His eyes go bright, which I’ve seen happen twice in my life, both times today.
“I won’t be good at the new way, not at first,” he says.
“I’ll reach for the old one out of habit, probably by next week, probably over something small and ridiculous.
But I’ll catch myself quicker every time.
And on the days I don’t, you have my full blessing to tell me to back off, and I promise I’ll try to listen instead of manage. ”
“I was going to do that regardless.”
“I know. It’s one of my favorite things about you.” He huffs and wipes under his eye like the wind insulted him. “So. We rebuild. If you’ll let me.”
“We rebuild.” I cover his hand with mine. “Slowly. With me telling you to back off about forty times a year, and you actually hearing me on maybe thirty of them.”
“Thirty’s generous.”
“Twenty-five and we’ve got a deal.”
He laughs, wet and caught off guard, the best sound I’ve gotten out of him in ten years. Then he walks me the rest of the way down the sand and sets my hand in Ashton’s like he’s handing over the one thing he ever got right.
My father steps back to his chair, and then it’s just the two of us under the arch.
Bex is in the front row in a dress she complained about for a solid week and looks unfairly good in, dry-eyed and unbothered on the surface, except I catch her blink too hard when my father sits down.
I’ll be holding that over her until we’re both old and gray.
Lola’s beside her with a tissue already out, because of course she came prepared, the woman’s never been caught short a day in her life.
A scatter of others fill the chairs behind them, a couple of people from my program, an aunt, the contractor from the site who taught Luke how to wear a hard hat and openly cried when we sent him the invitation.
Then Ashton’s hands close around mine, warm this time, no cold sweat, no exit folded into the grip, and the rest of the beach goes a little blurry at the edges.
He’s in a dark suit cut close enough that I lose my train of thought for a second, with the tie I bought him as a joke, the one covered in tiny awful cartoon sharks, because when he saw Luke in navy he announced he refused to be the second most serious man on the beach.
He’s wearing the shark tie. At his own wedding.
His thumb strokes once over the inside of my wrist, slow, right where my pulse is going stupid, and the look he drags down the front of me before he gets to my face is one I’m going to have to answer for later.
I’d marry him for any of it. I’m marrying him for all of it.
“You’re showing,” he says under his breath, his eyes dropping to the curve the dress can’t hide, then climbing back to my face like the two sights together are more than he planned for.
“Your fault. Genetically and otherwise.”
“Best work I’ve ever done.” His thumb strokes the spot on my knuckle where the plastic pirate ring sat for four weeks until the real one came. “I bought the loaner off Luke, by the way. He drove a hard bargain.”
“You bought your son’s toy ring.”
“Two dollars and ice cream for life. It’s sentimental, don’t make it weird.”
“It’s a little weird.”
“You’re marrying me anyway. About ninety seconds out. No takebacks.”
“Forty-five,” Luke says from beside Ashton, not looking up from the cushion. “The lady already started talking.”
“Thank you, bud,” Ashton says.
“I’m just keeping track,” Luke says.
The officiant clears her throat, the wind grabs her first line and throws it out to sea, and Luke hoists his cushion up between us like he’s presenting it to a queen, vibrating with the weight of his office.
Ashton lifts my ring off the cushion. I take his. The whole beach goes quiet except the water, the gulls, and Luke whispering “this is the good part, this is the good part” to no one.
Ashton goes first. He turns my hand over in his, slides the ring to my knuckle, holds it there.
“I had something written down,” he says.
“Lola has it somewhere. Three drafts, and they were good, I worked on them.” He shakes his head slowly.
“I’m not going to use any of it. Here’s the short version, the true one.
I spent my whole life certain that the only way to keep something safe was to hold onto it so tight it couldn’t get away from me.
And then there was you. You’re the first thing I’ve ever loved that I had to open my hands for instead.
I was terrified the second I did. I thought you’d be gone.
” His voice goes rough. “You didn’t go anywhere.
You stayed. You chose it, every day, on your own. ”
His voice goes rough at the edges.
“So that’s my vow. I’ll keep my hands open. Every day. Even the ones where it scares the hell out of me. Those most of all.”
I breathe through my nose to hold my face together and lose anyway, one tear getting loose, and he catches it with his thumb before it clears my jaw.
“My turn,” I manage. “Mine’s shorter. I didn’t have Lola.”
“Hey,” Lola says from the second row.
I slide his ring on and hold his eyes. “You walked into my life as the worst idea I’d ever had.
My boss. A man with a printed rulebook and more red flags than a parade.
” A laugh ripples through the chairs. “And then I watched you get down on a floor for your kid, and that was it for me, I was done. I just spent months insisting to myself it was annoyance. It was never annoyance.”
My voice wobbles and I let it go.
“You taught me that being loved doesn’t have to mean being managed.
That’s the one thing I spent my whole life sure I’d never get to have.
So I’m going to spend the rest of it loving you out loud, on the record, in front of everybody, where nobody can ever make either of us disappear. That’s my vow, Fraser. Try to keep up.”
His jaw works, his hand tightens on mine, and for once the man has nothing clever loaded.
“Good,” Luke whispers approvingly, to the cushion.
The officiant smiles, the wind dies for one merciful second, and she says it.
“Ashton, do you take Imogen to be your wife?”