30. Ariah
— ? —
Ariah
The venue is nothing like what a Grimaldi wedding is supposed to look like.
No cathedral. No endless guest list. No society matrons judging whether the flowers are appropriate for the season.
Just a private garden on the Amalfi Coast, forty people who actually matter to us, and a sky so blue it looks painted.
Nearly seven years since that first civil ceremony, and everything has changed.
“Nervous?” Piper asks, adjusting my dress - simple, elegant, ivory silk that I chose myself without consulting anyone’s opinion about what was appropriate for a second wedding.
“No.” I’m surprised to realize it’s true. “I thought I would be, but I’m not.”
“Good.” She steps back to look at me. “You look beautiful, Ari. Like someone who’s finally getting what she wants.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Isn’t it?”
I think about the past two months - the planning that was actually fun because it was ours, the arguments about seating charts that ended in laughter instead of tension, the way Pietro deferred to every choice I made because he understood this was my wedding as much as his.
More, maybe. The first one belonged to arrangements and expectations. This one belongs to us.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess it is.”
Through the window, I can see the garden filling up with guests.
My parents are there - my mother looking nervous, my father looking like he’s not quite sure how he ended up here.
They’ve been trying, these past months. Small steps.
Careful conversations. Nothing like the easy relationship I’ve always wanted, but something real. Something that might grow.
Pietro’s side of the garden is conspicuously empty of his usual family presence. No Rosaria, no distant relatives who only show up to be seen, no society obligations dressed up as affection. Just the people he’s chosen to have in his life now that he finally has the freedom to choose.
“Aunt Piper!” Lucy bursts into the room, her flower girl dress already slightly askew. “Luca says he lost the rings!”
“He didn’t lose the rings.” Piper doesn’t even look concerned. “The rings are in my pocket because I knew he would say he lost them.”
“But he’s crying!”
“He’s not crying. He’s being dramatic.”
“Same thing!”
I laugh, crouching down to Lucy’s level. “Tell your brother the rings are safe. And tell him if he does a good job as ring bearer, there’s extra cake in it for him.”
“How much extra?”
“Two pieces.”
“Three?”
“You’re negotiating on his behalf now?”
“I want three pieces too.”
“Fine. Three pieces each. But only if you both make it down the aisle without tackling anyone.”
She considers this. “Deal.”
She runs off, and Piper shakes her head. “Those children are going to be running this family by the time they’re ten.”
“They already are. We just haven’t admitted it yet.”
* * *
The ceremony starts with the music I chose - something soft and instrumental, nothing traditional, nothing expected. I walk down the aisle by myself, because I chose to, because I don’t need anyone to give me away. I’m giving myself. That’s the whole point.
Pietro waits at the end of the aisle, and when he sees me, his face does something that makes my heart stutter. Pure joy. Pure love. No calculation, no performance, no mask. Just him, looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.
I reach him, and he takes my hands, and I forget there’s anyone else watching.
“Hi,” he says quietly.
“Hi.”
“You came.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I thought I might wake up and realize this was all a dream.”
“It’s not a dream. I’m really here. We’re really doing this.”
The officiant clears his throat, and we both startle, remembering there’s a ceremony happening. Scattered laughter from the guests.
“Dearly beloved,” the officiant begins, and I hear the words through a kind of haze, too focused on Pietro’s face, on the way his thumbs trace circles on the backs of my hands, on the reality of this moment I thought I’d never have.
The vows come, and they’re not the traditional ones. We wrote our own, because this marriage is ours and the words should be too.
“Ariah.” Pietro’s voice is steady, but I can see the emotion behind his eyes.
“Nearly seven years ago, I married you because I was supposed to. And then I fell in love with you, and I spent years being terrible at showing it. I let you down. I let you carry everything alone. I let other people come between us when I should have been protecting what we had.”
His grip on my hands tightens.
“I can’t take back the years I wasted. But I can promise you that the years we have left will be different.
I promise to show up. I promise to see you - really see you, not just the version of you I find convenient.
I promise to put us first, before work, before family expectations, before everything. I promise to deserve you.”
I’m crying. I don’t care.
“Pietro.” My voice catches, and I have to start again.
“Pietro. I married you for all the wrong reasons, and I fell in love with you anyway. I left you because I didn’t think you saw me anymore, and then you spent months proving you could change.
You learned to make terrible jewelry. You cooked dinner without setting the house on fire.
You sang our children to sleep during a thunderstorm and made me a bracelet that’s still the ugliest piece of jewelry I own and I will never take it off. ”
Laughter from the guests. Pietro’s eyes are wet now too.
“What I needed was simple - presence, respect, partnership. Not perfection. And for years, I didn’t have even that.
You had to earn my trust back, and you did.
Day by day, choice by choice, you rebuilt what was broken.
” I squeeze his hands. “I choose you. Not because you’re perfect, but because you’re mine.
Because we built something together, and I’m not done building. ”
The officiant says something about rings, and Lucy scatters petals with aggressive enthusiasm while Luca walks very carefully down the aisle with the cushion, looking like he’s performing brain surgery.
Pietro slides the sapphire ring onto my finger - the one he proposed with, the one that replaced the plain band I left on a kitchen counter a lifetime ago.
I slide a simple gold band onto his.
“I am honored to affirm the vows you have renewed today,” the officiant says. “Your marriage continues, stronger for what you’ve chosen together.”
Applause. Pietro pulls me in and kisses me, and it’s soft and sweet and full of promise.
When we break apart, I look out at the people gathered here. Piper, dabbing at her eyes. My parents, holding hands in a way I haven’t seen in years. The twins, already making their way toward the cake table with suspicious determination.
No Rosaria. No Serena. No shadows from the past.
Just us. The family we chose. The life we built.
Pietro takes my hand, and I take his, and we turn to face everyone together.
“Ready?” he asks.
I think about everything it took to get here - the cold years, the leaving, the rebuilding, the slow work of learning to trust again. I think about the woman I was when I first married this man, so young and uncertain and willing to disappear into whatever shape was expected of her.
I’m not that woman anymore. I’m Ariah Emery-Grimaldi, and my name is on the door of the company I built, and my husband loves me, and my children are happy, and my life is finally, fully mine.
“Ready,” I say.
We walk down the aisle together, into whatever comes next.