CAMILA
Audrey had been doing up the last of my buttons for approximately four minutes, and in that time had told me I was the most beautiful bride, in seven different ways.
“I’m coming back next month,” I said. “I already told you.”
“I know. I’m relaying messages. It’s what I do.” She adjusted the small pin at my shoulder with focused precision.
“By the way, you guys maybe Sparkles’s parents now, but she told me to tell you that she’s missing the shelter.”
At the sound of her name, Sparkles looked up from her position on the velvet ottoman in the corner. She looked dignified, and ridiculously cute, wearing a small ivory bow that matched my dress, which she had accepted with quite a fervor.
She wagged her tail once.
“See?” I said. “She’s fine.”
“She misses her friends.”
“We’re going back next month, Audrey. She can see Paco. She can see the turtle.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just excited for you, Cam. Am I talking too much?”
“You always do. That’s why I love you so much.” I said.
She looked at me for a long moment, and her expression shifted into something softer.
“You’re really happy, aren’t you.”
It wasn’t quite a question.
“Yes,” I said. It came out simple and complete, the way true things did.
She hugged me carefully, mindful of the dress, and held on for a moment longer than the dress strictly required.
Two months ago, Jason had proposed to me inside a tent.
Not a beach at sunset or a restaurant with a string quartet, but a tent, on a camping trip, in a forest clearing that smelled of pine and woodsmoke. The tent had been nearly identical to the one he’d erected in my garden in Paradise Island, which I suspected was entirely deliberate.
He had been on his knees in the tent, in the evening sun, with a ring, asking me simply— “Cam, will you marry me, again?”
I had said yes before he said one more word.
The backyard of our house looked extraordinary.
I could see it from the upstairs window — white chairs arranged in rows, flowers everywhere, the late afternoon light doing its best work on everything it touched.
Brownie was visible near the front row, wearing a bow tie that he had already partially chewed, sitting beside Aunt Rosa who was wearing her good hat and appeared to be telling someone nearby an involved story using extensive hand gestures.
My whole world, assembled in a backyard.
Briggs was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
He had become, in the months since Paradise Island, something I hadn’t expected and couldn’t quite categorize. Somewhere between family friend and honorary older brother to me. Jason trusted him completely, and so did I.
He looked at me when I appeared at the top of the stairs and was quiet for a moment.
“Well,” he said.
“Well,” I agreed, coming down.
“You look—” He stopped. Started again. “I’ve attended a considerable number of weddings in my professional capacity, and I want to say something meaningful here.”
“Briggs.”
“You look like someone who makes Jason Riley extremely nervous, which is the greatest compliment I can pay any human being, because I have watched that man disarm a cartel member without changing his heart rate.”
I laughed.
He offered his arm.
“Shall we?” he said.
The aisle was short and the afternoon was golden and somewhere near the front Sparkles made a small sound of encouragement as I passed.
Jason was at the end of it.
He was wearing a dark suit, his shoulders filling it the way they always did, his olive skin warm in the afternoon light.
He was watching me walk toward him with an expression I had seen exactly once before — that first day in the shelter, when he’d looked up from the puppies and seen me properly for the first time.
The slightly stunned expression of a man who couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at.
He stood like that for long enough that the officiant said gently: “You can breathe, Mr. Riley.”
Jason blinked, and smiled, and it was the smile — the slow, private one, the one he kept for exactly this — and I felt my whole chest fill with something I had no more adequate word for than home.
I took his hands.
He looked at me the way he had always looked at me, the way I now understood he would always look at me, and I thought: how did I get here?
To this man who had loved me imperfectly and profoundly and had gotten on his knees in the sand, who had lived in a tent in my garden in a tropical storm, who had worn a jester hat with bells for a pug named Sparkles.
How lucky could one person get?
The officiant spoke. The afternoon light held.
I looked at Jason’s face, and took a breath.
And we began.
THE END