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She brushed my hair back from my shoulders, her voice wavering all over again. She’d cried more during the ceremony than the rest of the auditorium combined, probably. I’d never felt more loved than I had walking across that stage, hearing how loud they all cheered for me.
My heart swelled and I squeezed Julie’s hand, unable to speak. Seeing her emotional made me emotional, which, in turn, madeheremotional.
This whole day had been a mess. A teary, snotty, perfect mess. I’d loved every second of it.
Julie turned blubbery the moment I blinked one too many times, trying to fight back the tears. Adrien palmed the back of my neck, thumb caressing my skin as he placed a comforting kiss to my temple. It only made things worse.
“Oh god, here we go again,” Alice said, engagement ring gleaming in the sunlight as she adjusted the strap of her purse. “Honestly. You’d think someone died.”
“Be nice, Lice.” Gampy poked her calf with the end of his walking cane. “We were all there when you watchedUpfor the first time.”
“Addy cried more at that than I did.”
“And I don’t regret it,” Adrien said. “Second greatest love story of all time.”
Alice folded her arms. “Who’s first? Jamie and Jack? Or me and Dominic?”
“You and Dominic are dead last on every list,” Adrien retorted rudely. “I still have a fucking headache from that whole ordeal. And Ria and I are first, obviously.”
“It’s not a competition,” Gampy interjected as Alice shifted into her fighting stance. “Even if it was, my Lucy and I would have you all beat. You kids don’t even know what piningmeans.”
Three hours. We argued over who had the greatest love story for over three hours, making our individual cases and sharing our stories long after we’d arrived at Jamie and Jack’s house for the after-graduation barbeque.
Adrien held my hand when it was our turn to share, toying with my wedding ring as we laughed through the retelling of our first meeting. The whole thing was much more amusing to look back on now, knowing what we did.
“I knew halfway through our first real date that I was going to marry her within a year,” Adrien claimed, pressing a brief kiss on the back of my hand. “What I didn’t know was how I was going to convince her to say yes.”
“Which is what he’d told me halfway through ourseconddate,” I continued. My mouth twitched when Adrien chuckled at my tone, pulling me closer to him on the couch.
“I stand by my decision,” he said.
“And I stand by my reaction.” Which had been to tell him he was insane, share my live location with Jamie, and ask the waiter for the bill.
He’d proposed six months later. I hadn’t even let him get through the question before pouncing on him and screamingyes!
Best decision I’d ever made. The man made me stupidly, deliriously happy.
The type of wholehearted happiness that you can’t know exists until “it hits you right in the balls with a wooden cane, calls you a braindead goblin, and flips your whole life upside down” as Adrien always put it.
He caught my lingering gaze after the story baton was passed on to Julie and Anthony, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. He lifted my hand again, kissed it three times.
I love you I love you I love you.
“Forever and always,” he murmured quietly.
“Forever and always,” I whispered back, squeezing his hand three times.
I love you I love you I love you.
The End.
