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Chelsea’s face went red and she batted at his shoulder. “Now, now.” They were mostly past the skates. Mostly. Now she just wore them for fun.
“So that’s how you roll, eh?”
“That is a terrible pun.”
“Not gonna let me skate by with it?”
Chelsea groaned again. “Stop. Just stop.”
She thought for a minute, then shrugged. “I think I’m tapped out anyhow.”
To Chelsea’s surprise, Sebastian shut his notebook and put away his graphite pencils. “We should probably get going anyhow.”
“We should?” Chelsea looked surprised.
“Dinner,” he agreed.
“Dinner?”
“For our anniversary. Didn’t you remember?”
She gasped. She was terrible with details. “Is that today?”
“Someone’s in the dog house,” Gretchen singsonged, sitting up and clutching the sheet to her. “You two kids have fun. Happy anniversary and stuff.”
She murmured her good-byes to Gretchen as Sebastian took her hand and they left the house. Had it really been a year since they’d been married in the shotgun wedding down in New Orleans?
It seemed like a dream.
Chelsea curled up in the backseat of the sedan with Sebastian as they drove back into downtown Manhattan. “So where are we going for dinner?”
“You’ll see,” he said mysteriously, and pressed a kiss on her brow.
When the car stopped in front of the derby arena, she was doubly confused. “Why are we here?”
“We’re meeting someone.” Sebastian got out of the car and offered her his hand. “Coming?”
Of course she was coming with him. Puzzled and intrigued, she followed after him, hands joined.
It wasn’t until they got into the derby arena that she started to get an inkling of what was going on. The Rag Queens were there, completely in uniforms and pads. They began to cheer as she and Sebastian entered the arena, and she saw the skate pads were down on the flooring, the skate lanes marked off. The other local teams were there, too, and they all cheered and yelled as they approached. Someone shoved a pair of skates into her hands as she passed, and then someone else put a veil on her head. When she turned to look at Sebastian, he was slipping on a jacket and a top hat had been jammed over his head.
As they strode forward, she saw one of the referees standing at the center of the rink. In his hands was a Bible. On roller skates, Pisa stood next to him, clutching a bouquet that she held out to Chelsea.
“What is this?” she asked, laughing and crying at the same time. “Sebastian, what—”
“We didn’t have a real wedding last time,” he said, kneeling in front of her and taking one of the skates in his hand. He gently slipped it on her foot and began to do up the laces. “So I thought this time, we’d do it right. We’d get married in front of your family.”
“Your derby family,” Pisa hollered, and a cheer went up from the girls.
Chelsea couldn’t help it. She blubbered and wept like a baby. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. She put on her skates and the veil, and Sebastian put on a pair of skates, and they held hands in front of the derby ref and got married all over again.
Now this , she thought as he leaned in for a kiss, was a happy ending .
