“Everest!”
I chuckled.
Everyone but her.
Things weren’t perfect, but today wasn’t the day to get mad about any of it.
Today was the day to give myself another cursory look in the mirror and head to the backyard where a—possibly bribed—public worker was waiting to officiate the wedding.
The wedding.
It was wild.
Truthfully, neither Santos nor I really cared about it. Marriage was an antiquated institution, but my family came with rules, and a wedding had been part of it the second my mother realized we were more than childhood best friends.
I’d been terrified it would be embarrassing when her gaze started to stay on us for longer than a few seconds at a time.
In the end, she’d just gone to Santos, told him that she knew, and that he had one year to propose to me, and another year to get married if he wanted to become an official part of the family.
I would never take that implied promise away from him, so here we were, one year after said veiled promise slash threat, getting married in the backyard of the villa.
I did love the suit I was wearing. A white corset over a lace shirt and silk pants, a chiffon cape cinched at the waist, emulating the puffy skirt every princess lover dreamed of wearing. This was just a slightly more salacious version of the ideal.
So, I was excited about wearing this eight-thousand-euro suit slash gown, and I was excited about seeing Santos down the aisle. My mother had spared no expense, which meant the yard was now complete with one of those arches that looked like a bush full of flowers I should know more about, given all the gardeners I was in charge of.
Sadly, I hadn’t grown much in that area, but most days, I believed it was all right. Well, not all right, but not something I was going to spend a lot of thought on.
No, I was just going to focus on Santos. Santos, my best friend turned the kid I experimented with in school, turned the love of my life, standing against one side of the arch, Carlos next to him. Unlike him, Santos wasn’t wearing a military uniform or any of the few medals I knew he had. My father had tried to talk him into it, but that wasn’t my fiancé.
It took a longer time in therapy than he’d expected, given he still had monthly appointments with Victoria, but he had learned to accept that his time in the military didn’t have to follow him in the standard paths. He didn’t have to find pride in it if he didn’t want to, and if it wasn’t going to bring him anythingpositive, it was perfectly acceptable that he stood there in a simple black tuxedo, his bouncy curls only a few inches above his shoulders. He hadn’t cut his hair once in the past two years, and I’d never seen his face shine brighter whenever he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
Sergio joked that he looked like a Nordic David Bisbal. I snickered when he did, but secretly, he had a point, bar the fact that his roots were Swiss, not Nordic, and he was ten times hotter than the Andalusian singer.
“You look gorgeous.”
The words were similar to my mother’s, but coming from him, they filled me in ways that hers didn’t.
Everyone was here.
Well, not everyone that my mother had intended to invite, but everyone who mattered, plus a few relatives and socialites that couldn’t be avoided. They were sitting toward the back, though, the white benches in the front filled with the people who had made a home for us when we were still figuring out what that meant. That, apparently, included Sergio with the banner he’d been threatening me with for years.
“I can use glitter because it’s an outdoors event,” he’d said.
Was that a thing?
Oh, well.
I didn’t care.
He had kept it classier than I’d thought, a simple drawing of our faces kissing and a congratulations in bubbly letters with what had to account for ten tubs of glitter in different colors.
Whoever was in charge of cleaning up after would need a hefty raise.
“Eyes on me, princess.”
“Hmm?”
Fuck.
