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“You married me and you don’t know my favorite flavor of ice cream??” she throws back, aghast, eyes on fire. Emilio lifts his hands innocently, blank-faced.
A server comes by, and Connor quickly orders a round of mimosas, insisting we’ll obviously need them. “And go a little heavy with hers,” he insists.
Until Lena lifts her hand. “Actually, no, none for me, but thanks!”
Connor frowns at her. “Why none for you?”
Everyone at the table glances her way, curious. The server waits patiently for us to make up our mind about the mimosas, blinking indifferently.
It’s Skylar who leans forward, seeing the words unspoken in her eyes. “Seriously? Really?”
Lena can brush any secret under the table with the rest of us. She can’t brush anything anywhere when it comes to her brother.
“Yes,” she finally concedes. “We are.”
Connor and I share a look, still lost.
Alan, however, is a full step ahead. “Oh, wow! Guys, she’s trying to say she’s pregnant.”
It all snaps into place. “Hey! Awesome!” I turn to her enthusiastically. “Congratulations, Lena and Emilio! That’s great news! We need to toast to that,” I decide, lifting up my glass of water. “Come on, everyone, lift your glasses!”
Everyone does.
The server, who is quite suddenly invested in our business, presses his hands to his large cheeks, listening to our toast.
“To the new, wonderful life growing inside this amazing person,” I start, “and to their love, which blossoms more every day. And to the circumstance which brought them together the way it did, here in this city, my happy spot in the world, which …” My eyes drop to Skylar’s. “… which also happened to bring me and Skylar together. To happiness, to new love, to new life … and to the future.”
Everyone’s glasses clink together.
The server is in happy tears.
And Skylar’s eyes are sparkling in the sunlight as he gazes on me, looking overwhelmingly gleeful, emotional, and appreciative of my little speech.
That’s a face one can fall in love with.
I’m so fucking happy to be where I’m at, right here, right now.
In fact, some hours later when it’s just me and Skylar on the rooftop of my building, overlooking the crowded and colorful streets of Mayville under a setting sun, that’s exactly what I tell him:
“I’m so fucking happy to be where I’m at, right here, right now.” Our shoulders are pressed against each other as we stand side by side, watching the city. “With you. My friends. Whatever we’ve got to look forward to.”
Skylar smiles at me. His full cheeks are flushed with happiness. Or maybe it’s the wine we drank after our romantic dinner alone—at Dino’s, no less, where I actually had the pleasure of paying for our meal this time. And it would have been a perfect meal, if it wasn’t for our getting interrupted by an urgent call from my boss Bethany at work, who simply wanted to tell me that the adult sex toy and porn revenue has more than quadrupled over the last couple of weeks, thanks to my sprucing up the back room. And yes, it was great news, but had I known that that was what she was calling about, I might have second-guessed putting her on speaker.
As the whole restaurant was informed as well.
Of my adult sex toy success.
I only scraped up my dignity, took a sip of my wine, then smiled at everyone around me and announced, “Bailey’s Bistro & Books, right in the heart of Mayville, just around the corner from the How’s-It-Hangin’ nightclub.” Just like a commercial.
Free advertising, right?
I’m pretty sure someone’s grandmother in the back choked on her dentures. She was probably celebrating her and her husband’s sixty-seventh anniversary.
“I was giving a lot of thought to some things,” Skylar tells me.
I was about to go in for another kiss, but his words stop me. “To … what things?”
“Us. My life. What I want to do. Where I want to be.” He smiles contentedly. “I’m not taking the job with AppuCore that I was offered back home.”
My face collapses. “Skylar! That was what you wanted! Why are you giving it up?”
“No. It’s not what I want. To build software for some company to sell to other companies? To work for another corporate giant, living to serve someone else’s bidding behind the computer? It’s what my dad wanted me to do, thinking it to be the best way to put my degree to use, and I felt like I had no other options in life. But I don’t want that for myself. I want to cut my own path, be my own vision. I have vision, drive, dreams … I can do it all on my own terms, right?”
“You can do whatever you want,” I insist as I take his hand and rub it encouragingly. “It’s your life, Sky. You’re a master of math. It’s your choice.”
