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“It’s still a white dress,” he pointed out with a smile.
The reception was completely informal, with no official toasts or first dances. This was merely a celebration for the whole town to share our joy, and we had elected to forego the usual drudgery of more elaborate weddings. As we sat down at one of the large tables set up for the event, the only one designated for the bridal party, drinks were served, and everyone chatted while we waited for the food line to begin. Jon fetched us both a plate, heaped with barbecue ribs, potato salad, coleslaw, and rolls, and I looked at it forlornly.
Glancing over at him, I reached down by the seat and picked up the bag he had given me, slipping out the shirt and pulling it carefully over my head and down over my dress. Jon laughed as I looked over at him and smiled, taking my first bite of barbecue and dropping just a tiny dot of sauce in the center of the shirt.
“Not a word, Jon Rayburn,” I warned.
“No, not from me, Raintree Antelope Rayburn,” he replied, one of the rare instances when he ever used my middle name, which he knew I hated. “You know, I used to think it was sort of funny when you were a cheerleader and your initials were RAH, but now they are RAHR, like you’re some sort of internet wildcat. Is that an improvement?”
“Are we really having this discussion about initials, Jonathan Andrew Rayburn?”
He laughed and shrugged. “Maybe we should do better for our kid.”
“Maybe,” I replied with a laugh of my own.
“I was thinking about naming him or her Earth Amber Rayburn,” he continued.
“Don’t make me hurt you in front of all these people.”
He laughed and took a sip of his sparkling water and launched an assault on his own plate of barbecue. We ate happily side by side, with a few more drips of barbecue landing on the tent of a shirt he had given me. He pretended he didn’t notice. Once everyone had eaten, the food was cleared away, and everyone spent a good part of the evening dancing with a wedding band Derrick and his friends had set up for us, and we got our first dance, after all. It was obvious very quickly that Jon had known about the band and provided input. Derrick called us to the small area set up in front of the band, and they began to play “Hero” by Chad Kroeger, one of the last great songs before it had become uncool to admit you love Nickelback.
Of course, it ran deeper than that. It was the song playing in the background the night of our first kiss. I had finished tutoring him and nervously asked if he wanted to stay and watch Spiderman 2 with me. As the credits rolled and that song began playing in the background, he had kissed me. It was a moment that I remembered to this day and associated with the song anytime I heard it.
“You told them about our secret love for Nickelback. I thought we were taking that to our grave.”
“I’m not afraid,” Jon said. “I’ll tell everyone. I’ll buy you a T-shirt with Chad smiling on the front.”
“It’ll be a sight better than this thing you have me wearing.”
“Yeah, uh. If you’re done eating, you can probably take that off now.”
As the song finished, I stripped off the giant T-shirt and hurled it out to the crowd just as they switched to more upbeat music and invited everyone to join in. A confused-looking Betty Sue stood there looking at the T-shirt she had caught and then lay it on a nearby table before joining in on the dancing.
Hours later, sweaty and exhausted, we said our goodbyes and ran through a rainfall of birdseed to my car, decorated with the usual “Just Married” decor of cans on strings and shoe polish on the windows. It hadn’t been much of a fight over whose car Jon would drive to the reception area, where we knew what would happen to it. We both agreed there was no way we were subjecting our precious Barracuda to such defiling, and the work truck was just a bit too rough to risk getting to the airport without something falling off it.
We paused before getting inside as fireworks filled the air around us. It was completely unexpected and a lovely touch to the end of a great day. I made eye contact with Becky, and she nodded her head ever so slightly to one side where Jenx stood in a suit. She winked at me as I got into the car, and it made me happy, hoping that whatever she had planned with her fellow nerd went well.
As for Jon and me, we were on our way directly to the airport to fly out for a week’s stay in Hawaii. Our bags were already packed and in the trunk. It was hard to believe that, after all these years, I was married to the first man I’d ever fallen in love with and expecting our first child. This was bound to be an adventure.
