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Epilogue
Mason
Aurnia told me I absolutely could not marry Rachel at city hall. She was still pissed that I proposed to Rachel right then and there at the airport, in front of the KFC, without a ring, and to use her words, “without anyone to take a picture of it, save those asshole security guards who still won’t let me have access to their fucking cameras.”
I tried to tell Aurnia that Rachel and I didn’t need the whole wedding thing, we were already married. I tried to have Conor tell her that. But Conor just said he was staying out of it, only adding with a sigh that I should probably just give Aurnia her way. To use his words, “It’s just easier that way, man. Believe me, I know.”
“Every girl has a dream wedding,” Aurnia kept saying.
She’d been a pest for days, buzzing from one ear to the next as I tried to work.
“Not Rachel,” I told her.
“Every girl has a dream wedding,” she insisted.
I spun around on my stool. “Look, Rachel has never, not once, ever mentioned even the tiniest detail of what she would want for a…”
My words trailed off.
Aurnia beamed in victory. She flicked my forehead and said, “Every girl,” before skipping merrily away.
We managed to keep the details mostly a surprise. Rachel still thought we were heading to city hall exactly a week and a half after I proposed at the airport. It was the closest we could estimate from when we’d met each other to the first time we got married; it felt fitting, even if we couldn’t be sure it was entirely accurate. Rian was, of course, no help in the matter.
At first Aurnia didn’t believe me when I listed the things we would need to get in secret for Rachel’s wedding “dress”. Sitting across from me in the parlour, clipboard across her knees, she tapped her pencil against her temple and said with obvious mistrust, “So let me get this straight…you want me to get a high-low white feather burlesque costume that fans over the breasts—”
“Almost like indecently short in the front,” I said, remembering Rachel’s words like she was there whispering them in my ear.
Aurnia eyed me warily as she said, “‘Almost like indecently short in the front’. Um, silver pasties?”
I nodded. She just sucked her teeth.
Convincing her to paint a massive Eiffel Tower on the big wall of the parlour was a bit of an easier task. It was a bit tricky explaining why there was suddenly a big sheet of canvas covering the brick wall, but I told Rachel it was mould and maybe it was a sign that the house needed some work, and she easily bought it. Aurnia insisted that she get to marry us since it was her consistent badgering that got us back together. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about my conversation with Rian, about him revealing that I’d talked with my nan before her passing.
“It would only be right,” I told her as she flipped open her laptop to get licensed to perform wedding ceremonies online.
“Aurnia,” I tried to say, “Rachel and I are already married. You don’t need—”
“Shut up and go find me an Elvis wig,” she said.
With Aurnia’s…careful persuasion…Conor even agreed to dress up like the Midwest tourist from Rachel’s made-up wedding. We gave him a big Mai Tai glass, a fanny pack, high-waisted cargo pants, and an I Heart Vegas t-shirt we ordered online that ended up being a child’s size large, and therefore a midriff shirt after we cut out a bigger hole for the neck and sleeves. He was pissed and it was perfect.
We invited everyone. Even Rachel’s friend JoJo made the trip over. Dress code was Vegas trashy. The invitation said, “If you look even remotely elegant, you’re getting a pint of the black stuff spilled on you. You’ve been fucking warned.” I tried to tell Aurnia the “fucking” was too much. She told me it was “fucking perfect”.
When Rachel and I left for city hall the madness began at Dublin Ink. All the flashing neon lights our friends could round up were brought in. The place was packed with Marilyn wigs and polyester pink boas and lots and lots of black vests with no shirts, just inked-up pale Irish abs. I’d paid the cabbie ahead of time to get us a little lost in the direction of city hall, stall for time, and then double back to Dublin Ink. Rachel and I had been fooling around so much in the back seat, not so discreetly slipping hands where hands shouldn’t be, that she didn’t even notice when I opened the door and held out my hand at the curb outside the shop.
“Wait, why are we—” Rachel stopped when I unbuttoned my black slacks there on the sidewalk.
She watched with a mix of concern and intrigue as I kicked off my shiny shoes, tugged off my socks, and pulled down my pants to reveal shamrock underwear.
“Oh…my…God…” Rachel murmured, smile growing on her perfect lips as I loosened by bow tie just enough to slip my collar from underneath it.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Rachel said.
She was chewing at her lips and watching as I tossed my suit jacket and then my white shirt to the sidewalk. I held out my hands in my wedding “suit” and she screamed, loud as hell, “Oh my God!”
She ran to me and leaped into my arms. I held her as she kissed me, smearing lipstick all over my face. Wild curls curtaining our locked eyes, Rachel looked down at me and whispered, “But I’m in this stupid dress.”
I jerked my head to the side and she wrangled her hair out of her face just in time to see Aurnia, dressed head-to-toe as Elvis, peeking her head outside the door of Dublin Ink. She lifted a hanger with a white feather costume and wiggled it back and forth, grinning stupidly. But we were grinning stupidly, too.
