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“With this ring, I thee wed,” I said jokingly, placing it on her finger.
“I hope you don’t think that gets you out of a real ring and a big wedding,” she said, looking at me sternly.
“Because I want the whole shebang,” she said.
“Then you shall have it. Are we talking carriages, France or maybe a castle in Italy?”
“And at least 400 of our dearest and closest friends,” she said with a smile, then leaning in to kiss me.
“Sounds terrific,” I said with a big smile.
She held out her hand with the tin foil ring. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Not as beautiful as you,” I said, knowing it was a cliché but meaning every word.
She leaned over to kiss me and I held her face, to kiss her longer, and deeper.
“You’re with me now kid, for good,” I said.
“Best news ever,” she said with a happy sigh, snuggling into my chest.
Bonus chapter
A few days before the wedding, I started getting cold feet.
In a bad way.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love Tate or didn’t want to be with him. But there was so much stress surrounding the whole wedding day. Once the media had gotten wind of it, we had reporters wanting to cover the event, offering to pay us for coverage, as if that would change my mind. But Tate was somebody. He was a Silicon Valley darling, a tech entrepreneur who had struck it big and made billions with his app company. In addition, he was handsome and sexy, with a reputation as a bit of a daredevil, the kind of guy who preferred walking on tightropes between buildings to actually working in them. It didn’t help that he was married before to a Hollywood stylist and that he raised their daughter as a single dad. It only made him seem more attractive and more of a story.
And who was I?
Evie Gerick, barely 23, fresh out of college. Working for Tate Sagarro was my first real job and now I was marrying him. What a story! But I didn’t want to be a story, I wanted to be a girl marrying the man of my dreams, and for our day to be only about us.
“Why do you sound so glum?” my mother asked me earlier in the week on the phone. “Are you having wedding jitters?”
“Maybe,” I said in a shaky voice.
“What happened?” She asked quickly.
“Did he hit you?”
“No, no, nothing like that!”
But my mother wouldn’t stop. “Did he yell at you, did you have a fight?”
“No, we didn’t have an argument.”
My mother carried on without even listening to me, “You know, your aunt Desirée, my sister, almost didn’t marry your uncle Alan because she found out the day before the wedding that he had invited his ex-girlfriend to the wedding. She was convinced he still carried a torch for her. And maybe she was right, because you know, that marriage didn’t last.”
“Didn’t she run off with a ski instructor?” I asked, pulled into my mother’s story despite myself.
“Yes, well, it wasn’t meant to be, obviously,” my mother said.
“It’s nothing like that,” I said again.
“Then what are you worried about?” My mother asked. “Is it the age thing?” Tate was fourteen years older than me and while he was a very attractive man now, I had to admit, seeing his father had given me pause. Someone told me all men turned into their fathers eventually, and Mr. Sagarro was a lovely man, but the way he combed his remaining hair over his shiny bald head didn’t do much for his looks. The beer belly didn’t help either. The thought of Tate turning into that… Ugh! No!
“Was he mean to you again?”
