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“Look at ‘em, darlin’. What do you say?”
I opened the flap. On top, “Hawai’i?! Oh, wow. Really?!”
Leighton beamed at my reaction.
“But it’ll take forever to get across country and then across the Pacific, baby. Are you sure we have the time?”
“Definitely. I thought we might make a couple of stops on the way out. Another couple on the way home. Kind of break up the trip that way and see more sights. Play tourist, you know?”
I looked at the tickets again and paged through the reservation notes. Oh, my. Two whole weeks, not one. Luxury hotels everywhere. A whole week to discover O’ahu and Kauai (since Maui was still pretty devastated).
“When, baby? I can’t tell.”
“Early June. It should be the perfect time of year for a honeymoon trip.”
I gave Leighton one of thoseyou’re-being-a-mad-inventor-againlooks.
But in a flash and just at the very second my brain registered the "H" word, he’d come around the dining table and was standing beside me as I sat.
He took my hand. Got on a knee so we were eye-to-eye.
Barely taking a breath, he asked, “Samantha Billings? Will you marry me? Will you be my forever companion through whatever life has in store for us? Will you marry me?”
Mush. I’d turned to mush.
I could hardly form any words, “Yes, my Leighton. Yes. Yes!”
Leighton shouted, “She said Yes! Whoo-Hoo!”
All around us the patrons of this packed, ignore-your-neighbors big-city restaurant clapped and whistled!
My crazy mad inventor. My wonderfully sexy, tall-dark-and-handsome love. I just smiled and smiled. All choked up.
Leighton pulled me up and out of my chair for a quiet kiss.
Just as quietly, he slid a ring on my finger. Kissed me again.
And sat me back down in my chair.
Just as well. I’d have melted right onto the floor if he hadn’t.
Oh, and the ring was (mysteriously) the exact right size and ab-sol-ute-ly stunning!
Leighton
Samantha and I couldn't plan a wedding without Jerry and Davie. But my mother would also love to be involved.
“But shemusthelp us, baby! Of course, she has to be involved!”
I figured the first decision would be the hardest: the date. Turned out it was easy as pie. The Friday before Memorial Day weekend. A weekday, since we’d be married by a Justice of the Peace in a civil ceremony at City Hall.
Jerry had to step back when it came to who would be helping Samantha pick out a dress for the occasion. Mom and Roberta were recruited.
Samantha admitted to me—in front of Mom, as she cried harder and harder with each word, “I never thought amomwould be helping me with my wedding dress.”
Mom cried with my beautiful lady. I got choked up, too. Samantha’s mom’s disappearance from her life without warning still stung her. It was that one enduringly painful thing from her childhood she could never control.
My mother was up to this task. I knew it would be fine.
