Chapter Eighteen - Anthony

I haven’t slept all night. I’ve just been lying awake, my brain racing with thoughts of Brooke. The past four months have been some of the best of my life. I knew moving back to my hometown was the right choice, and that it would bring changes, but I had no way of knowing what I’d find in Brooke. What we’d find in each other. It’s still early, but the morning sun is breaking through the window. I decide to wake her up. There is something I have to confess.

“Good morning,” I say, reaching out and running a hand across her arm. She stirs and smiles up at me, extra breathtaking this morning.

“Hi,” she says, kissing me softly.

“Do you know what today is?” I ask, smiling.

“The date we set when we were joking about getting married?” Brooke asks, laughing gently. I tuck her hair behind her ears and grin.

“I have to tell you something,” I say. I almost feel nervous, like I had that first night I’d taken her to the Purple Hog.

“About our wedding?” she asks, clearly teasing. I shake my head.

“I have a confession,” I say, sitting up. She tilts her head at me curiously.

“Tell me,” Brooke says, sitting up too.

“I never canceled any of it,” I say. I get up and go to the front of the bed, kneeling in front of her. She gasps.

“Anthony,” she says in a whisper, like she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing. I take her hands in mine and kiss them before continuing.

“I knew you were one the one for me. I love you, so I didn’t cancel a single thing. I want you in my life forever. I want you and me and David to be a family. Will you marry me? Right now? Today?” I ask, pulling a ring out of the pocket of my pajamas. I’d picked it out with Autumn a month ago. She’s been helping out with everything. She says it’s felt good to keep a positive secret.

“Yes,” Brooke says, grabbing the sides of my face and kissing me. She’s crying, hot tears streaming down her face that I can feel on my cheeks as she kisses me. “Yes,” she says again, against my lips.

“I love you,” I say again, “and I can’t imagine being married to anyone but you.”

“I love you,” she says, pulling back a little. She puts her hand out to me, and I slip the ring on it. I’m so thrilled she’s said yes. I’m so happy in this moment that it almost doesn’t feel real – almost doesn’t feel like it should be possible.

“I love that you didn’t cancel the arrangements,” Brooke continues. “I love that you had so much faith in us working and in me.”

“I think part of me knew you were the one for me even when we were teenagers,” I confess. “That contract was my idea, after all.”

“I loved you then, too,” Brooke admits, laughing a little. “Anthony, this ring is beautiful.”

“Autumn helped,” I say, and Brooke’s eyes get watery again.

“It’s amazing,” she repeats. She looks so happy, and I think this is what I want: to make her happy forever. To always find ways to make her smile.

“I have another surprise,” I say. I stand up and open my closet, going to the back and pulling out a garment bag. It holds the dress I’ve had custom-made for her. A designer friend of mine in New York spend weeks on it, perfecting every detail. I don’t know much about fashion, but I know something beautiful when I see it, and this dress is amazing. It’s actually worthy of Brooke, unlike her other one, and I’m sure she’ll be stunning in it.

“What is that?” Brooke asks, standing up. Her voice is shaking a little.

“Open it,” I say. Brooke pulls on the zipper of the bag and gasps again as the dress is revealed.

“Oh my God, Anthony,” Brooke says, running her fingers over the silk in awe. “It’s gorgeous.”

“It’s one of a kind. I had it custom made for you,” I say. Brooke throws her arms around me, kissing me again, and I can feel how fast her heart is speeding under me.

“It’s wonderful. You’re wonderful,” Brooke says. She pulls back and looks at the dress again, then her ring, then at me, like she can’t quite believe it.

“You didn’t really think I’d let you get married in that other dress, did you?” I ask, grinning. Brooke laughs but then kisses me fiercely.

“I’d marry you in rags,” she says. I kiss her back, holding her close to me for a long moment.

“I’d better go wake my best man up,” I say, kissing her forehead as I pull back.

I wake David up and tell him the good news. He bounces around, helping me get ready while Brooke gets changed. He was in on the plan, and he keeps telling me that he knew when we met her at the playground that I was going to marry Brooke. He’s a ball of energy, running around the house and singing mixed-up words to love songs as we get ready to leave.

We’re going to drive to the wedding together, both already dressed. It breaks tradition. I’ll see her in her dress before we get to the aisle, but I don’t care. We’ve been breaking tradition our whole lives. We’ve been through so much that I’m not worried about bad luck. I just want to marry Brooke today. I want to start our life together.

When she walks down the stairs in her dress, my breath catches. I’ve never seen her, or anyone, look so beautiful. I’ve never seen a better sight in my life. We drive to the hotel, clutching each other’s hands the whole time. I can almost feel the nervous and excited feelings radiating from her through her hand, like we’re conducting energy where our hands are joined.

The chapel bursts into applause when we get there. Every row is filled with our friends and family. Autumn is standing at the end of the aisle, waiting, and David scampers up the aisle to join her. She gives him a high-five and he flashes me a thumbs-up. I think they’re the perfect maid of honor and best man. If the sounds of awing and cooing and cameras flashing all around the chapel are any indication, all our guests agree.

Brooke squeezes my arm and takes a huge breath.

“Ready?” I ask. She nods rapidly.

“Absolutely,” Brooke says.

“Then I’ll meet you up there,” I say, kissing her forehead and then heading up the aisle where Autumn and David are waiting.

The music swells up a few minutes later, and I turn to watch Brooke walking down the aisle to me, still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Looking at her, I almost forget how to breathe entirely. I can’t quite believe we really made it here, to our wedding day, that after all these years, Brooke is walking toward me in a gorgeous gown, about to become my wife.

“I love you,” Brooke mouths when she gets to me. She’s crying again, a few silent tears as she faces me.

“I love you,” I mouth back. I can’t stop smiling, can’t stop the happiness that keeps rising in me.

A few hours later, after the ceremony and at our reception, I still haven’t stopped smiling. Every moment of this day has been perfect, even better than I had hoped. Autumn has given a long speech about how she thinks Brooke and I are soulmates. She called us both brave and wonderful and said we deserved every moment of happiness she knew we were going to have. David gave a speech too, telling everyone what a good storyteller Brooke is and about how much she makes his dad smile.

After the speeches and the first dance, and several dances after that, my mom cuts in just for a minute. She looks like she’s been crying all day, and she beams at me as we dance.

“I always had a feeling you would marry Brooke,” my mom says.

“Always?” I ask. My mom nods.

“Since you were both skinny high school freshmen, I knew it,” she replies. I smile, picturing Brooke and me as those awkward kids, already so close.

“You were right,” I say and my mom laughs.

“I always am,” she tells me. “I’m so happy for you, for both of you.”

“Thank you for everything,” I say. I mean it for how much she always supported me, for how much she supported Brooke, for how much she loves David, and for how much she’s helping with my final surprise of the day.

“You know I’ll always watch David, anytime. That’s a wonderful kid you have there,” she says, smiling softly.

She dances me back over to Brooke and hugs her tightly for a minute before letting us dance again.

“Hi,” Brooke says, folding back into my arms and spinning with me. I kiss her, sliding my hand on her cheek as I do.

“Married life treating you well so far?” I ask, teasing when we pull back a little. Brooke laughs.

“It’s perfect,” she says. I’ve never seen her eyes so bright, I’ve never seen her look so happy.

“Yeah,” I say, “it really is.”

“We haven’t danced like this since prom night,” Brooke says. I laugh.

“That’s fitting since that was the night we got engaged,” I say, kissing Brooke again.

I dance with Brooke for the rest of the night, until the guests start clearing out until our feet hurt until all I want is to get her home and celebrate our wedding privately. I have one more surprise before we make it home, one last thing I’ve been planning.

“Before we go home,” I say, pulling Brooke in close and leading her to a room in the hotel I’ve blocked off just for this.

“More surprises?” Brooke asks, eyes wide and bright.

“Just one,” I say. I open the closet in the room and pull out a large wrapped box. Brooke sits down and takes it from me, eyes looking watery again.

“You’ve already given me so much today,” she says.

“Open it,” I say, sitting beside her. She pulls the paper off slowly and opens the box lid. She gasps when she sees the leather album inside.

“This is beautiful,” she says, running her fingers over the butter-soft fabric.

“Open that, too,” I say. I can’t take my eyes off her face, want to see the exact moment when she figures out what this really is. She opens the album and her eyes widen again at what I’ve already tucked into the sleeves, hotel room bookings and tickets for attractions all over the country.

“This is our road trip,” she says, turning the pages, eyes running over everything I’ve laid out.

“It’s our honeymoon,” I say, and she turns her head to me, crying in earnest now.

“Our honeymoon?” she asks. I kiss her, pulling her gently from the back of her neck.

“We leave tomorrow. My mom is going to watch David while we’re gone,” I say. She gasps again and leans in for another kiss.

“When did you do this?” she asks.

“I’ve been thinking about it for months, but once you got promoted and you can work remotely now, I had to. Nothing is stopping us, and we’ve been talking about this for a really long time,” I say.

“Even longer than getting married,” Brooke says. She puts her forehead against mine, breathing hard.

“It seemed right to combine them,” I say, smiling. She nods, eyes back on the album, looking beautiful and happy. I think it’s fitting, a road trip to start a marriage, a physical journey to start an emotional one. I’m looking forward to every mile, every inch, of those journeys with Brooke. I’m certain every one of them will make me fall even more in love with her.

After Michelle had died, I had thought I could fill the emptiness in me with equally empty things. I thought the only person I needed to love was David. Now I know that I always needed someone, needed Brooke. Coming home has changed my life in more ways than I possibly could have predicted, and almost all of them are tied to Brooke and the way she makes me feel. I came home to chase real happiness, and I’ve found it, here with Brooke.