Congratulations, Doctors Avery. We sincerely wish you the very best on the occasion of your marriage.
Enjoy.
Surprise Centre
There really is no better time to get married than when you're wearing your wedding dress. There really is no better day to get married than your wedding day – or half a day later, when your eyes are gritty from lack of sleep, when his suit is creased, when your dress is worse. There is no better day. There will be no better day in your life than the day you both splash your faces with cold water in the soft light of a hotel bathroom, when you both grip the edge of the counter and stare at your reflections, then stare at each other.
And really, nothing compares to running around a pharmacy to frantically purchase toothbrushes, deodorant and, on the sly, condoms. You probably won't look at one another when they ring those up, because it's been a while, but you both know, and you both want.
Don't bother getting into why he knew. He never meant to know the distance, in space, in time. He never meant to casually sift through wedding venues both in and out of state under the pretence of looking for other places you might have chosen to marry another man. Don't ask him. Just be happy he knew. Be happy he knew you well enough to know that you would march towards him – walking in that busy, determined way you've always walked, even in a wedding dress – and grab his hand, and keep right on marching, and then start running.
It might be more romantic to have a wedding night the same night as your wedding, but he drove through the night, and you were too wired to sleep. It makes sense to first lock the door, bury yourself in a pile of pillows, sleep to wake up smiling when you feel yourself being kissed. It's okay to kiss, to consummate this thing while the sun comes up, to reacquaint yourselves with the bodies you missed and coveted and tried to make out the outlines of through clothes. It's okay to touch, to taste. It's okay to fall into each other, to fall in love, to tell each other you never want to fall in love again.
There really is no one better for you than the kind of guy who's willing to wade through thank you notes and send wedding gifts back to their purchasers. There really is no one better for you than the kind of guy who holds the phone at arm's length while his mother reads him the riot act and only rolls his eyes at you. There really is no one better for you than him, your best friend, the one you tried to run from, the one who tried to run from you, the one who was meant to be the one. You can tell yourself you should have known the minute you set eyes on him, but he'll just laugh at you.
And really, nothing compares to falling asleep beside the same person ever night and waking up next to the same person every morning. Your stuff ends up in his drawer, his stuff ends up in yours. You end up in his shower. It ends well.
You're going to look back on this when you're old, when you're tired, when you're richer than Midas with a lifetime of memories. You're going to think there is no better day to get married than your wedding day, the day that became the day that was meant to be your wedding day.
You're going to decide, here and now, that there really is nothing more precious to you than this – you may have to keep it hidden, a secret for the time being, but there really is nothing more precious to you than this: the band on your finger, his heart on your sleeve.
Fin.