I felt someone brushing my hair back and I blinked my eyes open. I was exhausted from the past 24 hours and I thought that I could just rest my eyes for a minute before I had to start moving again. "Hey, you okay?"
I smiled. "I think I'm the one who's supposed to be asking you that. Are you ready for this?"
I walked around and took in Chloe's beautiful white dress. Her hair was in elaborate braids, held up by a gorgeous silver broach. I stopped behind her and she smiled back through the reflection in the mirror in front of us. "I'm more than ready. I want to do this now. How much longer do we have to wait?"
"I can go check, but people started arriving a while ago so it shouldn't be long."
She frowned. "No, stay. I don't want to be alone."
I quirked an eyebrow at her and moved closer to the mirror to check my makeup. "I thought you were excited."
"I am!" She laughed nervously. "I'm also very nervous so please don't go."
I turned and grabbed her hand. "I'm not going."
She gave my hand a squeeze and looked at me. They had just finished her hair and makeup. Her dad had left to take her mom to her seat and the rest of the wedding party was waiting outside for the rest of the guests to be seated. She looked down. "Thanks for everything you've done these past months, Stace. I don't know what I would've done without you."
When she looked up again I could see tears pooling in her eyes and I quickly moved to get a tissue. "No, hey, don't cry. You're going to ruin your make-up." I carefully dabbed the tissue around her eyes. "You don't have to thank me. I'm your maid of honor, of course I was going to help you."
"It's just, with everything you've been through since-" She looked at me sadly. "I wouldn't have blamed you if you needed more time."
I shook my head. "I didn't. I needed it to distract me." I checked her makeup again. "Now, no more crying, okay?"
She nodded. "I love you."
"I love you too." I felt my eyes stinging with tears and chuckled. "We need to stop this. I'm just going to look outside and see if we're good to go."
I walked to the door and looked outside. Chloe's brother was standing in the hallway waiting. "Hey, we're getting antsy here. How much longer do we have to wait?"
"I don't know." He shrugged.
As if on cue, we heard footsteps coming down the hall and turned to see Chloe's dad coming over. He smiled and waved me back inside to get Chloe.
I turned to her and smiled. "Last chance to run away."
Chloe rolled her eyes and walked past me and out of the room. I hurried to take my place next to Chloe's brother, grabbing my bouquet from one of the ushers as we neared the door that led outside.
The music started playing when I stepped onto the carpeted aisle. Beca hadn't wanted to walk down the aisle, afraid she'd trip and fall in front of everyone. She was already waiting at the end with a nervous smile on her face, her dress was a toned down version of Chloe's but just as elegant.
I didn't look at the rows of people as I walked, knowing I wouldn't see the face I most wanted to see there. I tried not to think too much about it as I took my place and looked back as Chloe appeared on the far side of the aisle.
I turned back to Beca just in time to watch her jaw dropping. She seemed to remember she was in front of a lot of people and that this was being filmed and quickly recovered, smiling adoringly as Chloe made her way down the aisle with her dad.
The ceremony was beautiful and short, as per Beca's request. She had joked that once she saw Chloe in her wedding dress she wouldn't be able to hold herself back from kissing her for long. Which, by the look on her face and the way she fidgeted until she took Chloe's hand to slip the ring on, seemed to be a real threat.
I rushed back inside to check everything was set for the reception once the ceremony was over. The hotel's wedding planner blanched when he saw me coming and hurried forward to assure me that everything was as it should. The guy had seen a lot of me this past month and I had to admit I hadn't been in the best of moods.
He followed me around reciting his check list while I straightened up the name cards on the nearest table and waved at the people who were already walking into the room.
I waited until almost everyone was seated and went back to find Chloe and Beca. They'd had enough time to get their urge to jump each other out of the way. Hopefully their dresses and makeup didn't need much fixing.
I stopped outside the door of the room we had used to get ready and knocked loudly before yelling. "Better cover up whatever you need to, I'm coming in!"
I counted to five and opened the door with my eyes closed in case they hadn't taken me seriously. I slowly opened one eye and then the other one to find both Chloe and Beca looking at me with amused looks. They looked disheveled but I had thought they'd look a lot worse. Chloe's lipstick was smeared and she had left a pink trail down Beca's neck. Beca's hair was a little ruffled but it was fixable with a few strategically placed bobby pins.
I shook my head and handed a tissue to Chloe to fix her make-up while I moved to help Beca. "I'm glad I didn't take your mom up on her offer to come find you."
Beca chuckled and blushed. "Me too."
I managed to get them looking almost as good as they had during the ceremony and had them back at the reception hall in record time, smoothing out their dresses as I tried to keep them apart for the short walk there.
I stayed by the door, watching with a small smile as they took their first dance to a mix Beca made. After the traditional dances were done, people started to join them on the dance floor. Finding the right DJ for the party had been the only decision Beca had been deeply involved with and from the sound of it, it had been a good choice.
I was about to go to my seat when I felt a hand on my back. "You're not dancing?"
I frowned confused and turned around. "What are you doing here? I thought your flight didn't get in until tonight."
Aubrey threw her arms around my neck and kissed me, her fingers skirting over the straps of my dress. I held her hips and pulled her closer, smiling against her lips. "I changed it so I could come."
I rested my forehead against hers and let my hands move over the soft fabric of her dress. "You should've told me, I would've picked you up from the airport."
"You wouldn't have had time. And I wanted to surprise you."
I moved forward to peck her lips a couple of times. "I love you."
She smiled shyly and blushed, giving me a quick kiss and moving forward to press herself closer to me. "I love you."
I led her to the table we were sharing with Chloe's family. Thankfully I hadn't had time to redo the sitting arrangements and there was still a seat for Aubrey. After we were done with the introductions, we sat and Aubrey pulled my hand to her waist and leaned against my side. I pressed a kiss to her temple and tightened my arm around her.
It was really hard for me not to touch her whenever we were together just to make sure she was still there. The month after her surgery had been really tough. The surgery had gone fine, her body hadn't rejected the new organ and she was out of the ICU after a couple of days. But because of the anti-rejection medicine she was taking, she had contracted a respiratory infection right before she was scheduled to be discharged. She'd had to stay in the hospital two weeks longer, which had pushed back her physical therapy schedule and delayed her recovery.
Not a lot had changed with our relationship while she was still in the hospital, except that she had waited exactly three seconds to kiss me after I told her I was no longer her doctor. I would visit her whenever I wasn't working and most nights I slept in her room despite her protests.
I took her home after they discharged her and I ended up spending the night. I didn't want her to be alone and, even though she wouldn't admit it until much later, she was terrified something would happen while she was by herself. I skipped work the next day and stayed with her, cuddling in her bed and watching TV.
She made me go to work the next day, saying she couldn't be afraid for the rest of her life and that I shouldn't have to stop mine for her. I checked in as often as I could the first few days, until we settled into a pseudo-normal rhythm. I would go to work, then stop by to see her on my way home. I spent the night whenever she had a doctor's appointment the next day and drove her to the hospital. Jesse drove her to physical therapy when I had to work or when I was busy helping Chloe with things for her wedding.
A month before the wedding she had been cleared to drive and she had gone back to work. She had started out slow, doing mostly administrative stuff, but there had been a problem with one of their clients and Jesse was visiting his family so Aubrey had had to fly to New York for a meeting. I had almost had a panic attack at the thought of her having to fly by herself to a different city, and I made her promise to check in as often as possible. I had already planned to go pick her up at the airport, even if I had to leave the wedding a little bit early.
She turned her head and kissed my cheek. "How did the rehearsal dinner and the ceremony go?"
"The ceremony was great. The rehearsal dinner was…" I twisted my lower lip trying to come up with the right adjective. "...interesting. One of Beca's cousins was allergic to walnuts and Beca didn't tell me. The salad had walnut oil and her throat closed up. Luckily someone had an epipen and it didn't get so bad. Then Chloe got really drunk and started crying because she couldn't be with Beca that night. I had to stay with her until she calmed down and stopped puking."
"Wow." She pulled my free hand in front of her and looked at my fingers. "I don't want to spent the night before our wedding apart."
"I'm sorry, what?" I stopped breathing. Even though we were very much in love with each other, and it felt like we'd been together for years, we'd been dating officially only for over four months.
She sat up and turned to cup my cheek. "I've known for a while that you were the person I was gonna spend the rest of my life with, however short it may be. We don't have to get married, I mean, the probability of me dying is a lot higher than yours and I get you not wanting to-"
"Okay." She frowned confused. "Okay, let's get married. We have to wait until Chloe and Beca come back from their honeymoon but we don't need a huge ceremony, unless you want one."
She laughed and kissed me. "I didn't mean right away!"
"But you're right, we don't know how long we have together. I could get hit by a bus crossing the street or a crazy, gun wielding man could go into the hospital and start shooting or-" I placed our clasped hands over her chest and blinked back the tears I felt forming in my eyes. "I don't want to waste more time."
She shook her head and kissed me again. "I love you."
She had started crying and I wiped her cheeks with my thumbs. "I love you too. And we're getting married."
"Bree! You made it!" Chloe approached our table and hugged Aubrey. She noticed her tear-stained face and held her back by the shoulders. "What happened?"
I shrugged. "We're getting married."
"What?" Half the people there turned when Chloe yelled and watched as she launched herself at me with a huge smile on her face. I rolled my eyes at Aubrey and Beca over her shoulder while trying to keep my balance.
I saw Beca bump Aubrey's shoulder with a smirk. "Welcome to the family."
