A/N: Thanks for sticking with the story! Reviews keep me motivated, so keep 'em coming. Obviously still don't own the characters, but that should go without saying. Onto the next chapter :)
ZPOV
The sound of my blaring phone woke me at what felt like the crack of dawn. I groaned, reaching for it and picking it up without recognizing the number. "Hello," I greeted trying not to sound like the person had woke me up.
"Oh good you're awake!" A voice I recognized but couldn't place, responded cheerfully. "This is Dawn, from the Butterstick. I was wondering if you and Wade wanted to schedule some time for cake testing?"
"Dawn," I said more to jog my memory than anything. "I appreciate it," I said pulling my phone away from my ear to check the time. "But it's just after 6AM and Wade is still asleep. Is it okay if we call you back when we've had a chance to talk it over?"
"Oh sure thing! Just give me a ring or drop on by. I have a ton of ideas. We could go with a traditional cake, or mini pies, or tarts! Tarts would be great for a spring -"
"We'll definitely give you a call back," I interrupted.
"Oh, okay. Yep, just give us a holler."
"Okay great, thanks. Have a nice day," I managed to get out before hanging up.
I felt Wade stir beside me and half mumble into the pillow. "Who the hell is calling you this early?"
"Dawn from the Butterstick. She wants us to taste test baked goods for the wedding," I said, laying back down and pulling the covers back around me. I yawned and felt one of his arms reach for me and pull me closer effortlessly. I turned so my back was towards him and he readjusted against me. I loved how we just... fit. I laced my fingers with his as they rested on my stomach.
"She wanted us to come in now?" He murmured, already sounding like he was drifting off.
"Mhm," I yawned, feeling myself drift off. "You know, at least it was a better wake up than the sound of my alarm playing Highway to Hell."
He placed a kiss on the top of my head. "Well maybe for the Valentine's Day my gift will be letting you change it."
"Or Christmas?"
"Nah, I'm not ready to go back to waking up to whiney pop music just yet."
"It's not whiney," I argued weakly.
There was no counter and after a few seconds, I heard his light snore, the kind that was barely above a heavy breath. And soon enough the rhythmic sound lulled me back to sleep.
When I woke up next, it was to an empty bed. I blindly patted behind me for Wade but all I felt was a cool mattress. I rolled over, opening my eyes and looking at Wade's side of the bed. It was empty, with a tiny receipt from a gas station laying loosely on his pillow, with his writing on it. I grabbed it, blinking the sleep from my eyes to read it.
Had to get to the bar and didn't want to wake you
I flipped onto my back and reached for my phone on the nightstand. I scrolled through social media sites, caught up on the news, and checked email before getting up and getting started on the day. This was a new normal. We were past the initial honeymoon phase of going at it like rabbits 24/7 where we had to have sex at least once before heading out for the day, every day, and had instead gotten beyond that. Sure, sometimes it still happened – we were by no means abstinent – but it was different somehow, though I couldn't pinpoint exactly the reason. It just was… better.
I'd intentionally taken the weekend of Wade's opening off, and Brick in an odd turn of events, hadn't argued when I'd asked him if he could be the on-call doctor this weekend. Freedom! I took my time getting ready, cleaning up Wade's room a bit in the process before heading into town, bracing myself for getting stopped by people with residual questions about the engagement.
And stopped I was. Once I got into town it took almost an hour to get the two and a half blocks to Wade's, with me having to interrupt and stop people mid-thought to move on my way. They meant well, I knew they did. But a mix of my inner New Yorker wanting to keep things private, to me not really having much to keep private because Wade and I hadn't discussed any of it yet, made me want to go into hiding.
The morning kept getting better as the first person I saw as I walked into Wade's was Lemon. We exchanged cordial smiles as we approached each other.
"Lemon," I greeted half-heartedly. "AB," I added, smiling a bit more.
"Zoe," Lemon nodded in return. "I hear congratulations are in order."
"Yes," AB added in her standard perky tone. "We heard all about it." She swatted my arm playfully. "I'm gonna pretend I'm not offended that I had to hear second hand."
I smiled in earnest, shrugging. "Sorry, it just kind of happened. Both the proposal and people hearing about it."
"Well," Lemon said shaking her head and reaching for my ring. "Let's see it then. The ring."
She took my hand, her face scrunching at the ring before looking up at me. "Hasn't he given you this one before?"
"Yea," I confirmed, shrugging. So what?
"So, he's recycling a ring?" AB asked. "That's…"
"Tacky. The words you're looking for are tacky, classless, and cheap."
"It was his mother's," I interjected. It was sweet and had more meaning behind it than any other store-bought ring could ever have.
"Ohhh…" AB replied. "Well, then I'm sorry. And it's beautiful."
"It's a nice gesture, but you should have that and your own ring. He shouldn't have given it to you all those months ago if he was going to use it to propose to the woman he planned to marry."
"Fortunately, we're one in the same," I snapped back with a smile. The south was teaching me things – like how to be bitchy with a pleasant grin on my face.
"That is fortunate," Lemon spat back with a similar expression.
"Well," AB started, diffusing the awkward tension. "Lemon and I were just heading out, but I'll call you later. I want every last detail."
I nodded, feeling grateful that I'd found a girl-friend that I could talk to about these things. There was Rose, but there were some things that I didn't feel comfortable discussing with a minor.
I moved past them, heading for the bar where Wade was taking someone's payment. As the person got her change and moved, George's profile appeared beside her, his phone against his ear. Are you fucking kidding me, today?
"Hey," I said to Wade as I slid onto a barstool in front of him.
"Mornin doc," he smiled, reaching for a coffee pot. "Someone slept in."
"Eh, I was being lazy. Also, your clean clothes pile on your chair was turning into Everest, so I cleaned a little."
"And in exchange, here you go," he said, sliding the cup of coffee towards me and placing the jar of brown sugar beside it.
"Already acting like a wife then," George chimed in, with a laugh. "Cleaning up the house."
"It's not only a wife's job anymore. Some would argue the responsibility never should have been solely on the wife to maintain the house," I countered. Neanderthals.
"Simmer down shortcake. It was just a joke," Wade defended. "Plus, everyone knows you're way messier than I am."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"No," I began. "I just have more stuff."
"Exactly. More stuff. More clutter. More messy."
"Messier," I corrected.
"See," he smirked. "You agree."
I rolled my eyes and stirred in the sugar. "You're an infant."
"One that you're stuck with," he chuckled. "You chose the man."
"More like man-child."
He folded his arms on the bar and leaned forward, dropping to a whisper. "That's not what you were calling me when I had you against the pool table last night."
I rolled my eyes again, fighting the blush. Fortunately, with how frequently Wade used sexual innuendo in public, my physical response was getting easier to keep in check.
"So how are you George?" I asked, turning and pulling back from Wade's lingering look.
He glanced up from the newspaper he had in front of him. "How am I? Besides the fact that neither you nor my best friend told me you two were engaged, just dandy."
"We were going to tell people, but then… it just got out," I said, half apologizing and half already tired of having to.
"Yea, plus I was gonna swing by this week with a six-pack and ask you to be my best man, so you woulda found out then anyway," Wade added.
I turned to look at him, grinning like an idiot. I don't know why, but the idea that he had started making plans for it, even something as small as picking his best man, gave me butterflies. This was really happening. And also, had he broken the news to Lavon that he wasn't going to be it?
"What?" Wade asked, looking at me like I had four heads.
"I'm not sure if I'm more offended or honored," George answered, looking confused.
"He says stuff that makes me feel the same way, all the time," I lamented, leaning towards him.
"I mean, you were gonna wait a week to give me one of the biggest pieces of news of your life, but at the same time ask me to be your best man."
"I didn't realize I had asked a girl to stand up next me," Wade said, sounding annoyed.
George shook his head, rolling his eyes. "Shut up. Of course I'll do it," he finally replied, his expression doing a 180 into a genuine smile. "Of course, I will. We've been best friends since we were 5. But are you sure you don't want to ask Jesse?"
"Nah," Wade shrugged. "I'll tell him about this later, and if he's around he can be an usher or some shit. You're more like a brother to me than he's ever been."
"Well alright then," George nodded definitively. "Have you picked a maid of honor?" He asked turning to me.
"Uh…"
"Yes! Bluebell wants to know who is going to be Zoe's numero uno," Dash reiterated, seeming to pop up out of nowhere, as he was wont to do.
"Um…" I said just as eloquently.
"She's thinkin it over, okay?" Wade said, speaking up for me.
"KISS! KISS! KISS!" Someone started chanting behind Dash. Oh god.
"Oh, quit it," Wade brushed off, waving his hand. The chanting grew louder. I sighed, looking over at him.
"If it's what the people want? We can just get it over with." I offered up.
"When it comes to kissin you doc, 'getting it over with' is not how I'll ever operate."
We exchanged a half second moment. The kind where your heart feels like it's swollen, in a good way, and you feel like everything bad that has ever happened has all been worth it because you're sharing this single moment with the person you're looking at. That was how Wade made me feel, more often than not. Like if it came down to it, it would really be him and I against the world. Or in this case, him and I against the town's eagerness to be firmly involved in our lives.
"Fine!" He shouted over my head. "But this is not going to be a regular thing," he added, pointing his finger at the small group that had made a semi-circle around us. "And I don't want you harassing us with questions about the wedding. We'll tell everyone what we want to announce, when we want to announce it."
"But what about a date?!" Piper Clemson, one of the few women that had been divorced more than twice in the town, shouted.
"It includes asking about the date!" He said, hollering over the crowd in her direction.
"Listen," I said, a bit softer and primarily looking at Dash. "This just happened. We want to enjoy it before we throw ourselves into all of this. Plus, I'm moving to Birmingham next month, so we have that to plan for waaaaay before a wedding."
There was some murmuring and I wanted to slap myself. They had probably forgotten I was moving or thought the move was off with the engagement.
"You're still going?" Dash asked, sounding even more surprised than he looked.
"Listen, do you want the damn kiss or not?" Wade said, leaning over the bar.
"Will you agree to an exclusive sit-down interview for my blog?"
I glanced at Wade, feeling like a celebrity – and not in a good way. Wade just shrugged in my direction.
"One interview," I answered sternly. "And no bombarding us with questions before it, or any follow ups afterward." I totally should have been an attorney with the way I was negotiating.
He thought a minute, then nodded. "People! Give them space for the kiss! You'll have all your questions answered in an upcoming tell-all edition on my blog!"
Wade made his way around the bar, shaking his head. "I feel like an animal in a zoo."
"You've got that right," I agreed.
With the crowd watching us, it felt awkward. I laughed nervously, looking up at him.
"This is weird," I whispered. He nodded, and I was mid-nervous giggle when his kiss silenced me.
I kept my hands at his sides, and it felt like crowd was making noise underwater as I smelled his aftershave and felt his teeth nip at my bottom lip.
Even thousands of kisses in, every one of them gave me butterflies like the very first time – before I left, before we were in a relationship, hell, before I even knew I liked him. The first night we kissed, me in a boxed-wine drunken stupor, straddling him in his car as "Dixie" rang out from his car horn. It was all the cliché shit I hated about love in pop culture; the world falling away from us, my senses hypersensitive to everything between him and I.
It was him that pulled back first, and as the noise from the crowd ramped back up in volume. "Mornin' doc," he whispered, his nose still close enough to slightly rub against mine. I batted my eyes open, smiling like the cat that ate the canary and seeing a similar grin on his face. "Mhm," was all I could muster in response.
WPOV
I loved how Zoe looked sometimes after we kissed. It was like I'd put her in some kind of altered state, and she hadn't quite snapped out of it. After the clapping that followed from the crazy group that had some weird voyeuristic thing going on, the bar got much quieter. People went on eating their breakfast and a few stragglers wandered in asking about brunch. And just like that the world flipped off its crazy switch and all was back to normal (relatively).
"So what are you gonna do with your day off?" I asked her as I got back around the bar.
She shrugged, grabbing her cup of coffee. "Check on Lavon, look at apartments online, and probably go stuff myself on wedding cake samples at the Butterstick."
"Oh," I said, my interest piqued. "When's that going down? I want in on it."
"Sometime this afternoon?"
"Sounds good to me. We can carb load then head home to," I paused to wiggle my eyebrows, "then I'll head back here in time for the dinner rush."
"To nap?" She asked, grinning as she sipped her coffee.
"Not the horizontal activity I was thinking of."
"That is the only activity I'll be doing after eating the amount of sugar I'm planning to shove in my face."
I laughed, shaking my head and walking down to the end of the bar to dump George's used coffee cup and plate into the wash bin under the counter. "We'll see."
"No," she said adamantly. "Cake then nap. That's the plan."
"Well, doc with a plan, text me when you're on your way over there and I'll meet you. I have to head to the back to do a few things while it's slow."
"Will do," she said drinking the remainder of her coffee and hopping off her chair.
"Hey, hey," I said, walking around the bar to her. "Where ya goin?"
"Um… you said you had to head to the back, so I was going to head home," she replied, eyeing me, confused.
"Yea, but where's my goodbye lovin?" I smirked. I leaned down and gave her a quick peck on the lips. "Alright, get out of here."
She puffed out a quick laugh and rolled her eyes, smiling. "Okay weirdo."
What little was left of the morning went by quickly, as did most of the afternoon. It wasn't until after three that Zoe texted that she needed me to come home.
"Wanda, something's up at the plantation. I'll be back in a few," I hollered in her direction. It was the lull between lunch and dinner and she was playing solitaire on one of the empty tables. She looked super focused and waved me off, barely acknowledging me.
Nothing was on fire and I couldn't smell any smoke or burning as I headed up the steps of my place. "Doc?" I asked, pulling open the screen door. I headed inside and saw her standing in the doorway of the bedroom wearing one of her short silk robes. It was a little open and barely covering anything.
She smirked. "I was thinking about what you said, and I decided your version of horizontal was better than mine."
This girl kept me on my damn toes. I grinned, walking towards her and tugging my t-shirt off as I approached her. She rolled her shoulders, the thin excuse for a robe dropping silently just as I got to her. She laughed a little as I lifted her up. "God I'm gonna love being married to you," I grinned before reaching for her lips.
"So how are you gonna break it to Lavon that he's not going to be your best man?" She asked after we'd done the deed and she was wrapped around me under the covers like a koala.
"I figured at the same time you asked him to be your man of honor," I said, massaging her scalp with my fingers. She pulled back a little and looked up at me.
"You thought I was going to ask him to be on my side?"
"Yea," I shrugged. "He's your best friend, isn't he?"
"Well yea," she started, laying her head back down. "But I was thinking of asking AB. I figured AB would be my maid of honor, Lavon would be your best man – that way they'd walk down the aisle together."
"Well, I guess it'll be Lavon and George with linked arms headed towards the alter." The mental image was kinda hilarious and I had to hold back my laugh.
I felt her body shake as she laughed a little. "That is hilarious to picture. Lavon is almost a foot taller than George." She went quiet for a beat. "You don't mind waiting until after this fellowship ends, do you?" She sounded almost shy about it.
I leaned down, kissing the top of her head. "Nah doc. Plus I kinda figured that would be the plan."
"And what are the chances we can elope?"
"Fine by me, but you're breaking the news to everyone afterward," I chuckled against her.
"Nevermind," she said quickly. "But small, okay?" She asked, looking up at me.
"Whoever you want," I told her, pulling her up my side. "Honestly, as long as you're my wife at the end of it, I don't really care about any of the other stuff."
"If we're having a wedding, you're not getting off helping me plan this thing Wade Kinsella," she said sternly. "No way am I doing this alone."
"You won't be, you'll have the entire town as one collective wedding planner."
She scowled. "No help, no wife."
I sighed dramatically. "Fiiiine. Already giving me ultimatums."
"Not an ultimatum, just a fact."
"Then Wade Kinsella, reporting for wedding duties."
There was no way in hell I would give her a single reason to change her mind.