Chapter 24: Same Church, Different Day

The night before the wedding, Sam came to my apartment at ten with a toothbrush and nothing else.

"Bad luck to see the bride," I said, in the doorway.

"I'm not here to see you."

"Then why are you here?"

"To do this."

He kissed me against the door frame, slow and sure, with a hand on my jaw.

We had done a lot of things in a lot of places by now.

None of it had felt like this.

He undressed me in the dark, and he knew exactly where every button was.

I pulled him down onto my bed and pushed him onto his back and climbed over him.

"Tomorrow I'll say yes in front of everyone," I said.

"I know."

"Tonight I'm saying it to you."

I lowered myself onto his cock and watched his mouth fall open.

He gripped my hips and moved with me, deep and steady.

I put both hands on his chest and felt his heart under my palm.

"Yes," I said, again and again, and he said my name each time.

When I came, I came slowly, with my eyes on his, and he followed a moment after.

We fell asleep like that, tangled, without a single thing left to prove.

The morning was cold and bright.

St. Brendan's smelled of candle wax and the winter roses my mother had insisted on.

I stood at the back doorway again, in the same place as before.

This time I wore my mother's wedding dress, taken in at the waist.

My hands were not holding a phone.

Constance stood at my elbow in her dark green wool, with her silver cane and her white twist of hair.

"They are all here," she said. "Every one of them stayed."

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