Eight months later

It’s the perfect day for a wedding.

Or evening now, I guess, since the actual marrying portion of the day is done and things have transitioned into a party. It’s raucous for being so last- minute and for being such a small group of people, but I shouldn’t have expected anything less. Sometimes happiness is loud and messy.

I stand at the edge of the commotion after being in the middle of it all day. I want to memorize exactly how this looks and feels—the sweet breeze that winds over my bare shoulders; the deck filled with friends and family, laughter and clinking wineglasses and music cutting through the summer warmth of the night; the vineyard beyond that, stretching toward the tree- cloaked jut of the mountains; the reaching branches of Big Daddy, the oak tree that’s watched so many of my memories at Blue Yonder. The one that provided sun-dappled shade earlier when Eli and I stood underneath it and slipped rings onto each other’s fingers.

And the sky. It chased dusk off an hour ago, and now it’s a wide blue that’s deepening by the minute, so endless it almost doesn’t look real.

But it is. All of this is.

I run my thumb over my new wedding band, thinking about the Post-it and receipt and gum-wrapper rings in my Converse box, still tucked on the bookshelf that’s now crammed with my trinkets and Eli’s puzzle boxes. The paper ring he handed over three weeks ago during an otherwise typical Saturday at Kerry Park, telling me thickly he’d been thinking about this moment from the first one he gave me. And once I’d read the proposal inside it, the diamond he held up as he kneeled at my feet.

I think about the ring he gave me today, his eyes luminous as he said his vows. I trace the unending circle of it, knowing that every ring Eli’s ever given me has meant the same thing: forever.

A pair of arms slide around my waist and I close my eyes, my body melting under the heat of the most devoted touch.

“There she is,” Eli murmurs against my skin. “And by she, I mean my wife.”

“You’ve called me that approximately four thousand times since we got married.”

“And I’m going to say it four million more over the next hundred years,” he says stubbornly.

I laugh. “Oh buddy, I have some bad news about that estimate.”

“Fine, fifty or sixty,” he says. I can feel the smile curling over his mouth when he murmurs into my ear, “All of them, regardless.”

“That sounds pretty ideal,” I reply, my chest aching at the fact that we’ll get it.

Eli tightens his hold on me, resting his chin on the crown of my head. I trace my finger over the arch of his wedding band as we go quiet, soaking it all in together. Grace and Adam are spinning each other tipsily to the music, safe in the knowledge they can party the night away now that Laurie’s shuttled three-month-old Penny off to sleep. Jamie and Blake are seated in chairs pulled into a makeshift circle with Eli’s sisters, a wine bottle on the ground between them, and my and Eli’s dads are chatting easily, arms crossed over their suit-clad chests. Cole, who served as our last-minute officiant, is swirling the wine in his glass and then holding it out for Eli’s mom and her fiancé to smell. I can track his ester-volatizing spiel from a mile away.

It really is the perfect day, and it’s ours.

As if he’s thinking the same thing, Eli turns me until we’re facing, wrapping his arms around my waist. I get caught in the hypnotic lock of his eyes, as I always do and ever did—caramel and gold and deep, deep brown, bordered by lashes that are still spiked from his tears during the ceremony.

“I love you so much,” he says quietly, grazing his mouth over mine. “I love you,” I whisper back.

“Thank you for marrying me.” His hand comes up to cup my face, his thumb moving over the curve of my cheek.

I lean into his touch, lifting a shoulder. “I mean, I had nothing else going on.”

He grins, brushing another almost-kiss along my lips. “And thank you for agreeing to do it with such little notice.”

“That was a no-brainer. We have a proven track record for planning weddings in a week,” I say, and he’s still smiling when he kisses me for real.

Originally, we’d planned to come down to the Bay Area for the weekend to celebrate Penny’s one-hundred-day birthday, a Korean tradition. After we got engaged, though, Eli requested we extend the trip to the whole week even though we’d just been down in March when Grace had Penny.

Even eight months into living with Eli and six months into his strategy director job at a telecom company (which comes with, among other perks, unlimited PTO), sometimes I have to calibrate my brain to an Eli who suggests time off with such little anxiety. Whose late worknights are few and far between, whose weekends are saved for me and the friends we’ve made together and separately in Seattle, whose panic and stress continues to unwind itself with time and patience and therapy.

It was an easy yes. I love being in Seattle with Eli, the space it gives us to build a life together, but I miss this other home we have, too. Maybe someday we’ll come back. For now, I love where we are, and every trip we make down here feels like a bonus. For a girl who struggled so mightily to know the shape and feeling of home, it’s a revelation to have so many places—and people—to call it.

I didn’t think anything of Eli’s request until we were on our flight down and I looked over to find him staring down at my ring, his expression soft and hungry.

“Pretty, hmm?” I asked, holding it up like we hadn’t been gazing at it starry-eyed for the past two weeks. It winked under the reading light.

Eli hummed, then looked up. His eyes locked with mine and I reveled in that clicking feeling in my chest, the way it vibrated through me when he murmured, “Hey, Peach.”

“Hey, Eli,” I murmured back.

A tiny grin tipped his mouth up, but there was a nervous shake to it. “Do you want to get married this week?”

My laugh was short and clueless, fading when I realized he was serious. “Wait. Are you re-proposing while we’re flying over Redding, California?”

“I looked it up,” he said. “There’s no waiting period to get a marriage license in California, so we could go in and get it, then get married up at Blue Yonder.”

My throat went instantly thick. “You want to marry me?”

“I mean.” His amused gaze flickered down to the ring. “Yeah.”

I shook my head, flustered. “Right now, I mean. This week. There.”

“I can’t think of any other place I’d want to marry you more.” His voice was quiet, his expression warm and hopeful. “This is probably a good time to tell you that marrying you at Blue Yonder was always on my list.”

“It was on mine, too,” I said, my eyes stinging. We hadn’t started wedding planning at all, but suddenly I was desperate to marry him in the place where those first roots of love dug in between us. And I didn’t want to wait.

“Okay,” I whispered, and for the second time in two weeks I told him yes.

It came together quickly after we celebrated Penny’s day. Adam got Blue Yonder squared away for us—“The most equal payback of all time and it means you two are getting married? Hell fucking yes,” he exclaimed when we asked him to help. “But whose best man am I going to be?” And I learned that Eli had already asked his family to fly out, anticipating that I’d agree to his plan. Jamie, Grace, Blake, and I went shopping and I found an off-the-rack dress like it was fated for me, a strapless number with a sweetheart neckline that made Eli so speechless he stumbled over his vows. We put Adam in charge of music, asked Jamie and Blake to pick up a Costco sheet cake, and had Aunt Julia buy every flower at Trader Joe’s for the decorations.

And now we’re married.

Eli’s mouth softens against mine, pulls back until it’s just a graze. It’s a tease of things to come. His fingers flex into my waist and he breathes

against my lips, “How do we get rid of ev—”

“The Moras are making out!” comes a howl from the other side of the deck. “Let’s goooooooo!”

I look over to see Adam with his hands cupped around his mouth, as if he needs help projecting his voice. Everyone else is gathered around him— Cole wolf-whistling, Jamie yelling “ow-owwww”—and it’s a cacophony of applause and glass-clinking and joy, until it bleeds into a chant that surely echoes for miles: kiss, kiss, kiss.

“Oh my god,” I say over the noise, turning back to Eli. “This is ridiculous.”

“Absurd,” he agrees, but his happiness curves around the word and so it sounds like perfect instead.

“They’re not going to stop until we give them what they want.” I’m practically yelling now; it’s a mutiny.

Eli gazes down at me, so much love in his eyes that it almost shocks me, even though I see it all the time. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to seeing how obviously he belongs to me. How eager he is to show it to me every day.

“Well, then,” he says, and when he dips me, I swear my ears pop thanks to the jubilant, roaring cheer from the people who love us most. Who wanted this day as much as we did, and did everything to make it happen.

I’m still laughing when Eli says against my mouth, “We’d better give them what they want. I have plans for you.”

 

 

Much, much later, when pictures have been taken and dinner is done, when our euphoric dance party has broken up and everyone has gone home, Eli and I take a familiar path. The sky above us looks infinite, pitch black and sprinkled with stars. We wander past the cottage we’ll be sleeping in tonight—our cottage—and I kick my heels off, leaving them on the grass as we make our way to the edge of the pool. It shimmers under the moonlight, holds all of the memories we’ve had and the ones yet to come.

I only intend to dip my feet in for a quick cooldown, but when I look over at Eli, he’s grinning, that sharklike one.

“What do you think?” he asks, nodding his chin toward the water. “Wanna jump in?”

“What, like this?” I reply, sweeping my hand over my dress, hemmed in vineyard dirt, and his dove-gray dress pants and white dress shirt, tie and jacket long forgotten.

“Naked works, too,” he says silkily. “I’m going to get you there regardless.”

I hear the challenge in his voice and straighten, raising an eyebrow. “Are you asking me to rumble, Eli Mora?”

“Maybe I am, Georgia Mora.”

“Oh my god,” I laugh. “My name rhymes. I didn’t even think about that.”

“I like it,” he says, towing me into the circle of his arms. Now his smile is brilliant, the happiest I’ve ever seen it.

“Me, too,” I murmur, eyes stinging.

He brushes his lips against mine, a gentle touch that becomes something needier, and I exhale to slow down the moment. It’s a dream. Something real. A memory, but not yet. Something we’ll look back on in fifty years, or a hundred if Eli gets his way.

Finally, he pulls away, his gaze tracing over my face. His smile fades, but the happiness is still there. He feels this memory we’re inside of, just like I do. “What do you say? A rumble for old times’ sake?”

I grin. It’s old and new, a pattern we’ll repeat. “Let’s do it.” And then, hands clasped, we jump in.