“Sure I haven’t,” Nana said. “That’s exactly right. I’ve never been there. And I’ve never gone under the name Eva St. James while in Des Moines in 1958, either, so don’t you worry about that.”
“This is pretty much normal for this family,” Darren told Jenny. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You’re part of this family,” Mom said, patting him on the arm. “You’re welcome.”
Darren looked inordinately pleased at that.
“Vince gets to go first,” I muttered. “Because he cheats.”
“Don’t hate the player,” Vince said. “Hate the game.”
“Maybe we should proceed?” Jenny asked.
“Right,” Vince said, and suddenly, he was nervous again, which made me nervous again. He bit his bottom lip and looked down between us for a moment. He breathed in, held it, and then breathed out again before he looked back up at me.
He said, “For a long time, I felt alone. My, uh. My parents were… well. They were focused on other things. They had people depending on them. They had important jobs. They had priorities. And I—I wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t a priority. I wasn’t anyone’s priority.”
He shook his head and reached out for me again. I grabbed his hands and squeezed his fingers tightly. “So for a long time, I felt alone. I had friends. Good friends, even. But it still felt like I was missing something. Something that I could… I don’t know. Something that I could call my own. Something that I could point out and say that’s mine.
“Mom died, and at the end, before she passed, she told me she was sorry. That she wished she could have been more to me. That she could have done more for me. And I might have hated her for it, might have thought it was too little too late, but I didn’t. I didn’t think that because the week before, I’d met a man named Paul Auster and had fallen in love.”
He laughed quietly to himself. “I knew. From that moment I first saw you. I knew that you were going to change everything. I didn’t know why. I just knew I needed to know your name, and that once I knew that, then I could get to know you. And once I did that, then everything would be okay. And so I did. I learned your name, Paul. I followed you around. You were exasperated by me, you were annoyed with me. And I just wanted to know everything about you. Darren told me I was being stupid about it. That I would scare you off, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be by your side as much as I could.” He shrugged, and I saw his determined expression stutter for a moment. “You were… God, you were this person, this snarky, sarcastic person who was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. And the more I got to know, the more I wanted it for good.
“I’ve been told we fell too fast. That it wasn’t normal. That it wasn’t realistic. That it wouldn’t last. But I don’t care what those people say, because they don’t know you like I do
. They don’t know how you look in the morning when your hair sticks up in different directions. They don’t know that you call pineapple on pizza an affront to all that’s holy. They don’t know that even though I might not be the smartest person in the world, that you don’t treat me like I’m stupid. They can see you, they can see the sarcasm. They can see your sass. But I don’t think they can see your heart, your perfect, fierce heart like I can.”
He chuckled wetly, somehow still in control. “I didn’t have much. I didn’t have a big family I could call my own. I didn’t have people that were my people.” He looked around at the people who stood with us, before turning back to me and taking another breath. “Until you. Paul, until you, I didn’t know what it meant to have a mom and a dad. To have a Nana. I had a brother, but I didn’t have someone who could be my brother and my sister. I didn’t have a Daddy. I didn’t have a queen who loves you almost as much as I do. I didn’t have any of those things, until you. Because you gave them to me, Paul, just as surely as you gave me yourself, and I promise you, with all that I am, that I will protect them, that I will love them, that I will care for them. And I promise you, Paul, that I will love you forever, okay? I just wanna love you forever. That’s all I ever wanted, and this is real, okay? I promise you it’s real. We’re gonna be good. I know it. We’re gonna be so, so good. I’ll make sure of it. Because until you, I didn’t have a home. And now I do. So. That’s… good. Um. That’s it. That’s all I had to say.”
I gaped at him.
He gave me a wobbly smile.
Jenny said, “Paul, would you like to—”
I promptly burst into tears. “You fucking asshole!” I shouted at him.
The crowd gasped.
“Oh no,” Sandy moaned, voice thick and wet.
“Yes!” he crowed, dropping my hand so he could fist pump like he was Judd Fucking Nelson. “Suck it! I won! I knew I would get you!”
“You’re crying too!”
“Well, yeah,” he said as his voice broke, and it knocked the breath from my chest. He reached up and wiped his eyes. “I love you, Paul. We’re getting married. This is the best day of my life. Of course I’m crying.”
I don’t think I can be blamed for tackling him then.
He laughed as we went down off the raised altar onto the grass, landing with a jarring crash.
Our guests gasped again, like the drama queens they were. They acted like they’d never been to a gay wedding before where one groom launched himself at the other groom. Amateurs.
I was straddling Vince, and his hands were resting on my thighs, and the tears were falling freely now. “I’m going to marry the shit out of you,” I told him. “You have no idea.”
“I think I have some idea,” he said.
“I can’t beat what you said, because that was some damn fine English if I do say so myself.”