And for two years, that’s exactly what I do.
Until the day Evie graduates and answers the question I’ve been almost afraid to ask. “I’ve already packed my things,” she says. “And lined up three interviews for art therapy positions in Portland. So…when do we leave?”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “If you want to stay in the city, I—”
“I want to be with you,” she cuts in, her eyes shining with conviction and that fierce, unwavering love I hope I never take for granted. “All the time. From when I wake up in the morning to when we go to sleep at night and as many minutes as I can beg, borrow, or steal in between.”
“I’m never going to make you beg, baby,” I promise.
And I keep my word, right up until the night she tells me she’s off her birth control and begs me to start trying for a baby. To which I say, “After we’re married.”
“Tomorrow?” she asks, a mischievous light in her eyes. “Courthouse? You and me?”
“It’s a date,” I promise.
It ends up taking three days—there’s a mandatory waiting period after we get our license—but on the Friday before the Stanley Cup finals, we’re saying our “I do’s” at a rooftop restaurant, surrounded by my new friends from the team, their wives and girlfriends, and the ladies from Evie’s art therapy practice, who have miraculously transformed the space with hundreds of paper flowers.
Early the next week, I help lead the Badgers to victory and land the first Cup title of my career. Against the Ice Possums, no less.
After a management shakeup and some well-timed trades, the Possums eventually got out of their slump and became a team to be reckoned with. But they still wouldn’t be the team for me, even if I’d stayed. We just didn’t have the right chemistry.
But my new team? Well, we kicked ass, took names, and shook Possum hands with grace in our victory.
And I’m so damned happy about that, but not nearly as happy as I am that the little blonde running to hug me at the edge of the ice after the final game is now my wife.
My heart. My everything.
And she always will be, no matter where our adventures takes us next.