father. My brother has forgiven him. My mother is in marriage counseling with him, and seems to have set his infidelities to the side. Today is a day for steps forward, and as the first strains of “Wedding March” herald my entrance, I answer my father with a nod and step forward with my arm through his.
The guests rise, some gasping when they see me framed in the arched entrance with my father, some teary-eyed like Ms. James and Kai, most smiling. It’s my mother’s face that almost makes my steady steps stumble. There is such pride in her eyes, like of all my accomplishments, marrying a good man—a man she didn’t necessarily see for me in the beginning but has come to respect—is my crowning achievement. When I consider what a failure her marriage has been in the past, how much pain my father has caused her, maybe me marrying for love, finding the true happiness I have with Grip is more than she knew to hope for.
Finally I allow myself to look at my groom. People always talk about that first glimpse the groom has of his bride, but no one ever mentions the first glimpse the bride has of her groom. They really should warn a bride about this. No one told me my heart would float up in my chest and hover in my throat, or that the tears would instantly gather at the corners of my eyes when I saw him.
Maybe no one else has ever had a groom like Grip.
I always think of his as the face of a king, one sketched with an artist’s skilled hands. A careful thumb smudged the sooty brows over dark eyes that see so much and can give so little away. The regal rise of bone in his cheek and the taut line of his jaw, the luxe lips generously drawn and precisely lined take my breath away. The closer I get, the more in focus his features become. I see the wedge of thick lashes, the softest thing in a face comprised of rugged planes and carefully hewn angles.
When he turns his head and our eyes meet on the threshold of forever, his jaw drops and he blinks quickly, like this first sight of me stuns him. The hours I spent searching for this dress when I should have been working were worth it. It’s not white or ivory, but the palest shade of blush ever to exist. It’s watercolor pink, so sheer a hue that it’s barely perceptible as color at all. It’s strapless, and the mermaid shape molds my curves, baring my shoulders, cupping my breasts, nipping at the waist, tapering down my hips and legs to flare just below my knees in wisps of organza as frothy as meringue.
When my father releases me to stand in front of Grip, I look up, uncovered and exposed for his inspection. Instead of a veil, I opted for a simple shoulder necklace, a string of Swarovski crystals clinging to a silver chain that drapes across my throat and collarbone, dips just shy of my cleavage and drips between my shoulder blades. Grip’s eyes wander over my face, his smile growing wider as he catalogues the details of my appearance. When he sees my shoulders, his smile falters and his eyes zip to mine, startled and awed. Along the top of one shoulder, following the narrow bone, is calligraphy sketched so delicately the letters look like flowers blooming on my skin, proclaiming that my heart broke loose on the wind.
He looks out into the audience until he finds Mateo, his friend who is the only one he trusts with his ink, and now the first person I’ve trusted with mine. Mateo gives him a wide grin and a thumbs-up. A slash of white teeth is Grip’s only answer before he turns back to me, and breaching the invisible wall between bride and groom, not asking for permission or waiting for the preacher to grant it, he touches me. His fingers trail along my shoulder, along the words Neruda penned decades ago brought to life on my skin. The words that, shared on a Ferris wheel high above the ground, unlocked a door between us that has never really closed. A smile widens on my face at the pleased look in his eyes, exactly the way I envisioned when I approached Mateo about the tattoo as a surprise. Keeping Grip away from me for the last two days so