Page 74 of A Storybook Wedding

CJ watches me with those beautiful wonder-filled eyes of hers, and I drag her away from the computer and back to the bed with a small black box in my hand. It has a red ribbon around it. I sit her down and hand it to her.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“This is your birthday gift. I hope you like it,” I reply. My stomach dips, as it might if I were on a roller coaster.

“But you just gave me a gift a few days ago.”

“I know. That was for Christmas. It’s not my fault your birthday and Christmas are in such close proximity to each other.”

She smiles, looking from the box to my face and down at the box again. “It looks like jewelry.”

“Why don’t you open it and find out?”

CJ nods. Her grin alone is worth the money I spent on this. She unties the ribbon and flips open the box. Inside, there’s a wedding band with a dozen diamond chips across the top of it.

She gasps. “Holy shit. Is this real?”

“It’s white gold and diamonds. I got it in town. I hope you like it. I just didn’t want you to have to suffer forever, walking around with your ex-boyfriend’s promise ring on your left hand while your sister incubates his litter of babies. Something about that didn’t feel fair. You shouldn’t have to endure the emotional turmoil of remembering how much Bryce hurt you every time you look down at your fingers.”

“Pen,” she says. Her voice is soft, and it sings the nickname sweetly. “This is too much.”

“It’s really not,” I reply. “When you think about everything you’ve done for me…” My voice trails off.

She looks up from the box into my eyes. Her face gets all scrunchy, and she says, “This is the sweetest, most considerate, most—”

“Good,” I say, cutting her off. “I’m glad you like it.”

“I love it. It’s beautiful.”

“Can I put it on you?”

“Of course.” She hands me the box, and I take out the ring as she all but rips the old one off her finger. I replace it with my ring, a wedding band for my newly minted girlfriend. The idea of it makes me laugh. This would make one hell of a story, I think.

All of a sudden, the lights go on.

“Oh, thank God!” CJ squeals. She peers out the window and points to a truck that reads Block Island Power along its side. “That was fast by New York City standards.”

“Shit. No wonder we lost power.” I nod with my chin. “Look over there,” I say, pointing at an ash tree that had split in half, pulling wires down around it. “That tree must have knocked out the grid. I guess from the wind.”

“Sheesh,” CJ says. “Hopefully no one was hurt.”

“Bad news travels fast. I’m sure we would have heard if it got somebody.”

“Well, thank goodness the electric is working again,” she says. “Now you can join me in the shower.”

I don’t need convincing. My grin says it all.

One hour and two very satisfying orgasms later (one for each of us), CJ and I are in the dining room, warming our hands on fresh mugs of coffee.

“The charcuterie boards weren’t going to keep, so we had no choice but to put them out,” Alice Devereaux explains. “I mean, it was such a night.” She’s all wound up with the excitement of regaling anyone who will listen with stories from the party that almost wasn’t. “It’ll definitely go down in the history books, that’s for sure.”

Dillon picks at his oatmeal. “Good thing board games can be played by candlelight,” he says.

“It’s really a shame you two couldn’t make it,” Devereaux says to me and CJ.

I give CJ a knowing look, but she says, “I know! I was just wiped from the day. Residency takes a lot out of me.”

“And now it’s the new year,” Devereaux continues. “So I take it your queries went out, right?”

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