Page 122 of For Pleasure Or Worse

I joined my sisters and Phee back at the table to watch the reward of our hard-won scavenger hunt with a front-row seat. The music sparked to life, playing the first few jazzy notes of a classic Beyoncé song.

“Don’t blink, ladies,” I said.

My chest swelled with nervous, excited anxiety, the overwhelming kind that felt like adrenaline but wasn’t quite. Cellphones around the room were lifted and recording, and our photographer was zeroing in on the dance floor.

Someone, somewhere, was fighting with their significant other to hold open a door for them. Mine was dance battling against his military buddies like the Wayans brothers in wigs in front of two hundred people to see me crack a smile.

And theyreallyfucking did that.

Or something vaguely reminiscent of that. They might not have synchronized at any given point during the entire thing, and I was pretty sure the threads holding Tyler Swan’s pants together split while he was trying to do a flip that would feel like a train hit him in the morning, but the comedic timing was worth every muscle ache and back spasm. Sam committingto breakdancing after a few too many liquor drinks and a filet mignon dinner was really the cherry on top, proving all the expected effort was there.

It would have been tragic if we’d lost the bet, based solely on the fact that there was nothing we could recreate that would top watching my brother-in-law erotically slap his own ass in front of his grandmother.

We were on our feet applauding them, making it metaphorically rain, and when the music hit its final beat Mateo looked right at me with my favorite smile, a crinkle of happiness creasing his eyes, and blew me a kiss.

It felt like a lie now every single time I said it, but I had never loved him more than I did in that moment.

Mateo ledme to a small round table at the far edge of the reception space where our wedding cake was on display. Just beyond it, the floor let off into the sand and a small private beach. Waves broke gently onto the shore, illuminated by the string lights hanging off the trees. You could see every star in the sky, each blinking light of a passing plane, the full, spectacular moon. All the noise around us dulled.

“Was it everything you ever wanted?” he asked.

What a loaded question. This day? Our week? The last six months? Or maybe the past year and a half of my life that was like something out of a storybook? Not the Disney kind, the kind you had to ask the bookstore clerk about without looking them in the eyes. Still storybook, technically.

With any of those, though, my real answer would be, no, it wasn’t. It was nothing like what I wanted when I was sixteen, or eighteen. Definitely not at twenty-two, or even at twenty-five.Because I hadn’t known what I wanted until it happened exactly the way it did. I hadn’t known I wantedhardlove. The kind you worked at and fought for. The kind that made you question why you ever settled for anything less than it before, and made sure you never settled for it again. We were two completely flawed people, and that hadn’t magically ended when we met. We just learned how to love each other through those things. Not in lieu of them.

Everything I’d ever wanted was standing in front of me.

“It was more than that,” I told him. “Even after the hair, and the sculpture, because it wouldn’t have beenusif everything went right. Too boring.”

“Entirely.” Matty picked the long knife up off the table and the soft white linen napkin it was wrapped in. Two little people embraced on the top of the two-tiered, marbled buttercream cake.

It was bittersweet, watching it all come to an end after the roller coaster ride to get here. One day went by in the snap of a finger after what felt like years of work, and tomorrow we’d go back home and continue life as just the two of us. The quiet solitude was already creeping in like the Sunday scaries. As ready as I was to resume our life and be able to enjoy one another fully, I could feel myself already mourning this unique time in our lives that we’d never experience again. As if it was a time capsule we’d been filling and now it was time to bury it.

I was somehow nostalgic for the present.

That would change. I knew the feeling would wash away, because our future was already building its blocks in front of us. Anna and David would be living down the road, and all the wheels were in motion for Angelo to join us when the time was right. There was a brightness ahead making up for lost time with my family, and turning the house Mateo and I lived in into ourhome. We had clients to make magic for, ideas to see through, dreams to bring to life.

The possibilities were an endless, invigorating blank slate, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

“We did it,” I said. “Butt naked and screaming, but we did it.”

“Don’t get me hard while I’m cutting the cake, Tal. Everybody’s looking at us.”

My mouth twisted into a grin, and I put my hand over Mateo’s on the knife as he guided it to the cake and made the first cut while our closest friends and family gathered watching. He swiped a dollop of icing onto his finger and held it out in front of my lips for a taste.

“Didn’t you just say not to get you hard?” I murmured. He plopped the buttercream onto the tip of my nose with a deep chuckle and dark eyes challenging me, and his perfect teeth split into a full, breathtaking smile. The sweet smell of sugar wafted through over me. “You don’t know what you started.”

I swept some more icing off the top of the cake and dabbed it onto Matty’s nose, smearing it down and across his cheek. He gasped, breathy and amused, and tried to wipe it off but got even more of it on the sleeves of his dress shirt instead. “Oh, come here, baby. Give me a kiss.”

Mateo caught me by the wrist when I turned to dodge him and planted his lips smack onto mine, rubbing his nose and his cheek across my face in a messy waterfall of kisses. I reached out blindly and took a handful of the cake and smashed it into his hair, giggling like a maniac. He grunted out a complaint though I felt his smile against my skin, and a moment later there was another generous helping of our delicious and expensive wedding cake being rubbed into my face and neck.

“Man, you look good enough to eat,” he joked, running his lips down my neck and licking icing off my chest until I was laughing so hard I could cry.

“Tally, your dress!” Phee called out. She was smiling and laughing, too, hanging onto the moment like a thread the same way I would if it were her and Frankie. The front of my dress was covered in cake and getting more ruined by the second and I threw my hands up, too happy to care.

“We can wash it off,” Mateo suggested. “I could use a bath, too.” There was mischief in his expression, a light in his pupils that only sparked that way when he was about to get himself into trouble. I recognized it and took two steps onto the sand, back out of his reach, but it was too late already. He came after me with a wicked smile dimpling his face.

I shrieked and turned, running in the opposite direction, as if I could somehow outlast him in a race, and it took no time at all for my husband’s strong, tight arms to wrap around me and lift me straight off the ground and over his shoulder, headed toward the waves.

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