Page 30 of Everywhere You Look

“We all match!” Mellie says, waving her bedazzled wrist around. In a second, Lemmie has joined in and the girls have found themselves in a very important game of popstar dress-up make-believe.

“Wow,” I whisper. “Dean, this is too much.”

“No way, corazón. It’s jewelry, and it’s not nearly enough. I don’t care what circumstances led us here. We got married today. I’m yours, you’re mine, and these kids are ours.”

Dean lifts Ollie from between his legs and kisses her cheek. She squeals and giggles and grabs his face with her chubby baby hands, squishing his cheeks while he laughs. Lemmie and Mellie look happier than I’ve seen them in months, sneaking bites of PB&J between posing for invisible paparazzi and showing off their bracelets.

My heart feels like it’s going to burst out of my chest. Fuck,Ifeel happier than I have in months. Since way before Gigi passed. Maybe since my injury took me out of the game last year. Tilting my head up to the sky, I blink back a few tears before looking back at Dean and placing my palm on his knee.

“Yours, mine, ours,” I say, and those three words feel more important than any of the vows we made this morning. Because this time, they came from my heart.

12

OUR VERY FIRST NIGHT

Dean

I sit on the edge of the couch with my head in my hands, rubbing my fingertips into my temples as the wax and wane of little girl shrieks pierce my eardrums. Lemmie and Mellie run around the ground floor of the house, chasing each other while competing with Ollie in her pack and play to see who can scream the loudest.

Spoiler alert: All three of them are winning.

“Alright, alright, you win. The churros were a terrible idea,” I groan, dropping my head between my knees. After dinner, Luke and I thought it would be nice to treat the kids to an ice cream cone as the cherry on top of our celebration.

It was nice, until I spotted a street vendor sellingfried confections on the walk home and decided that foot-long churros should be the cherry on top of the cherry on top. I have incidentally created two and a half sugar monsters that, at this rate, may never sleep again.

“What? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the cinnamon sugar dusted shrills,” Luke says as he plops down on the couch next to me and nudges my shoulder.

“I said you were right and I was wrong.” I drop my face into Luke’s shoulder, squeezing my eyes shut and willing the headache blooming behind my eyes to go away. We both changed out of our suits hours ago, and the worn, threadbare Redwoods t-shirt on Luke’s body feels cool and soft against my aching forehead.

“Twelve hours into this fake marriage and I already have you wrapped around my finger,” he says as he slides his arm around my shoulder and pulls me closer.

Oh, honey, you have no idea.

Something shifted for me this morning. I can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment—whether it was the vows or the kiss, giving Lemmie and Mellie their bracelets or the look of my ring on Luke’s finger. All I know is that there is nothing fake about the way I’ve been talking myself out of kissing Luke all day long.When I slid the ring on his finger, when I watched him clean applesauce off Ollie's face with a baby wipe, when Lemmie tripped on the sidewalk and scraped her knee and he sprinkled imaginary fairy healing dust on her head to make her stop crying.

Each one of those little moments made me think that all of this could be real.

Less than a day into this fake marriage and I’m already in too deep, willing to throw out the rulebook just for a chance to taste my husband’s lips again.

That just won’t do. We need to focus, we need to secure our kids and solidify our family in the eyes of the court. Until then, there can be no hanky-panky thoughts or actions.

Even if the floral, freshly laundered scent of Luke’s t-shirt has me aching to nuzzle in closer to his neck and inhale, just to see if his skin smells just as sweet.

“How do we make them stop?” I grumble, and I feel Luke’s shoulder rise and fall with his chuckle.

“Hey chickadees, first one to the couch gets to pick the movie we watch!” he calls out, and the girls come running. I feel them hop onto the couch and start bouncing on the cushions beside us. I don’t feel like moving my head from its place on his shoulder, but in my mind, I marvel at Luke for his intuitiveskills. He tapped into Lem and Mel’s competitive side and ensured they’d race to the couch knowing that it didn’t matter which one of them “won”. We’ll be watching Encanto either way.

God, I could kiss him for his brilliance.

“What was that?” Luke asks.

Shit, did I say that out loud?

“Nothing,” I grumble, peeling myself away from Luke and settling back into the couch. “Fire up the TV, let’s see if Tío Bruno can lull these monsters to sleep.”

Two hours later,my headache is gone, the family Madrigal’s magic has been restored, and all three kids are finally sound asleep. Luke put Ollie in her crib about halfway through the movie, and the twins fell asleep in a cuddle pile on the couch shortly after. With the precision of a bomb squad leader defusing something nuclear, Luke lifts the sleeping girls off the couch and I follow him upstairs, watching from the doorway as he settles them into bed.

A thought passes briefly through my mind—howeasily this could have been me in another life, tucking my kid into bed, but I shove it down. I don’t want to think about the past and the life I might have had.

---