Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
“From me.” I cross the room and sit behind her on the rug, my back against the couch, her shoulders easing into my chest like they remember the space. “Open it.”
Inside is a framed photo—grainy, printed from my phone. A beach morning. She’s laughing into the wind with one hand on her belly and the other holding up her ring, sunlight throwing sparks off the band. I had the word burned into the frame, small and plain: beauty.
Her breath catches. She doesn’t say anything for a long second. Then she turns and climbs into my lap the way you do when a dam inside you breaks in the cleanest way. “You’re going to ruin my mascara,” she mutters against my throat.
“Occupational hazard,” I mutter, kissing the top of her head.
We sit like that until the coffee goes lukewarm and the house fills with that particular quiet that only comes after laughter. She finally pulls away and leans the frame on the mantel, centered between a seashell we found and a photo of my old man grinning like he invented sunrise while holding my mom close against him.
“When did you do that?” she asks.
“Yesterday. Had Red run it to the frame shop while I pretended I was very busy with extremely important club things.”
“Criminal mastermind,” she teases. Then her face goes soft in that way I’m still learning to trust: the way that says I’m still here. “Tommy?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“For?”
“Forever,” she states, so simply it empties my lungs. “We keep saying it. Let’s choose it. Now.”
My heart drops and then lifts like a bike cresting the perfect hill. “You’re sure? We can do the courthouse. The beach. The clubhouse. Hell, I’ll marry you at the Waffle House if that’s where you want to be when forever starts.”
She laughs, wiping her eyes. “Backyard,” she says. “Our backyard. One week from today. Simple. Our people. Vows we actually mean.”
“Deal,” I reply, because I am ready. “I’ll make calls.”
“And I’ll… figure out how to be a bride without getting hives.”
“You already are,” I say. “No dress required. But get one if you want because I don’t know that I can manage the vows if you’re in front of me naked.”
She sighs like a woman who’s learning that joy takes up space and she’s allowed to take it. “Okay. One week.”
One week isn’t a lot of time to plan a wedding. One week isn’t any time at all if you’re the kind of person who wants calligraphed place cards and rented chandeliers. But we’ve never been those people. We’re the ‘call the people who show up and let the rest fall where it may’ people.
Turns out, when you love a club, the club loves you back loud.
The week becomes a blur.
BW, on my porch, measuring distances with his eyes. “You want the arbor there. Light comes through that gap right as the sun drops.” He draws a quick map on a napkin like a battlefield schematic and then texts Doll. Fifteen minutes later, she sends a photo of an immaculate boho arch she “happened to have in a storage unit.” She also sends twelve exclamation points and a string of hearts.
Kylee, my brother Red’s ol’ lady and Kristin who is with Pretty Boy arrive with clipboards, a smile, and the kind of energy that turns chaos into choreography. “Let me be useful,” Kylee says, and I’m smart enough not to argue. Suddenly there are chairs being borrowed from everywhere—clubhouse, church, neighbors who think love is a holiday and loan chairs accordingly.
Pretty Boy volunteers lighting because of course he does. The man can wire a stage by instinct. That night my backyard glows with a hundred little bulbs strung from the big oak to the fence line, as if the stars forgot their job and gave it to us for a while.
Crunch shows up with plywood and paint. “I’m making a sign,” he explains, unapologetic. By sundown he’s propped a board by the gate that reads in big, brushed letters:
From Brutal to Beauty — J + T
He doesn’t look at me when I see it, he just cups the back of my head the way big brothers do when the thing they’re giving you is too soft to look at openly.
Jenni and Jami vanish for an afternoon and come back smelling like a florist shop and a bag from dress boutique. I don’t see the dress because I like having reasons to forget how to speak, but I see the way Jami floats around the kitchen afterward, fingertips grazing the counter like life somehow finally fits her skin. That’s all I need to know.
Tripp handles permits we don’t strictly need and asks favors in the polite, threatening way presidents do when they want no trouble from neighbors who forget we pay their bills with our construction jobs. The man puts his name on anything that might cost us stress and tells me my only job is to breathe and not run.