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)
I think about running exactly zero times.
At night, when the planning quiets, Jami and I lie on the porch couch under a blanket that smells like every ride we ever took. We talk about vows. What to say, what not to promise. She wants to keep it real. No fairy tale, no lies. I want the same, but in my head “real” is a four-letter word that’s plain and simple. We land on something in the middle: promises you make with your boots on.
“You’re going to cry,” she warns me at least twice.
I tell her she’s projecting. She says we’ll see. We both laugh.
Every morning she marks another X on the calendar with a little heart in the corner. Every mark looks less like counting down and more like gearing up.
Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I take the old lawn mower out back and pretend the stripes matter. They don’t. What matters is the way the air smells at five p.m. when the sun turns our fence into a line of gold. What matters is the sound she makes when she tries on those little white sandals and decides bare feet are braver.
The day arrives like it’s been coming our whole lives.
I wake before the alarm. The sky is a brilliant mix of color. The house is still. For a minute I just listen to the quiet and memorize it. If peace had a sound, it would be this: soft breath through a doorway you’re not afraid to open.
Jami’s in the kitchen already when I get there, hair braided, a robe tied loose around her. She’s holding the sonogram in one hand and my coffee mug in the other like both are sacred.
“Nervous?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “You?”
“Like I’m about to jump off a cliff with my eyes open.”
She smiles. “That’s your kink.”
“Only when the cliff’s you.”
She rolls her eyes and kisses my cheek, then shoves me toward the hall. “Go shower. You missed a spot shaving.”
By noon the backyard is a small, temporary village. Chairs face the oak tree, ribbons flicker, lights nap lazy between branches waiting to glow. There’s a table along the fence line with iced tea, lemonade, and a bottle of sparkling water for the post-ceremony toasts. Doll’s at the center of it all like a queen bee directing traffic. She looks at me when I step outside and claps her hands once.
“Well look at you,” she takes note. “Thomas Oleander in a suit. Somebody call Tonka to read me my last rights because certainly I’m getting ready to go to Heaven. You wouldn’t even wear a suit for your Mom and I when we offered to pay you to do it for the damn prom.”
“It’s dress pants and a white shirt, Doll,” I say. “Don’t get dramatic.”
She grins. “Honey, it’s me. I’m gonna be dramatic.”
Sass hugs me and smooths a nonexistent wrinkle with the air of a mother who has helped all her boys survive big days without fainting. “You’re ready,” she whispers. “This feels like a good ending and a better beginning.”
“It is,” I say, and the words lodge in my throat.
The brothers filter in—Red, Crunch, Pretty Boy, Dad and Mom, and all the Haywood’s Landing Hellions. Even some of the clubs ride in from other parts of the state. The women settle, the music finds a volume that makes hearts swing but neighbors forget to complain.
Then the gate opens and Jenni walks through in a black dress, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. She points two fingers at her own eyes and then at mine. She will always be watching me. Behind her, Crunch offers an arm like she’s royalty. She will always be his queen.
And then—
Jami.
Barefoot in the grass, red dress instead of white that moves like it remembers the ocean, hair braided with little white wildflowers that look like they grew just to prove grace is possible. She looks terrified and brave and happy and stunned, which is to say she looks like herself.
I forget to breathe until she reaches me. Somewhere in the blur I take her hands. They’re warm and shaking and so are mine.
Tonka, the club chaplain, retired Navy Chaplain, steps up between us with a little black book he didn’t need to bring. “No one here requires ceremony to know what this is,” he begins, voice pitched for the small crowd, the large sky. “But there’s something right about words that stand in front of witnesses. So we say what we mean. And we put it in the air together. That’s family. That’s how the Hellions ride.”
He nods to me. My turn.
I swallow. The paper in my pocket feels dumb. I don’t want clean spoken lines. I want the truth direct from me to her.
“Jami,” I begin, and my voice finds me. “You know most of this, because you lived it. But I’ll say it out loud for the folks and the wind. I loved you before I knew where to put the word. I loved you in rooms I couldn’t get through and I’ll carry you out of doors I swore were locked. I loved you when the light hit you wrong and when the dark wouldn’t leave. I love you sober and scared and laughing and loud. I love you then, now, and forever, Tiny.”