Authors: Lauren Gilley
Jordan was shoveling in hash browns when she returned and took a seat beside him. “You’re being too nice to her,” he said between bites.
“I know,” she sighed. “But…”
“You’re too nice to everyone.”
She frowned as she tore her slice of toast in half, crumbs raining down on her plate. The first pale fingers of bluish sunlight made the butter look like glass. “Are you calling me a pushover?”
“No.” He reached for the ketchup bottle. “You’re just way out of my league is all.”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “Thanks…I guess.”
He didn’t react, though, watching his plate with comical earnest as he squeezed more ketchup onto his hash browns and stirred them. There was something, she realized, sitting heavy on his mind; the smooth, detached calm of his face warred with the hot sparks in his eyes.
“What are you thinking about that’s got you so serious all of a sudden?” she asked and popped a bite of toast into her mouth.
He flashed her a look that said he was thankful she’d picked up on his mood. “I realized something while I was running.”
Go on
, she said with a lift of her brows.
“Well.” He sucked in a deep breath and his fork hand went still. Whatever this was, he’d deemed it serious. “I don’t think it’s fair to ask you to live with me on faith.”
She swallowed, the toast going down like gravel. “What?”
“You shouldn’t have to put me up for the night and cook for me and…
be
with me just because we talked about when you graduate.” Her mind went to two nights before, to his chest pressed to her back and
can you wait till you graduate?
His eyes latched onto hers and went suddenly soft, softer than she’d ever seen them. “I won’t ask you to waste time on me.” His voice had gone soft too.
“Jordie - ”
“I think we should get married.”
Her heart stopped, and then stuttered to life again. “I’m-I’m sorry. I’ll need you to repeat that, because it sounded like you said - ”
“Marry me.”
Ellie put her hands over her mouth, suddenly afraid she might hyperventilate, and watched a killer smile slice across his face.
“I don’t have a ring, so you don’t have to get all ‘oh my God’ yet or anything.”
“I have a ring,” she said, hands slowly falling back to the table, her own disbelieving smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. It felt like the world fell silent, like everything went spinning away from them and left her with nothing but his face and the steam coming off their breakfast; the white-washed light of a winter morning, and the crazy thumping of her pulse. “My grandmother’s engagement ring. It’s in a box in my closet it…” She couldn’t say anything else, eyes suddenly stinging, throat closing up.
“Would you want to?”
She blinked hard. “When?”
“Soon, I think.”
“We couldn’t have a wedding.” She dabbed at her eyes. “My family…they would ruin it…we just couldn’t.”
“City Hall then.”
“Yes.”
“Yes to City Hall? Or - ”
“Yes to everything.”
They stared at one another a long, still moment. She didn’t think either of them breathed. Then they both scrambled up out of their chairs. Ellie tucked her face into the hollow of his throat when he wrapped her up in a tight hug. His sweatshirt had gone clammy as the sweat cooled but she didn’t care, fingers digging into the fabric. She felt his chin on top of her head, his fingers in her hair, and before Paige came downstairs and Nikki came trudging back into the kitchen to whine about the worst heartbreak in the world, Ellie pressed her eyes shut tight against tears and allowed herself the opportunity to live inside a moment, with a man, she hadn’t dared to dream about.
39
“
Y
eah. I guess I’d be quitting too if I had a man offering to pay my way in life,” Ellie’s manager said with a smirk that was only half humorous. “Never mind it’s only a week till Christmas or anything.”
Ellie pinned a sweet smile to her face with an effort. Jordan was not agreeing to “pay her way,” though that’s what it felt like. They’d discussed at length all the reasons he didn’t think she should keep her Angelo’s job: Paige’s baking was starting to lift off the ground and she needed help now more than ever. Between a house owned in full and her Hope scholarship, her expenses were minimal, and given Jordan’s salary and her insistence on graduating in three years, it just didn’t make sense for her to continue waitressing when her time was of more benefit elsewhere. Paige hadn’t been shy about pointing out that they talked in
we
s now, that they were a unit. It sent a happy chill through her to think about it. Or to glimpse her grandmother’s diamond sparkling on her left hand. Jordan had gone and sat with Abigail one afternoon, asking permission to have both Ellie and the ring. Her parents hadn’t been consulted.
“You know there’s a hundred other students waiting to fill my shoes,” Ellie said as she waited for her final paycheck.
“And they probably won’t run off and get married,” Helen quipped and pushed the check across her desk. Ellie folded it up and stowed it in her purse before it could be retracted.
“I’m not running off,” she amended lightly. “The courthouse doesn’t necessitate scandal.”
“I won’t miss your vocabulary,” Helen said with a sigh. “Alright.” She waved her toward the door. “Go get hitched.”
A tiny part of her regretted some phantom loss of independence as she left the back office of the pizza place one last time. She would still be making money with Paige. Jordan moving into the house with her wasn’t exactly the most masculine of comings together. She was by no means losing independence, but still…
A pang of sadness hit her as she stepped out into the parking lot, but she knew it would dissipate when she walked through the door at home and saw boxes of Jordan’s stuff lingering in corners and passed a hand over the marriage license he was supposed to have procured that day.
She’d entertained wedding fantasies as a little girl, but now, all she wanted was the union itself. Her parents would never consent to pay for anything except the wedding they deemed appropriate – which this wasn’t – and she couldn’t stomach the hoopla her mother and sister would generate. No…flowers and dances and fine china weren’t important. Being Ellie Walker was her vision now.
Jordan wasn’t home yet, but Paige was up to her elbows in piping bags and white fondant in the kitchen. Her hair was French braided and secured with a black ribbon silk screened with little skulls. Her black eye makeup was smudged, flour on her cheek. “Oh!” She jumped when Ellie stepped into the room. “You’re home.”
“That’s generally what ‘I’ll be home in a bit’ means.”
Paige scowled. “God, you’re even starting to
sound
like him. Makes me want to gag.”
She rolled her eyes and grinned. “Do you want some help?”
However outwardly different the two of them were, they had similar ideas when it came to decorating for Christmas. Garland full of colored twinkly lights had been draped across the tops of the cabinets to mirror the garland over the mantle in the living room. A miniature tree with tiny ornaments was tucked into the corner of the counter beside the mixer. The oversized, live tree in the front bay window of the living room had a sap and wilderness smell that permeated the entire house. Even if baking was an everyday occurrence, Christmas made it somehow special.
“Um…” Paige shoved a loose scrap of hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist and left flour behind. “I’m actually working on a special order.”
Offers to help were
never
refused. “I figured. Do you want a hand with it?”
“They want a round layer cake and three dozen chocolate cupcakes with white frosting.” She had a smooth stretch of white fondant rolled out on her cutting board and the piping bags were full of pink and green icing. The cake was three short layers of rich chocolate with white filling. “You could start on the cupcakes if you want. I was gonna add a couple teaspoons of espresso powder to the standard mix.”
“Okay.” Ellie retrieved a bowl from the stack beside the sink and began gathering ingredients into it. Her curiosity was piqued. “Who placed the order?”
“A bunch of girls throwing some kind of party,” she said with a shrug and draped the fondant over the cake.
“What kind of party?”
“I didn’t ask…what’s with the questions?”
Ellie set her supplies on a scant free foot of counter space and watched her friend smooth white over the cake like a culinary genius. She left socks everywhere and didn’t rinse dishes before she put them in the dishwasher; her temper and her mouth got her in trouble quite a lot. But when she really cared about something, she took her time and did it right. “Are you…” Paige’s blue eyes snapped over and Ellie didn’t want to ask the question, but felt she had to. “Okay with what’s happening? I know it’s fast, and I know you don’t want to have to share a bathroom with a boy - ”
Paige snorted.
“But are you…okay?” she repeated for lack of better phrasing.
There was a long pause as excess fondant was trimmed and Ellie began to regret her question. She didn’t want to be deluded with negative opinions the night before she was married. But Paige finally set her knife aside, wiped her hands on the front of her apron, and gave her a steady look. “You want me to be honest?”
“Of course.”
“El,” she sighed. “Except for his
huge
asshole moment, I haven’t seen you happier. I know you don’t
need
anyone, and I know you could totally kick cancer’s ass as a single working woman with no kids…but even if you never admit it, I know you want to have babies and write books and bake the best cookies any kindergarten class has ever tasted.” Ellie grinned and saw Paige twitch one too. “And you want someone to love you as much as you deserve. And trust me, girl, you deserve a lot. Does he love you that much? Does he know exactly what kind of awesome, sexy nerd you are?”
“Yes,” she said, and knew it was true, a hot blast of happiness radiating outward from her chest.
“Well, then.” Paige shrugged. “I guess I gotta get over shaving cream in the sink and his underwear on the floor.” She brightened, eyes widening. “Hey, next time we hear a weird noise in the basement, we can send him after it! That’s what husbands are for after all.
Husband
. Damn. That’s so weird to say.”
Ellie was beaming. “Thanks, Paigey.”
She shrugged it off and returned to her cake. “Don’t forget the espresso powder.”
“I won’t.”
**
“Mom, you have
got
to stop crying.”
“I’m trying,” Beth insisted, dabbing at her eyes. “But you’re the last of my babies to get married!”
“Yeah, Jordie,” Mike said from behind his chair and both his big hands slapped down onto Jordan’s shoulders and squeezed until his clavicles groaned. “You’re the last baby. Don’t ruin the moment.”
Jordan shook his brother off and got to his feet, full up to his eyeballs with planning. Delta and Jess and Jo were at the Walkers’ kitchen table with a whole stack of Delta’s wedding magazines, bookmarking pages and oohing and ahhing over all the little things that meant nothing to him, but would put a megawatt smile across his fiancée’s face. Beth was circling the table and pointing out things she liked over the girls’ shoulders, trying to suppress happy maternal tears. He had a marriage license in a folder in his Jeep and the whole thing was beginning to feel surreal. He wanted to go home, and was struck by the shock that “home” was now wherever Ellie was.
“Do I need to do anything else?” he asked the table at large.
Delta had assumed the role of head planner, and she was the one who answered. “No. We have everything under control.”
“She’ll die,” Jess assured.
“Does she suspect anything?” Jo asked.
“Probably, but she’s playing dumb if she does.”
“Don’t say that about your wife!” Beth scolded.
“She’s not…” He sighed. “Okay, thanks, girls. I’ll owe you all one.”
“Yes you will,” they chorused, and he wondered when exactly Delta had become one of the crew and one of his sisters.
He had a cigar on the patio with Dad, Tam and Mike, and endured marriage advice. It was dark when he pulled in at the Cape Cod. Ellie was in the kitchen helping Paige ice three batches of chocolate cupcakes alongside a white cake decorated with baby roses and edible pearls that she had no idea was for her.
“Hi!” she called as he came into the room. People always claimed that brides glowed, and he hadn’t ever noticed anything like that before, but Ellie was decidedly glowing, exuberance coming off her in shimmering waves.
“Hi.” He slipped an arm around her waist and dropped a kiss on top of her head. She smelled like confectioner’s sugar.
“Here.” She scooped a dollop of frosting out of the bowl with a finger and extended it up to him. “Try this.”
She hadn’t meant it in a suggestive way, which somehow made it sexier, and her eyes crinkled up and she laughed when he sucked it off her finger.
“Barf,” Paige groaned. “It’s bad enough you’re all love nesty; I’m not watching you lick frosting off each other.
Seriously
.”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
“Lemon?” he guessed.
“A hint.” She picked her piping bag back up – because he now knew what “piping bags” and “bunt pans” and all manner of kitchen implements were – and was leaning over her plate of cupcakes again when she turned back to him with a sudden start. “Did you get it?”
Jordan pulled the file folder out of the back waistband of his jeans and opened it with a flourish. He watched her lashes flicker as her eyes raced over all the tiny, legal print of their marriage license and her mouth curled up in a blinding smile.
“Wow,” she breathed. “This is happening.”
“Tomorrow, even,” he said and earned a smirk for it.
“El,” Paige sighed, “let me finish this. You go…” She made a face. “Do whatever it is you wanna do before you get married. Okay?”
“You just don’t like the way I go counterclockwise,” Ellie protested, but she set her bag down.
“True. I don’t like that.”
They hugged, and Jordan had a feeling he’d missed some sort of significant conversation between them while he was gone, for which he was glad, so long as Paige hadn’t ruined the surprise. He let Ellie lead the way out of the room, caught Paige’s attention, pointed to the cake, and gave her a thumbs up. She dipped in a mock bow.
So far, all the pieces were falling neatly into place, and for whatever reason, that left him anxious. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? If his family was any kind of example to go by, true love was fraught with secrets and scandals, castle weddings and drunken bar brawls. He supposed he’d been dealt his own hand of complications, but those were nothing when compared to how easy it was to plan the kind of wedding that would bring tears to Ellie’s eyes; to ask her to be his and mean forever.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe after all of Tam and Jo’s surface issues, loving each other was the easy part. Maybe Delta’s ruined castle wedding was what had turned her into the girl who’d hugged him and congratulated him that night. The problems, the challenges – those things were external. Maybe having a girl who loved him back made all the difference this time around. Maybe her Certainty was even stronger than his.