The Last

by Tawna Fenske

  The most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen is standing here holding my hands and watching me with so much love in her expression that I practically melt with it. I gaze into those clear blue eyes and know I’ve found what I’ve been searching for my whole life, even if I never knew it. Sarah, the woman I was made to love. We look at each other like we’re the only two people in the world.

  But there are actually two hundred people here at this wedding, including my colleagues at Wyeth Airways. Dana Peschka and her husband watch from the third row, while Walter and Trevor Williams beam at us from the other side of the aisle. There are no sides at this wedding. Just togetherness and celebration and love. Lots and lots of love.

  I sound like a cheesy Hallmark card or one of those romantic comedy movies Sarah loves, but it’s fucking true and I don’t care who knows.

  Sarah squeezes my hands, and I feel that chest-thumping urge washing over me again. God, she’s beautiful. Her dress is lacy and white, but not one of those big Cinderella numbers with the long caboose. It’s floaty around her ankles, but short enough to show off the sparkly beaded flip-flops that Junie made for her.

  “I love you,” I mouth to my bride.

  She grins back. “I love you, too.”

  “As you can all see,” my mother continues, jolting me back to the fact that there’s a wedding going on and I might want to pay attention since it’s mine. “The reason we’re all here today is that Sarah and Ian are madly, deeply, passionately in love.”

  A ripple of laughter moves through the crowd as my mom continues. “But it takes more than love to make a marriage work. It takes honor and commitment. It takes friendship and fondness. It takes respect and humor and a million other little ingredients that most people don’t think about when they enter into it with stars in their eyes and candy hearts on the brain. But some couples, if they’re very, very lucky, get time to think it all through. To really be certain this is what they want. And in the end, they reach the conclusion that life is better with the other person by their side.”

  Lucky.

  That’s exactly how I feel right now.

  Like the luckiest bastard in the entire world.

  “Ian and Sarah,” my mother continues. “The two of you have known each other for years, but you’ve known several different versions of one another. You’ve known the young, feckless, open-hearted young students. You’ve known each other as ambitious dreamers, as wary thirty-somethings, as friends, as confidants, as lovers, as companions. But today, you’ll know each other as something else.”

  Husband and wife.

  I mouth the words along with my mom, aware that they mean so much more to me now than they did a year ago. I owe that to the woman standing here with my ring on her finger in a pasture fringed with junipers and reindeer.

  My mother takes a deep breath and continues. “Before we get to the ceremony, Sarah and Ian would like to acknowledge someone who couldn’t be here with us today. Ian’s brother, Shane—” My mom’s voice quivers here, but she holds it together. “My son, our beautiful boy, is watching us from above, and even though his heart gave out before his time, I’m positive he’d be over-the-moon excited to know Ian has found a woman worthy of his heart.” My mom clears her throat. “Ready?”

  I expected this part of the ceremony to undo me, but it doesn’t. Not with Sarah’s hand in mine, giving me strength. She looks into my eyes and smiles.

  You okay?

  She doesn’t mouth the words, but I can hear them, and I nod as she hands her bouquet to my mom and we step to the little table that holds a blue candle. Blue, Shane’s favorite color, and my hands aren’t shaking at all as Sarah and I lift two small white candles to light it.

  A year ago I couldn’t have imagined doing this, but here I am with my heart in my throat and the woman of my dreams by my side.

  “Paying tribute to the past is something that matters a great deal to Ian and Sarah,” my mother continues. “Not only to their shared history with each other, but with their friends and families, and everything that’s shaped them to be the people they are today.”

  I set the candle down and let my hand slide over Sarah’s back. I feel the tiny, heart-shaped patch sewn on the back of her gown, and it gives me courage. It’s a scrap of cotton, a piece from one of Shane’s old T-shirts stitched into the fabric of her dress as something blue.

  God, I love this woman.

  Sarah catches my eye and smiles. We join hands and walk back to where my mother waits. We’ve opted not to have attendants, though we briefly considered having our cat, Chewy, serve as ring bearer.

  In the end, we decided to keep things small and manageable. All our friends and family are here—even my dad, who flew in from Italy.

  Sarah’s bouquet sends a flutter of lavender into the air as she takes it back from my mom and turns to me with her hair glowing in sunlit ripples.

  “Before we get to the vows,” my mother says, “Ian has something he’d like to read to Sarah.”

  My bride’s eyes widen. She wasn’t expecting this, and I’m thrilled I managed to weave a tiny thread of surprise into this carefully orchestrated event. I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out the tattered piece of paper. It’s creased and folded and faded with age, and I couldn’t believe when my mother found it in a stack of boxes stored in her attic.

  “I thought you might like to have this now,” she told me as she pressed it into my palm after a visit to Shane’s grave. “It’s finally time.”

  It is, and my hands aren’t shaking at all as I unfold the blue-lined page. “Sarah,” I begin, marveling at how little my handwriting has changed in ten years. “The semester is almost over, which means I’m running out of time to say something I’ve wanted to say since the first day we met. Since that moment last year when I walked into Econ and saw you there in your yellow sweater and I thought, ‘there’s the woman I’m going to marry.’”

  Sarah gasps and draws her hands to her mouth. Her eyes are wide and glittery with emotion, and I feel my own throat tightening. I swallow and keep going, determined to power through.

  “We’ve been best friends for almost two years now,” I continue, hopeful the audience is following along. That they’ve realized they’re witnessing a flashback of sorts, this note I’d planned to read to Sarah so long ago. “But you are so much more to me than a friend. You’re my study partner. My muse. My confidant. You’re the first person I want to talk to when I wake up in the morning, and the last person I want to talk to before I go to bed. You’re the one who makes me laugh hardest, and the person I know will be there for me if I ever do something unmanly like cry.”

  The audience chuckles, but I keep my eyes on Sarah. Unshed tears sting the edges of my eyelids, but I’m not embarrassed. It’s the first time I’m letting her see me like this, and I wonder why the hell I was so afraid. This is the easiest thing in the world, trusting someone you love with the brittle bones of your heart.

  “Sarah, I love you.” My voice cracks, and I refold the crinkled paper. I know the rest by heart. “I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love someone, and I want you to be mine.”

  I tuck the paper back into my pocket as a tear rolls down her cheek. Swiping it away, I take her hands in mine again, and she squeezes them so hard my fingertips turn white.

  “All of that’s true,” I continue, “but it’s not the whole truth. Back then, I was young and hopeful and naive and I didn’t have a clue what love really was.” I smile into her eyes, fingers tingling where they connect with hers. “But I know now. Thanks to you, I know exactly what love is.”

  “Ian, my God.” Her words are half sob, half laugh, and wholeheartedly human. “I love you so much.”

  I know it’s not time yet, but I pull her into my arms and hold her tight. Her heartbeat thuds against mine, and I stand there with my arms around her and a big, stupid smile on my face.

  “Yes,” Sarah sniffles. Her words are muffled by the front of my jacket, and she draws
back to meet my eyes. “Yes, I’m yours,” she says again with a smile that could power a shopping mall. “Forever and ever. I do. Wait, am I supposed to say that yet?”

  She turns to my mom, who is openly sobbing. I fish into my pocket and pull out matching handkerchiefs that I hand over to each of the women I love. They dab at their eyes while I wipe mine with the sleeve of my jacket.

  We’re not the only ones getting emotional. The audience ripples with sniffles and joyful whispers and a smattering of laughter. My buddy Ryan is in the front row with his little girl on his lap and his pretty, pregnant wife beside him. On the opposite side are the couples who make up the cornerstones of my new life with Sarah—Lisa and Dax, Cassie and Simon, Missy and Parker. All of them are smiling at us, reminding me what’s possible. What we’re all capable of.

  At the end of the row, in a seat of honor, is Junie. She’s smiling bigger than anyone, her fingers laced with those of her boyfriend, Aidan. They got together a week after our gym date, and they’ve been inseparable ever since.

  I look back at my mother, who dabs her eyes one more time with the folded handkerchief. “There’s no way I can top that, so I won’t try,” she says. “Sarah, do you take Ian to be your lawfully wedded husband? To love, honor, cherish—”

  “Absolutely.” My bride is nodding before my mom gets out the rest of the words about sickness and health and all that stuff we’ve been through before and will undoubtedly go through again. Whatever it is, we can handle it.

  I know that now.

  “And Ian, do you take Sarah—”

  “I do.”

  The audience laughs at our impatience, but I don’t care. We’ve waited for years for this moment. Forever, it seems like.

  I’m ready now.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife,” my mother says. “You may kiss the bride.”

  I do. As my lips find Sarah’s and her fingers slide around the base of my neck, I kiss her like I’ve never kissed her before. Like I plan to kiss her forever. Like I plan to spend the rest of my life loving her so fiercely I’m consumed by it.

  Because I do.

  And I finally can.

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  Acknowledgments

  Much love and gratitude to all my readers who couldn’t get enough of the characters they met in The List and The Test and wrote to me asking when they’d get to read Sarah’s story. Thank you for following the series and for loving these stories like I do.

  Huge thanks to Linda Grimes for all the early reads and moral support. When do I get your next book?!?!

  Thank you to Meah Meow and my entire street team, Fenske’s Frisky Posse. I love you for your boundless support, endless enthusiasm, and great racks. I’m especially grateful to those of you who lent me your names for characters in this book. You know who you are!

  As always, I’m so thankful for Michelle Wolfson of Wolfson Literary Agency for being an awesome agent, champion cheerleader, and bodacious business partner (not to mention your terrific tolerance of my lame-ass attempts at alliteration).

  Thanks bunches to Liz Pelletier of Entangled Publishing and to the entire Entangled team for all your hard work making my books the best they can be and getting them out to the masses. I’m grateful to Jessica Turner, Melanie Smith, Heather Riccio, Hannah Lindsey, Debbie Suzuki, Curtis Svehlak, Riki Cleveland, and anyone else on the Entangled team who I might have inadvertently forgotten here. Love you guys!

  Endless thanks to my family for all the love, support, and laughter over the years. Dixie and David; Russ and Carlie; Cedar and Violet—I couldn’t do this without you.

  And thank you to Craig Zagurski for putting up with my 3 a.m. hot-flash-induced brainstorming moments and my neurotic need to plot every last detail of our life together so it can fit around my writing schedule. I love you, Hottie. Thanks for being mine.

  About the Author

  When Tawna Fenske finished her English lit degree at twenty-two, she celebrated by filling a giant trash bag full of romance novels and dragging it everywhere until she’d read them all. Now she’s a RITA-nominated, USA Today bestselling author who writes humorous fiction, risqué romance, and heartwarming love stories with a quirky twist. Publishers Weekly has praised Tawna’s offbeat romances with multiple starred reviews and noted, “There’s something wonderfully relaxing about being immersed in a story filled with over-the-top characters in undeniably relatable situations. Heartache and humor go hand in hand.”

  Tawna lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, stepkids, and a menagerie of ill-behaved pets. She loves hiking, snowshoeing, standup paddleboarding, and inventing excuses to sip wine on her back porch. She can peel a banana with her toes and loses an average of twenty pairs of eyeglasses per year. To find out more about Tawna and her books, visit www.tawnafenske.com.

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  The Test

  The Fix Up

  The Hang Up

  The Hook Up

  Marine for Hire

  Fiancée for Hire

  Best Man for Hire

  Protector for Hire

  Eat, Play, Lust

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