by JA Huss
Marco elbows me, muttering something in Italian I can only assume is probably along the lines of, Your woman is sexy hot and I bet the lingerie she’s wearing underneath is gonna blow your mind , but I can’t even shoot him a disapproving glare, because he’s right.
My bride is sexy hot.
And no, the man whose arm she’s holding onto as she walks isn’t her father. And none of these people here are our people—but in this moment I do not care.
Emma.
Emma is the only thing on my mind.
I want this woman by my side right now. I want her next to me for the rest of my life. I want her in sickness and in health. I’ll take all the bad with the good. I want to love and cherish her so hard, she will forget the thirteen years we spent apart and only think of the ones we spent together.
Her veil only covers her eyes. It’s a very tasteful, very understated veil. But the best thing about that veil is that as I watch her walk towards me—as I see her suddenly realize that this is it, we really are gonna make it all the way through this ceremony—I catch her checking me out. I catch her eyes wandering down my body, then back up to meet my gaze again.
She smiles and bites her lip.
And man, that little lip-biting thing? Yeah. I’m gonna picture that every time I make love to her for the rest of my life.
My stomach flips with excitement once they reach the steps and all I want to do is rush down those steps and pull her into my arms.
But I wait.
I force myself to stand still and wait as her fake father pauses to look lovingly at her—nice touch, fake father-in-law—and then she ascends towards me.
Emma’s eyes find mine as she slowly approaches the altar. And then she shrugs up her shoulders as if a tingle went up her body.
God, I love her. I love her so much. And even though I still have regrets about missing out on all those years when we were apart, I know—I just feel it in my heart—that this is just the beginning for us. We have so much to look forward to. And pretty soon none of those missing years will matter anymore. We’ll be too busy making new memories to even think about the ones we never had.
When they reach the top her fake father stops just a step away from me, turns to Emma, and lifts her small veil up and says something low and soft in Italian.
Emma nods her head at him and murmurs, “Thank you.”
Then she turns to me. I reach for her and she takes my hand, stepping forward to stand next to me as we both face each other in front of this chapel filled with people.
It’s only then that we realize… the priest is speaking in Italian.
Both of us giggle. Fuck it, right?
What did we really expect? And surely, this day could not get any weirder.
We hold hands as he speaks, probably saying all the usual things. Marriage is serious. Marriage is a lifelong commitment. Marriage is sacred.
Yes. I agree to all those things.
I hold Emma’s hands in mine as the ceremony proceeds. And I even hear a sniffle or two from our audience. Nice touch, Fingers. Nice touch.
And even though everything here started out fake, suddenly everything feels very, very real.
I am marrying this woman.
The priest pauses, and when we look at him we realize we’re up.
We didn’t discuss this. We have no vows! And even though everyone else is working off a script, we’re just winging it.
Emma looks a little frightened. Her eyes are wide and her pouty lips are making a perfect, round, o shape.
I squeeze her hand. “I got you, babe.” Then I clear my throat and begin.
“Emma Dumas. I first met you thirteen years ago. We were young, and one of us was very stupid.” She smiles wide and sucks in a breath of air. “Me,” I say, looking out at the crowd. And hey, they get it. Because they chuckle a little at my joke. “But I don’t think I ever told you how you grabbed my attention that day. I saw you from across Mallory Square. You were wearing little Daisy Duke cut-offs and a white tank top. And, of course, those now infamous pigtails.”
She squeezes my hands as she shakes her head and looks down for a moment. But she quickly raises her eyes back up to meet mine. Like she refuses to miss a single moment of our big minute.
“And Emma, I thought to myself… ‘Jesse Boston—’” A slight murmur from the crowd makes me pause for a moment. I guess they didn’t know who I was and now they do. Jesse Boston is the same no matter what language you say it in. “I said, ‘Jesse Boston, how in the heck have you been on this island for a week and are just now seeing this girl?’ You see,” I say to the crowd, “I missed her. And I hated that. I really hated that. Because up until that moment when I first saw this vision of a girl, I was doing nothing. I was nothing. I was wasting time, and taking up space, and couldn’t even begin to imagine what the next thirteen minutes would bring, let alone the next thirteen years. So I took my chance.” I turn back to Emma. “I went up to your shaved ice stand and asked you out. It was probably not my best pick-up. But Emma, I just want you to know… it was my most honest one.”
She lowers her eyes again. And when they rise up to meet mine just a moment later, I see the shine of a tear in them.
“It was… honest. Every moment with you that night was honest. And when we reconnected thirteen years later, every moment that came after was honest too. You not only make me want to be a better man, I am a better man with you by my side.” I bring her hand up to my lips and I gently kiss her fingers. “Thank you. Thank you for seeing the better me. Thank you for buying me from a bachelor auction with grand delusions of revenge. Thank you for the one-up dream date. Thank you for sharing your family with me. Thank you for being my knight in shining armor… just…” I shake my head. “Babe? I can’t do this without you.”
She inhales deeply, lets go of one of my hands to swipe a tear off her cheek, and then says, “Jesse Boston. You were my fantasy man when we first met. You were the man who made all the promises. You were a boy so golden I could barely stand to look at you.”
I sigh. Because I didn’t feel good enough for her back then. I was so afraid she’d see through me. So afraid she’d realize what a fraud I was. So afraid that she’d figure me out and sneak away, thankful that she dodged a bullet with a boy called Jesse.
“And when you disappeared, I was lost. I was someone else when you left. Some other girl who no longer understood her place in this world. And for the next thirteen years I would think about you at least once a day. I would think… what could we have been? What life would we have lived if we had stayed together from the start? If we had never gone out and did our thing, by ourselves, on our own?” She squeezes my hands. “And you know what?”
“What?” I whisper, dying to know what she thinks about this.
“We might’ve been that couple.”
I laugh a little. That couple.
“We might have been that couple you described on our second-chance first date last summer. The one who fights hard, and lives fast, and loves each other ferociously.”
“Love is a battlefield, babe. And we’re both just generals.”
She giggles. “That’s right. It’s a pretty romantic idea. But you know what’s even more romantic?”
“I think you’re about to tell me.”
“Us. The real us. That’s even more romantic than the fantasy us. Because the real us, Jesse Boston—the real us is strong. The real us is smart. The real us is resilient. The real us is… well…” She shrugs with her shoulders. “We’re real, Jesse. And I know all this is fake. This whole day was set up to be something fake. Every bit of this day was a crazy fantasy. But I just want you to know that this moment? This one right now? This is all us, Baby Boston. I don’t care who’s sitting in this chapel with us. I don’t care that we don’t know them, and they don’t know us, and this isn’t my dress, and that isn’t your tux. It’s real. Because this moment is about my love for you and that’s the only thing that counts.”
She and I b
oth suck in a deep breath of air and suddenly the world is… different. Better. Brighter. Realer than real.
Because she’s right. This moment, and the ones that come next, those are the only ones that count. “I love you, Emma Dumas.”
“I love you back, Jesse Boston.”
I turn to the priest and nod. “And that’s all there is.”
He smiles at us. Maybe he understands the actual words of our impromptu vows or maybe he’s done this enough to just feel the meaning of our moment. But his smile is big. His arms go up and he spreads them wide, opens his mouth and tells me to kiss my bride in a language I don’t understand, and then the chapel doors swing open with a bang.
Everyone gasps and turns around to see who dares interrupt our moment of bliss.
I squint my eyes at the man standing in the doorway, unable to figure out who it is or why he’s there.
And then there is chaos.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - EMMA
Chaos.
Total and utter chaos.
Everyone stands up. People are shouting. The groomsmen all pull out guns from their suit coats. My bridesmaids are running to the back of the altar, trying to hide.
My fake mother is screaming. I’m talking this little round lady is yelling at the top of her Italian lungs. My fake father suddenly has like… a machine gun or whatever you call them, and then, from behind the guy who just stopped the wedding, there’s a whole other group of men silhouetted in the doorway. All are dressed up in black suits. All have guns out.
I roll my eyes and look at Jesse.
“For fuck’s sake,” he says, running his fingers through his hair. “Are you kidding me right now? I mean, Fingers! Dude!” He yells it to the ceiling like maybe, hopefully, there’s some hidden cameras up there and Fingers will magically hear his plea and stop this mess before it gets out of hand. Like maybe there’s a way to just kiss, get back to the whole ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride’ moment and pretend this surprise twist didn’t happen. “We were so close, man! This isn’t necessary!”
But then the shooting starts. The mobster guy in the doorway is screaming. And blazing guns aside, there’s no possible way to miss that these are threats.
At first, I figure it’s all part of the show, right? This is Treasure Island all over again, but with mobsters. I mean, the name of the package is Shotgun Wedding.
But Jesse’s right. We do not need the theatrics. We’ve had enough. So we just stand there for a moment, totally convinced this is fake.
Until my fake father-in-law takes a bullet to the chest, twists in the air, and falls flat on his face.
I just kinda stare at him for a moment, still thinking this is fake. It’s a good fake. I’ll give them that. It’s pretty authentic. But it’s not real.
It cannot be real.
But then I see the exit wound in his back, and the blood pooling on the floor around his upper body, and then two things happen simultaneously.
I scream. I don’t even know where that scream comes from, it’s like instinct.
And then someone from the Mob family yells, “Jesse motherfucking Boston!”
And then another thing happens.
Jesse and I look at the man screaming his name, then at each other, and then he’s running. He’s got my hand, and we’re running. Past the now shooting back groomsmen, past the podium thingy in the center of the altar, and through a gold curtain that leads to some chapel back room.
“What the fuck was that?” I yell. Maybe this isn’t Fingers? Maybe this is about the Boston brothers?
But Jesse is still running, still tugging me along behind him. He finds a door, slams into the silver crossbar to open it, and it goes swinging out so fast it bangs into the side of the building. Then we’re running along the side of the chapel to the back as a full-on shootout happens inside.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Jesse yells. “I’m gonna kill Miles, and Fingers, and Clarence, and Steve, and Jessica, and Sven, and Vinnie, and—”
But he stops short. Because we’ve reached the rear parking lot and there’s a whole other gang of men back here. They see us and yell, “There he is!” In English, too. So that’s our second clue that these guys might not be Fingers’ guys. They might, in fact, be real guys after Jesse Boston. Because while I was making fun of his so-called mobster connections this morning, the truth is, Jesse is part of some kind of Mob. It might not be the fake family inside the chapel kind of Mob, but it’s still a secret criminal organization. And yeah, there might actually be people upset with the Boston brothers right now. We never did get the whole story out of Johnny when he came back from the Caribbean with a weird science girl called Megan and no Charlotte Kane.
“This way!” Jesse yells, already running back to the front of the church. I’m definitely out of my element here, so I’m really thankful that he’s got a hold of my hand and is still dragging me behind him, because without that direction I would probably still be standing in that rear parking lot with a sick, confused look on my face.
Instead, I’m now running past the front of the church where there are lots of haphazardly parked black SUVs with blackout windows. And there might even be a whole other army of mobsters inside them, but we don’t stop. We head to the one car we know is empty.
The ‘Just Married’ car, complete with tin cans painted peach and yellow and a giant peach satin bow affixed to each door handle.
It’s a sporty little Mercedes convertible in pale yellow. A classic, actually. Something very vintage Grace Kelly. Something I’d drive if I were living like a princess in Monaco and not the CFO of Bright Berry Beach Cosmetics.
But then Jesse is shoving me into the car, my dress flying up over my head as I crash into the seat. And he’s climbing over me, turning the key in the ignition as I upright myself and paw layers and layers of tulle out of my face.
Fucking Cinderella dress!
But then again… my mind is suddenly trying to picture all this going down in a mermaid dress and I think the Cinderella dress actually works better in this particular situation. I don’t think I could’ve uprighted myself in a mermaid dress and right now Jesse Boston would be driving out of this rural resort with my ass in the air.
Which makes me chuckle. Because my rambling train of thought is insane. Hell, the whole fucking thing is insane!
The tin cans are making a huge ruckus behind us and I take a moment to plot a scheme in which I climb over the back and somehow unhook the cans, but then I realize that’s a level of insane I’m not willing to descend to and look forward again.
I yell, “Stop!”
Because Jesse is looking back at the cans too, and right in the middle of the fucking exit of the resort is a woman blocking the road.
Jesse slams on the brake and we both jerk forward. The car stops within inches of the woman, who I now realize is Karen fucking Krakken.
I say, “Karen?” Because… how the fuck? What the fuck? Who the fuck? All the fucks! None of this makes any sense at all and for a moment I wonder if I’m asleep back in the bridal dressing room. Like… that tub of hot bubbles felt so good I just passed out and all of this is just some Fingers’ Fantasy Wedding Pick Three Buffet-induced dream.
But no. She’s real.
Kraken Karen runs towards our car and yells, “Quick! Get out and come with me!”
I say nothing. I’m too stunned. I’m still trying to make all these square pegs fit into round holes.
But Jesse is on it. He says, “Fuck you, bitch!” and backs up. Then he shifts the car back into first and we peel out, sliding right around Kraken Karen, and then ten seconds later we’re going eighty down the totally empty, abandoned desert road towards the sunset.
I yell, “Oh, my fucking God!” and then, “Where are we going?”
And Jesse yells back—because the wind is pretty loud in a convertible—“We’re going home! Right the fuck now. I don’t care if we have to drive this car all the way to Florida, we’re outta here!”
He speeds off down the road, but there are a few switchbacks and that slows us down. The cherry on top of this day will not be the both of us going over the side of a dusty desert mountain Grace Kelly-style.
“Is anyone following us?”
I turn to look around, but we’re on a curve and the mountain is in the way. But then… I see them. Headlights across the canyon on another switchback. The black SUVs. “Yes! Holy shit! They are!”
“How far back?”
“Maybe half a mile!”
He goes a little faster and I can see this ending coming. I swear to God. We’re going over the side of the cliff.
But what I don’t see until it’s almost too late is the big black van coming towards us from the other direction.
“Shit!” Jesse yells, turning the wheel to the left. The car slides to the right and almost turns completely around.
And that’s when the train of black SUVs comes around the last switchback.
“What do we do?” I ask. My heart is pounding inside my chest, adrenaline coursing through my body. Is this part of the wedding? Is this real? Will these people hurt us—or, even worse, will they hurt Jesse and leave me alone?
The thought of something happening to him, or me, or us—that’s bad. But the idea that I might have to go on without him? That’s so much worse. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.
The SUVs come to a stop about fifty yards away and when I check behind us, the black van is only about ten.
We’re trapped between them and the only way out that doesn’t involve being shoved in the back of a black van is to go over the side of the road and run.
“Let’s run,” I say, nearly breathless from the panic building inside me.
“Run where?” Jesse asks. “This has to be a joke, right? This has Fingers written all over it, don’t you think? Shotgun Wedding?”
