And JJ, at the center of everything. The man I’ve always loved. The man I almost lost. The man I’m never going to let go of again.
He squeezes my hand in the ceremony, and though Dad is speaking, all that really matters is us, here. It’s like the rest of the world disappears. It’s only light and happy blurs, and all that really matters is his dimpled smile and the warmth of his eyes.
You okay? he mouths to me.
I nod back, and JJ smiles so wide.
Big love, he mouths.
Big love, I tell him.
Always and forever.
I do.
It’s the promise to try every single day. To go all-in. To put everything you have into the most precious thing you’ve ever been given.
I spent a lot of time thinking about why we try. There are so many answers to that question.
But in the end it comes down to this:
Are you in?
I look at JJ and know there’s only ever been one answer.
* * *
After, I get to say a proper hello to everyone, all of these people we love. I move between groups of friends and family with JJ beside me, and we greet them all for the first time as man and wife.
Every time we come to a new group JJ says it, and I can’t help but beam.
“Have you seen how beautiful my wife is looking today?”
I can tell he loves to say that word just as much as I love to hear it.
It’s only when JJ and I are taking a break by the cupcake stand—we didn’t have time to organize a cake—that I see Hunter through the crowd.
He’s looking stunning, of course. You don’t inherit those old-money WASP genes without also owning a wardrobe of bespoke suits. The man who was a mess when he visited us over the summer is back to being effortlessly stylish—like he’s wandered out of a magazine shoot, with his easy lean and casual grin.
But his grin isn’t casual. It’s trying to be, sure. But he doesn’t have his usual composure. Something has changed, though the only difference I can put my finger on is the new girl under his arm.
Hunter has a lot of new girls. He doesn’t really do old girls—a couple months is I think the most he’s made a relationship last, barring a few on-and-off train wrecks with Victoria’s Secret models. But this one: she’s striking. Blonde, yes, like always. But she’s so different that I can’t stop looking at her, with her freckles and the way she stands—like she’d be more comfortable wearing a ratty pair of jeans and hanging out in a dive bar than here. She keeps picking at her dress like it doesn’t feel comfortable to her. It’s a beautiful strapless sheath, deep blue with a faintly metallic floral print. The wide boat neck bares and accentuates her delicate collarbones, complementing her figure. And yet she stands in it like it belongs to someone else, and she is all joints and gangly colt limbs.
She looks beautiful and yet uncomfortable with it, unsure of who she is.
“Sam.”
I look over to JJ at the sound of his voice, and he gives me a grin before slipping a piece of cupcake into his mouth.
“I was curious too,” he says. “Her name is Sam. Samantha.”
“I didn’t know Hunter had a girlfriend.”
“Apparently he does.” JJ finishes straightening his tie. “He definitely introduced her as that.” And we both know that Hunter can, to say the least, be precise about his introductions. This is my date is very different from may I introduce you to my girlfriend.
“There’s something different about her,” JJ muses. He’s looked away from me and instead faces them, where Sam and Hunter have turned in toward each other and are having a conversation. She has a faint frown on her forehead, and there’s something unusual in the way Hunter squeezes her arm before sliding his own back over her shoulders.
It’s not something I’m putting much thought into. There are so many more people to see.
Chase is looking as striking in a suit as he always does. Not bad. It’s hard to make an athlete look bad in anything. But he gives the impression of a jaguar forced into single-breasted Armani wool, like he’d be more comfortable in something else.
But he looks so happy. He has his arm around Brooke’s waist, and now and again he leans over and whispers something into her halo of wild curls, and then they laugh together as he squeezes her close. You can see the love on them. It radiates like heat, warm in the winter.
Chase’s winter was so very long. I’m so happy to see that spring has finally come for him, and he’s really blossoming in a way that, if I’m honest, I thought he probably never would.
I’ve already started looking for Hanne when the woman herself surprises me with a swift hug from behind. I turn, and—
“Oh my god, Hanne.”
She grins at me. She’s wearing a beautifully cut suit, the sharp black lines deeply flattering to her athlete’s body. She’s let some of the pink fade from her hair, and has tied it up into a classic French twist at the back of her head. She looks stunning: feminine and a tomboy both at once. She could have just walked out of French Vogue.
“I knew you were going to dominate the dress game,” she says to me with a beam. “I thought I shouldn’t try to compete.”
“Well, you’ve dominated suit-so-gorgeous-I-could-die-in-it,” I tell her.
JJ looks over, licking the final crumb of cupcake from his finger. “Hey. Does that mean you don’t think I dominate the suit game?”
Hanne pulls an exaggerated expression of well… But it collapses to a grin just as she collapses onto him, grabbing him close for a tight hug.
“So proud of you for finally getting on with this.” Her voice is muffled against his shoulder. “Now you’d better make babies.”
We all laugh, and I’m so happy to see them together.
Even after Hanne’s gone, I don’t comment to JJ that she hasn’t brought the guy she was seeing as her plus one. I guess this is the answer about how seriously she feels for him.
I’d like Hanne to find someone someday, but sometimes I wonder if that’s just me projecting. Because she seems entirely happy, entirely self-sufficient. I’ve never met someone as whole. Someone as capable of taking care of herself.
But I hope she will, because when Hanne meets someone else equally complete, they’re going to make an astounding couple. One I can’t wait to see.
I don’t think much more about it—not until late, when we’re hours into dancing. JJ and I have tucked ourselves into a corner of the room, and I rest against his chest, my arm at his hips, feeling his body lightly sway with the music.
In the center of the dance floor, Hanne is pretending to go fishing and Mike DeLuca is jump, jump, jumping in as if he’s hooked. Both of them are laughing so hard that they glow.
“Mike didn’t come with a date, did he?” I ask JJ under the music.
JJ looks over as he pops a cocktail sausage into his mouth before licking his fingers clean. “No. Why?”
I watch Hanne laugh and laugh with him, and I wonder…
JJ squeezes me closer, dipping down so that his mouth finds my ear. “Stop wondering about everyone else’s love lives.”
I laugh, tilting my face to him. He’s so close that I can only see the sparkle of his eyes. “Are you jealous?”
“Never,” JJ murmurs, humor warm in his voice. “I just want to ask my wife for another dance on our wedding night.”
His wife. The words sink deep into me, a planted seed that blossoms into the purest happiness I’ve ever felt.
“I’ll always dance with you,” I reply to him. “Always.”
JJ has always believed in fate. He said in the beginning that we were always meant to be together.
I told him that I didn’t believe in that stuff.
But not believing in fate didn’t stop it from catching up to me.
In all the years since we met, I have never stopped loving JJ Schneider.
Raquel
Christmas Day, and I wake up earlier than anyone else in the house.
; JJ’s sound asleep still. I have to move his arm away so I can slip out of the bed, and he nuzzles after me, murmuring wordless sounds against the sheets. I kiss the warmth of his skin before pulling on slim pants and a thick cable-knit sweater that falls halfway down my thighs. I tuck my face into the turtleneck as I open the door, as careful quiet as I can, and slip it shut beside me.
I can feel them sleeping all around us, our families, together for the first time.
JJ’s dad, Bob, is snoring in the bedroom he shares with Robin. The sound makes me smile.
The other doors feel warm, somehow. The whole house has come alive. We’ve never had everyone here all at once.
JJ’s parents. Mine. JJ’s sister, her wife, and Bryn.
Claire couldn’t make it—I don’t believe her reasons. I think it’s about a boy. But I still smile to see the room that will be hers. There will be plenty more Christmases, and plenty of time for her to stay in this room—one day with her own man, and her own babies.
Downstairs, everything is a winter wonderland. We have the arc of Christmas candles on the table, waiting to be lit. Holly and ivy is everywhere. There’s mistletoe hanging at the French doors onto the deck.
In the very center of the main room is the tree. So huge it might just have walked out of a forest, and bedecked in lights and decorations. Last night JJ lifted Bryn on his shoulders so he could put the star on the top. And then after he was in bed we all stayed up, wrapping his gifts from Santa, and disappearing into other rooms one-by-one to wrap each other’s presents. Now they’re under the tree, a mountain of love and bright-colored wrapping paper.
In a few hours, I’ll need to start cooking. We’ll have all of us crammed into this kitchen, with wine and Christmas songs, and we’ll be laughing and happy together.
I can already feel it glowing inside of me.
For now I take a deep breath, as if I could draw it all into me: my family, together in this house, safe and sleeping, about to have a magical day.
I love you. I’m so happy.
There’ll be time to come back later. It’s still dark, not yet six thirty. I’ll be able to return and have a shower and get dressed, ready for the day. JJ’s making the cream cheese and lox bagels for breakfast. I’ll start dinner. We’ll be able to show everyone our love, with presents and food and the rest. Our time, mostly: the time to fill all the trees down the drive with fairy lights, to build the snowmen JJ’s made with Bryn and his sister; to cook all of this food, and fill the cellar with wine.
For now though I slip into my office and turn on my monitor.
The cursor is still waiting where it was last time, hovering over my email client.
It’s pointing to a smiling, snow-tanned face—the icon of the girl who emailed me about getting back to skiing. I’ve received the occasional email from her over the months, and I’ve replied to all of them with a polite no. I never gave it much thought, and even now I don’t sit down and weigh the pros and cons.
But something has changed overnight. I woke up this morning and simply knew what I had to do.
Love. It’s everywhere. To have my family here. To have JJ here. To have the Christmas together I’ve always wanted.
Nothing is guaranteed, in life. We have to appreciate what we’re given. We have to make the most of it.
I want to help this girl make the most of her one, precious life. I want to get back to doing what I used to do: helping people achieve dreams that were bigger than boardrooms or checks.
It’s not that I don’t think those things are important. But they’re not what I studied sports psychology for. They’re not what I dreamed of helping people to achieve.
I open up my email client.
Dear Min-ji,
I believe in you.
* * *
As I walk back upstairs, I have a smile on my face.
I am so excited to fill the house with children. To see their father teach them how to be brave and bold—how to seize life with both hands and never let go.
I’m excited to teach them about dedication. About making their dreams come true.
And most of all I’m excited to raise them in a house full of love. The love of their parents, and their grandparents, and their aunts. Of their unrelated family, too, which is just as important. I’m excited to have Chase and Brooke come over for play dates and birthday parties; for Uncle Hunter and Auntie Hanne to visit.
Love. That’s what I want my children to learn. Love for family, love for friends. Love for what you do.
A love for life. Every messy, imperfect, beautiful moment of it.
For now though, we need to get busy making them.
JJ’s half awake already when I settle over him in bed, my thighs to either side of his hips. He smiles up at me, sleep-fuzzed and slow. Already he’s hard against me.
“Merry Christmas,” he half-teases.
“Is it too early?”
He laughs, reaching up one hand to catch my cheek. To draw me down close, so that bent over I can kiss him, slow and treasuring.
“It’s never too early,” he murmurs, after, stroking my hair back from my face. “Whenever you’re here, it’s just the right time.”
I’m so happy that I glow.
I don’t need to say it. He knows. But I say it anyway.
“Big love.”
JJ grins at me, as his hands begin to explore my body. Learning. Caressing. Adoring.
“Big love, Raquel,” he says like a promise. “Big love.”
Epilogue
JJ
Raquel is waiting outside the store when I get out.
“Kel?”
She turns abruptly to me, and there’s a spring in her step as she starts forward. Her hands are pushed down into the deep pockets of her trench coat. It’s a cold and sunny February day, blue-sky beautiful. Her breath is a soft white plume in front of her, her cheeks pinched by the chill to bright pinkness.
“James.”
I don’t get much chance to try to read her face, to see just why she’s calling me that instead of JJ. She’s pushing into my arms, linking her own tight about me for a squeeze. Her face presses against my chest.
Of course I hold her, but I’m slow to settle my arms. I dip my face and try to find her eyes, even though at the moment I’m only rewarded by her hair tickling my nose.
“Kel? What’s up?”
She’s quivering. I can feel it, the racing potential in her body, the edge-caught startle of her. But she doesn’t seem upset? Or I can’t hear tears—don’t think I saw them on her face… But it’s enough to worry me.
She’s beginning to speak just when a hand slaps me on the back and I almost jump out of my skin. Raquel steps out of my arms as neatly as water flowing from cupped hands, both of us assembling the same smiles. Neither of us particularly enjoy having private moments in public.
Chase’s grin is wide. “Didn’t expect to see you here, man. You coming up the hill for the shoot now?”
There aren’t three people I could want to see more. From beneath the sling of Chase’s arm Brooke grins up at me. On Chase’s other side Hanne smiles around the plastic spoon of her improbable froyo. Thirty-two degrees outside, and apparently that means frozen desserts to Norwegians. God knows I love and respect Hanne, but that doesn’t mean I understand her.
These people are my crew—my family—and seeing them just wandering about the town I live in is amazing. But for this one moment I wish they could have stayed away like, five more minutes, so I could work out what’s up with Raquel.
“I just came to pick JJ up so we’d reach you in time,” Raquel says. I’m relieved to see she’s actually smiling. Not make-other-people-comfortable smiling. Really smiling.
… Really smiling?
She must see my confusion. She reaches over, that little flushed smile holding, and squeezes my hand.
“JJ’s been buying presents for his nephew. He turns four next week.”
“Of course JJ is the best of you with kids,” Brooke
says with a quirk of humor.
Chase squeezes her, tenderly knocking his head against hers. “Hey, thank you very much.”
She laughs, and presses into him, going up on her tiptoes to kiss at his stubble.
There is not much cuter than your hard-as-nails best friend going all mushy over his new girl, but it’s my wife I’m interested in. My wife. When will it be normal to say that? Even to think it. That this beautiful, bright, bold, vivacious, unstoppable woman has agreed to spend her life with me.
The woman who still seems to be almost shaking with something, but that something is definitely leaving her smiling.
Hanne slurps the froyo spoon out of her mouth as she looks at me. After fifteen years being thick as thieves, we don’t have to say a word to communicate with each other. I can see it all in the arch of her eyebrow.
What is up with Raquel?
I shrug. I wish that I knew.
Chase looks at his watch over Brooke’s shoulder. “Well I guess we should hit the road, huh? We were going to take my truck. It’s a couple blocks up, in front of the coffee place.”
“It’s fine,” Raquel says, trying to sound casual and failing. “I’ll drive JJ.”
Chase shrugs as if that’s easy by him. “Cool. We’ll come with you, then.”
Hanne flicks her leg back neatly to kick him in the muscle of his calf. Her smile is fixed. “No, Chase. We won’t go with them.”
“There are five of us. It makes sense…” Brooke looks confused, too, but at least she understands Hanne’s Look. “Ah, sure. Yeah. We’ll go in ours, Chase.”
Chase looks from Hanne to Brooke, about to argue, before he chooses the wiser path and decides that fighting with the combined forces of the two most important women in his life is a terrible idea. He gives my shoulder a friendly thump as he goes past.
Crash: The Wild Sequence, Book Two Page 33