by Nella Tyler
Finally, though, both Patrick and I ran out of oxygen. He broke away from me and we both grinned at each other, catching our breath.
“Time to call Landon?”
I frowned in confusion and then remembered. “Let’s do it,” I said, taking his hand in mine and leading him back towards the kitchen. Patrick slipped his phone out of his pocket and opened up his contacts list. I watched him dial out, smiling.
After a minute I saw his face light up.
“Hey buddy! Happy New Year!” he paused, and I thought Landon must have been talking his ear off, going a mile a minute. “Let me put you on speaker and you can tell Mack too.” He took his phone away from his ear and tapped the speaker icon.
“Hi Mack! Happy New Year!”
“Happy New Year to you, too!” I grinned at the phone even though I knew that Landon couldn’t possibly see me. “Are you having a good time at your grandparents’ house?”
“Yeah! Did Dad kiss you?”
“He did,” I confirmed. “We were talking about going to brunch tomorrow—does that sound good?”
“What’s brunch?”
“It’s breakfast for lunch,” Patrick explained. “That way you can sleep in and still have pancakes.”
“Cool! Yeah, yeah let’s do that!”
We talked to Landon for a few more minutes before his grandmother came on the line, explaining that while she’d given the boy some coffee milk, she was pretty sure he had only stayed up so late by sheer force of will. Patrick said goodnight to his son, and I seconded it, and then we hung up to return to the party.
We were just in time to hear the New Year’s resolutions; I thought the one that said, “Giving my son the love and attention he deserves,” might have been Patrick’s, since it didn’t sound like anything that any of the other guys at the party would have said. One look at him confirmed it—and he looked at me when mine was read.
The party started to wind down, and Patrick and I managed to dance for a little while longer before we had to excuse ourselves for the night; it was almost one, and we hoped that the roads would mostly be clear. Mom and Dad insisted that if we wanted to, we could stay the night in my bedroom—but I wanted to be alone, really alone, with Patrick for the first night of the New Year. I told my mom that we would talk about what had happened with Noah in a day or two, gave my siblings and my brother a kiss, and then I walked out with Patrick, more than ready to make good on the idea of spending the rest of the night making love.
“When do we want to go to brunch?” I asked him.
“As late as humanly possible,” Patrick replied. “I want to have sex from the minute we get home until we can’t stay up a minute longer.”
“I like that plan.”
Chapter Ten – Patrick
I had taken a glass of champagne after my midnight kiss with Mackenzie, but that was the only alcohol I’d had in hours. By the time we got into the car and headed out onto the road back into the city, I was well under the limit. I would never in a million years have risked Mackenzie’s life or mine by driving drunk.
“All in all that wasn’t a bad party,” I said as the heater started to kick in. I turned onto the highway; there were a few cars on the road—one or two of them seemed to be weaving a bit, and I avoided them, speeding up just enough to get past them.
“Apart from the bullshit with Noah,” Mack said, making a face.
“Ah it was a hiccup. Most of the people at that party were at least as drunk as him, so they’re not going to remember it. Everyone else will just remember that he was an asshole.” I reached out and gave Mack’s hand a squeeze. “And I’ll remember that you kissed me at midnight, and that you drove me absolutely crazy with the dancing.”
“Did I?”
I glanced at Mack to see her grinning, totally satisfied with herself.
“Then it was a good party after all.”
“Oh yeah—if we’re apart from each other for more than a couple of days, I am going to take a suspiciously long shower and think about you bumping and grinding to me while “California Love” plays,” I told her. Mackenzie laughed, shaking her head.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, grinning a little bit.
“Not even a little,” I agreed. “I mean, you’re looking even more amazing than usual, and I’ve spent all night wishing I could get you alone—really alone, not just in the kitchen.”
“You know,” Mackenzie said, “one year—I think it was maybe three years ago—I walked in on my sister full-on making out with her husband in there.”
“Is that why people kept occasionally peeking in on us?”
I laughed. “I thought they were just worried that you were upset.”
“No, I think they were hoping they’d catch us being scandalous,” Mackenzie said. I changed the subject then, and we talked about where we wanted to go to brunch the next morning, or if we’d rather do it at home. Mack’s mom had had handed her a bottle of champagne—unopened—on the way out, with a wink.
“What was that wink from your mom about, by the way? I forgot to ask you.”
Mackenzie laughed. “Okay—don’t freak out on me. Apparently she conceived my brother John on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, drunk on champagne. So I guess she figured it would be the joke of the year if I went the same way.”
I grinned. “No getting knocked up tonight,” I said. “If we’re going to have a kid together, I want to have at least some planning behind it.”
“You—I didn’t really have kids on my mind,” Mackenzie said, blushing. I took a quick breath to settle my nerves; I’d been thinking about more than just having sex with Mack when we got back home. I’d been thinking about my bet with Landon, and whether or not it was time—now that the deadline was on me—to tell Mack about it.
“I’m not thinking of kids in particular,” I said, giving Mack’s hand a squeeze. “But there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“That sounds like it will either be great or awful,” Mack said. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay, tell me what it is.”
“I made a bet with Landon, right about the time we first met,” I told Mack. “It wasn’t—I didn’t make it because of meeting you, but it was around the same time.”
“What was the bet?” Mack looked at me intently.
“That I couldn’t find him a new mom by New Year’s Day.”
“What?”
I glanced at Mack, hoping that she didn’t look too appalled. “It was a silly bet,” I said, shrugging. “The wager was that if I couldn’t find him a new mom, I had to buy him a second Christmas-worth of gifts—his entire list, all over again.”
Mack stared at me a moment longer and then started to laugh, shaking her head. “That is a silly bet for sure,” she told me. “So I guess this is the deadline, since it’s New Year’s Day as of about an hour and a half ago.”
“It is,” I said, nodding. I hesitated for a moment. “I’m not going to propose to you right now, by the way,” I glanced at her and tried to smile. “But I was thinking that if—if you wanted to be part of my life, and Landon’s, that would make me happy. I’m glad to buy him another round of Christmas presents.”
“I think—I think it would be crazy to go so far as to get engaged,” Mack said. “But…after everything so far, I think…I think I’m ready to at least commit to being part of your and Landon’s life.”
I pulled over onto the shoulder.
“Are you okay?” she asked, startled.
Instead of answering, I put the car in park and leaned over to kiss Mack. I couldn’t help myself—and I couldn’t possibly wait any longer. I kissed her until we were both panting, and then broke away.
“Landon is going to get double-double presents,” I told Mack, grinning. “We’ll do a whole Christmas morning thing, the three of us, in two weeks.”
“That’ll be beautiful,” Mack said, smiling. I took a deep breath and took the car out of park; I had to get her back to my place as f
ast as possible.
Epilogue: New Year’s Eve, One Year Later
“Everyone’s taking their seats,” Amie said behind me. “They’re going into the chapel from the lobby right now.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to do a first look photo set?”
I couldn’t open my eyes to look at the photographer; the makeup artist was busy applying shadow to my eyelids, blending it with brushes. My ass was starting to go numb from how long I had been sitting in the chair, but I knew better than to complain; I had asked for a particular hairstyle, and a particular makeup look—it wouldn’t be fair for me to bitch about how long it took.
“That’s going to take too long,” I said, keeping my eyes obediently closed. “Just get pictures of him at the altar, and pictures of me coming down the aisle; that will be good enough.”
I thought that my heart couldn’t possibly beat faster in my chest; I pictured the beautiful cream-white dress I would be putting on in a few more minutes in my mind. A little more than a year before, I would have given long odds for me getting married at all—much less so soon.
“Okay,” the makeup artist said quietly. “Open your eyes carefully, and take a look in the mirror. Tell me if it looks as good to you as it does to me.” I slowly lifted my eyelids; they felt heavy with all the makeup already on them, but when I looked at myself in the mirror it didn’t look like I was wearing a ton of makeup—it looked like I was only wearing a little bit, but that my eyes were even bigger, bolder, more vivid than ever.
“I look gorgeous,” I said, my breath catching in my throat.
“You look gorgeous even with no makeup on,” Jessica said from somewhere off to my right. The hair stylist was still working on my hair, wielding a curling iron and a mouthful of bobby pins. “But I will say that you’re starting to look like a total princess.”
I laughed as carefully as I could—I didn’t want to get a burn or mess up my own hair while it was being styled—and carefully looked over my shoulder without turning my head. “If I’d had my way, we’d all be at the Justice of the Peace, and I’d be wearing jeans and a sweater.”
My parents had insisted on me having a “real wedding,” with bridesmaids, a reception—the whole nine yards. I had tried to get Patrick on my side, but Landon had trumped us; one of his friends at school had been a ring bearer at a cousin’s wedding, and he had campaigned hard for us to have a wedding so that he could follow in the trend. Patrick had done his son one better: he’d made Landon his best man, and my two brothers were groomsmen. I’d taken Jessica as one of my bridesmaids, Evie as my Matron of Honor, and Amie as my third bridesmaid. I’d enlisted my niece as my flower girl, and one of Landon’s cousins was our ring bearer.
I struggled to sit still as the two stylists finished up their work, getting more and more excited by the moment. I was tingling all over, hot and cold flashes washing over me. I was nervous about the ceremony—even though I’d managed to pare down the guest list to the bare minimum, there were still easily fifty people in the chapel—but I was happy and excited at the idea of the reception afterwards, and then the honeymoon that Patrick and I would be going on.
It had taken Patrick no more than six months after telling me about his bet with Landon to propose. I’d thought that maybe he would ask me at the end of the year; I didn’t suspect anything even when Patrick told me about the date: he’d scheduled all of the places we’d gone to in the first month of dating, including the park where we’d gone ice-skating, one of the restaurants where we’d had dinner, and the café where our first date had been. While I waited at the table for him to go and get our coffees, someone appeared out of nowhere and delivered a bouquet of peonies—late for the season, but just as beautiful as any I’d ever seen—directly to my table. I’d been shocked at the fact that the delivery guy had somehow managed to find me in the middle of a crowded café, much less that he knew I was the person he was supposed to deliver to.
And then Patrick had appeared with our coffees, and asked if I liked the flowers. “I have no idea how you managed this,” I had told him, still staring at the beautiful blooms.
“You’ll be really surprised by this, then,” he’d said. I looked up and saw that he’d put an open jewelry box on a little saucer, and inside of the jewelry box was a beautiful diamond ring. “Will you marry me, Mack?”
I had barely been able to stop crying from happiness enough to say yes, and we’d immediately agreed to have our wedding on New Year’s Eve, since that had been the night that we’d finally, truly come together as a couple. It just made sense to us.
“Okay, time to get you into that dress,” Jess said, just as the two stylists finished up their work.
“Give me a second to look at myself!” I protested, smiling. I looked into the mirror and saw myself transformed. I didn’t look like a completely different person—I wouldn’t have liked that—but I did look more beautiful than I thought I had ever looked in my entire life before.
“How long do you think it’s going to take Patrick to get the dress off of her at the end of the night?” I rolled my eyes at Amie even as she, Jess, and Evie got to work helping to tighten my bodice and pull the other pieces of the dress together on my body. I’d tried to pick something out that wouldn’t be too complicated, but it still required a lot more effort than I would normally put into a dress I was only ever going to wear once.
“Since she’s not going to wear it again, it doesn’t matter if he destroys it,” Jess said. I chuckled.
“Are you going to wear that lingerie I got you for your bridal shower?”
I grinned at Evie, shaking my head carefully as they worked to get the veil on me.
“I don’t know. Maybe when we get to Tahiti.” Landon was going to be with us for the honeymoon—but he was staying in a separate room, with his mother’s parents. I couldn’t have imagined leaving Landon out of the fun, but the honeymoon was supposed to primarily be about me and Patrick having a little time to ourselves. We would be in Tahiti for two weeks, soaking in the sun and getting tanned in the middle of winter. I couldn’t think of anything I would have wanted more.
“What do you want to bet that she ends up having a kid with the same birthday as John?” I rolled my eyes.
“I’m not trying to get pregnant,” I protested. That wasn’t completely and entirely true; Patrick and I had been talking a lot about when we wanted to try for a baby. Landon was six, and he still wanted a younger sibling to play with and take care of; and even though I loved Landon more and more every day, I did want a baby of my own to raise. While we weren’t exactly planning to have a child during our honeymoon, I didn’t think I’d be upset if we did. I didn’t know whether I’d quit working if and when a baby did come—Patrick and I had both agreed to worry about that when the time came—but I loved spending time with Landon, and I knew that I would want to spend even more time with him and with my new baby if and when I had a child.
“Okay—okay. Everyone is seated and the groom is in his spot,” Evie said, hurrying back into the room from her quick check-in at the chapel down the hall. “You’re ready to go, you look beautiful.”
Evie kissed me on the cheek, and then so did Jess and finally Amie, and I stood up, taking one last look at myself in the mirror. I tingled all over, and when Jess handed me the bouquet—snowy white roses and blush peonies—I took as deep a breath as my bodice would allow. “Let’s get this done before midnight, ladies,” Evie laughed.
“It’s my wedding!” I said, grinning. I took another quick breath and Evie opened the door. “I’ll take as long as I want to take.”
I swallowed against the dry, tight feeling in my throat and followed my bridesmaids out of the prep room and down the hall to the chapel. The doors were closed; everyone except for my dad and the wedding party were inside, waiting. I looked at my beautiful friends, my family members, my proud father, and when I heard the music start up in the chapel to signal the start of my new life as Patrick’s wife and Landon’s step-mother, I th
ought that I could never be more overjoyed in my entire life.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 Nella Tyler