“Dom.”
“People who will slaughter me if I do a bad job? Will never let me live it down and will bring it up every Christmas for the rest of my life?”
“Dom.”
He finally stops pacing and looks at me. Looks down.
“Go turn off all the lights.”
His eyes go lazy. He licks his lips.
I spread my knees.
He turns off the lights and pulls all the blinds shut for good measure.
My love story steps between my spread legs and yanks me to the edge of the counter. Wraps my hair in his fist and pulls it back. “How much time do we have?” he asks before sucking my earlobe into his mouth.
“Probably seven minutes,” I gasp, but he’s already unzipping his pants and taking himself out and checking to see if I’m wet. I am. Obviously.
“We’ve worked with less,” he murmurs, right before tugging my panties to the side and pushing into me.
He seats himself to the hilt and we stay there for a just a moment, holding one another, just feeling and loving and loving the feeling. It feels even better than the last time we were in this exact spot, approximately two years ago. Because this time? This time is a celebration of a love story.
* * *
Maybe six and half minutes later, Dom doesn’t look nervous anymore.
* * *
Dom clears his throat. “Good evening, everyone.”
Frankie squeals in my lap. I wrap my arms around her and rest my chin on the top of her head. She entwines her fingers with mine.
Dom glances down at his paper once, then puts it down. Because he’s good at everything. Including wedding speeches.
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Dominic, ‘Domy’ to the Flores family, and I have the honor of being Ollie’s best man tonight.” Dom pauses for the thunderous round of applause and catcalling. It takes a few seconds. “If you had asked me twenty years ago if I’d be standing here giving a speech about Oliver finding the love of his life, I might have laughed. Not because he’s unlovable—obviously not—but because Oliver Flores was the most tightly wound, type-A, schedule-every-minute-of-his-life guy I had ever met. He made lists for his lists. He grew up with a spreadsheet for a soul. He believed in efficiency, control, and structure.”
Dom smirks at Oliver, who glares at him.
“Love? Love was too unpredictable, illogical—messy. Which is why it makes sense that when love finally found him, it came in the form of Georgia.”
He smiles over at her. She grins at him.
“Georgia, a hurricane in human form. Loud, colorful, full of life. She came barreling into Oliver’s world with absolutely no regard for his carefully laid-out plans, knocked them all over like Frankie scattering a pile of neatly stacked papers in my office?—”
“Hey!” Frankie yells.
Dom grins. “—and then had the audacity to make his life better for it. And Oliver fought it. Oh, he tried to keep things professional—because, of course, she was his employee first—but love doesn’t exactly care about the DOE’s HR policies. What started as frustration, as clashing, as fighting, somehow turned into something none of us saw coming: the perfect match. Turns out, Oliver didn’t need someone who followed his lists—he needed someone who would scribble all over them in glitter gel pen. Their story is proof that sometimes love doesn’t always arrive the way you expect it. Sometimes, it barges into your office, tells you to pull the stick out of your ass, and turns your entire life upside down.”
I catch the teachers over at the PS 2 table smiling. Emmanuel is visibly bawling.
“But love has never has just one path. Some people start as enemies, some as best friends.”
I see Elias squeeze Mia impossibly closer, his arms wrapped around her and his hands resting on her stomach.
“Some fall together like puzzle pieces that always fit, and some fight it every step of the way, resisting the gravity pulling them closer. Love can be a slow burn, flickering patiently over years, or it can be a wildfire, catching in an instant and refusing to be contained. Some crash into each other like Oliver and Georgia, and some, well… take a little longer to acknowledge what’s right in front of them.”
He finds me and gives me a panty-melting wink. “Love you, babe.”
