I raised my eyebrows. “Really? That’s a thing?”
She nodded. “It is indeed.”
Jack walked in and looked around. “I really need to upgrade,” he said. “This makes my boat look like it’s ready for the burn pile.” Then his eyes widened. “Speaking of boats, I have a present for Vivi. I didn’t want to steal anybody’s thunder, but it is her twelfth birthday tomorrow, and I thought she deserved something special.”
I leaned into his side, and he put his arm around me. He was the best man.
“Emerson saw us all asleep in my room this morning,” I said.
“Uh-oh,” Sloane said. “That couldn’t have gone well.”
I shook my head. Jack and I had been going through our calendars earlier that morning, trying to pin down a date for our own nuptials. Since Emerson was basically having the wedding we had talked about, we decided to get married just the two of us and then have a nice dinner with our families afterward.
“Jack,” I said now, “I’m so sorry. I know we were planning earlier, but I think we need to put off setting a date until I can make things right with her. I don’t want our marriage to be the source of this unhappiness.”
For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t read his expression. “Ansley, look,” he said, “I’m fine with being fourth. I get it. I will always come after your girls, and I am good with that. But if we are going to be together, you have to be willing to fight for me the way I have always fought for you. And if you can’t do that, then I’d rather know now.”
As he turned around and walked out the door, I thought about what I had put him through over these past six months. Not wanting to be together because of the girls. Then not wanting to introduce him to the girls. Then, when we were finally giving this thing a shot, breaking up with him because Adam was MIA and Sloane needed all my attention. He took the backseat to them regularly, and he handled it with ease. I guessed this was the tipping point for him.
I sighed and turned to say something to Sloane and realized that Emerson was standing there, too, holding AJ’s hand, looking white and not in the bridal way.
I bit my lip. “I didn’t know you were there.”
She didn’t say anything but walked past me, too. “Great,” I said to Sloane. “That’s just great.”
“Gransley!” AJ said, with so much excitement that it took my mind off what was going on. “I got to go potty on a boat! It was so fun!”
I scooped him up onto my hip and kissed his round cheek, as ripe and juicy as a fresh peach. “I love you so much,” I said.
“I love you, too, Gransley.”
Finally, someone who wasn’t mad at me.
Vivi ran into the cabin. “Gransley, Gransley, you have to come see what Jack got me for my birthday!”
I couldn’t even imagine, but as soon as I walked outside, I saw it. I gasped for the second time that morning and put my hand over my mouth, scrambling onto the dock.
“Jack,” I said, “is this the one?” The night Jack and I had met, we kissed for the first time standing in his tiny thirteen-foot Boston Whaler.
He nodded, reaching his hand out to me. As I stepped into the boat, now perfectly restored with new teak and a new engine, I let myself, for a moment, be that fifteen-year-old girl again, the one who had met Jack at the sandbar party, who had stayed late with her friends, who had been so swept away by that boy from the second her eyes met his.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know you want everything to be perfect. It’s just that I only wantyou. Under any circumstances.”
It wasn’t a moon tide. And it wasn’t the sandbar party, but I leaned into Jack and kissed him right there, in the broad daylight, where everyone could see, even my own family. The birds were chirping instead of the cicadas humming, but either way, this man, this kiss, these sounds, this had become, for me, the cadence of summertime. And I vowed right then and there to make sure that no matter what else happened, Jack knew he was my priority. What he wanted mattered.
“September 22,” I whispered, as I pulled away from him.
Jack smiled and nodded.
“That’s the day I want to marry you,” I said. “September 22 is the harvest moon, and I think we should get married underneath it.”
Jack teared up as he kissed me again. “September 22,” he said. “The day I’ve been waiting for since I kissed you on this boat for the very first time.”
I heard a screech from theStarlite Sisters. I looked up to see Caroline wrestling a magnum of Veuve from James.
“But we have to christen the boat,” he was saying.
“You are not smashing that bottle and ruining the finish on this perfect boat.”
