I laughed, which was what he intended, and then the music started inside, something low and sweet on a single cello, and we stepped through the entrance into my wedding.
The cold hit me first.
Not unpleasant cold — the kind that sharpened everything, made your senses go up a register. The air smelled like pine and something clean and wintry, and for a disorienting moment I forgot entirely that we were on a mountain in July, that outside this dome the sun was shining and the wildflowers were out.
Then my eyes adjusted and I forgot everything else entirely.
I had performed on hundreds of stages. I knew what it was to walk into a space that had been designed around an idea, to feel the intention of something bigger than the sum of its parts. But nothing, not one single stage or arena or television set, had ever done this to me.
The dome rose above us, and through it, projected onto the curved ceiling, was the northern lights. Shifting curtains of green and violet and white, rippling and silent overhead, so convincing that my whole body tilted backward looking for the real sky. White birch and pine trees lined the short aisle, draped in fairy lights. The altar was framed in more pine, covered in what looked like real snow, and strung with more light than I could count. Everything glowed. Everything moved, just slightly, the lights and the faux snow and the shadows of the trees.
Declan was standing at the end of it.
He looked like a man who had not moved since he’d taken his position there, the way he went still when he was feeling something too big to let out. He was in his tuxedo, the dark vest, and he was watching me walk toward him with an expression I didn’t have a word for yet. Like he was memorizing it. Like he was going to need to recall this exact image for the rest of his life.
Somewhere between the entrance and the altar, my nerves burned off completely.
This was not a show. This was a Declan Kingman production, meticulous, intentional, and made entirely for an audience of one.
That was me.
I was the audience.
The cellist was playing and it took me most of the aisle to realize why the melody felt so familiar. Then it landed. “Chunky Dunkin’.” He’d had someone arrange my song about skinny dipping with Declan “Chunky Dunkin’” for cello. I made a mental note to find the cellist after the ceremony and tell them they had made a genuine contribution to music history.
My dad transferred my hands to Declan’s. His hands were warm, which surprised me every time. I didn’t know why. It had been a year and a half and his hands were always warm.
“Hi,” he said, quiet enough that only I could hear it.
“Hi,” I said back.
“Do you like it?”
I felt the tears finally tip over.
He reached up and caught them with his thumb, both thumbs, careful and unhurried.
“I love it,” I said. “I love all of it.”
The look on his face was worth every surprise and every re-routed bus and every fake Bingo convention website in the history of elaborate romantic deceptions.
“Then let’s get married,” he said.
We turned to Everett.
Everett Kingman, at a podium, with the authority of a man ordained by the internet and the full weight of his own very high opinion of himself, was genuinely one of the great things in my life.
“Friends and family,” he began, “I am deeply honored to be standing here for the second time in six months to unite one of my brothers with the love of his life.” He paused, and glanced between Declan and me. “Which is not nothing, given how Declan once told me that marriage was, and I’m quoting directly here, ‘the kind of thing other dumb people do.’” He smiled. “Kelsey Best happened to my brother, and I think we can all agree the results have been spectacular.”
I heard a murmur of laughter through the small crowd. Three hundred people I barely knew but felt like I had to invite to my wedding were in Aspen were at a rave right now. These sixty were the real wedding, and looking out at them I felt the rightness of it settle over me like the fur wrap on my shoulders.
This was what I’d wanted. Not the spectacle. This. Gryff and Artie in the third row, Isak with his camera lowered for once, Jules in her green suit looking like she’d run a championship game and won, Chris and Trixie smiling like they knew exactly how we felt, Bridger sitting in the front row with his handsfolded and his jaw working the way Declan’s did when he was keeping something in.
“My brother Declan doesn’t know how to be anything less than his best,” Everett went on. “Best defensive lineman the Mustangs have ever had. Best son. Best brother. And I say that with full awareness that Chris is right there.” He nodded in Chris’s direction. Chris pointed at him.
“So when it came time for him to fall in love, there was really only one direction this was going to go.” He looked at me. “The first time Declan brought Kelsey to Kingman Family Game Night, she beat every single one of us at Uno in under forty minutes. She stole the lucky pillow. And in the process of doing all of that, she became one of us so completely that I genuinely cannot remember what game night felt like before her.” He paused. “I love you, Kelsey. I’m so glad you’re officially stuck with us now.”
I pressed my lips together again.
