“Good, because the dress I am going to find is going to be worthy of a crowd.”
I roll my eyes, remembering how extra her wedding dress was. Before I can protest, I’m pulled towards more people I have never met. Soon I am video calling with his aunt and uncle in Ireland, and by the end I have met so many folks I can’t keep track of their names. I’ll learn them eventually, because this is my family now. The kind I have always wanted.
I never thought this cancer was going to kill me, but I also never thought it would change me in this way. While I lost parts of myself, I transformed into this new version that is so much better than the original. It’s someone who is healed, and open to so much more of what life has to offer. It is a person who is ready for him.
This journey has taken so much from me, but in the end, it gave me my passion back and Callahan.
Like he heard my thoughts, Callahan raises a shot to our future and then takes it like it’s a promise. From there, in true O’Connor fashion, shots and toasts are nonstop. I don’t know if I’m drunk off the liquor or the love being poured into me. Every time I look at Callahan, he adds a little more.
When he walks up and wraps me in his arms I feel like I’m going to explode from all the good feelings building inside.
“Hello, wife.”
“Not yet,” I say, still loving the sound.
“We can fix that tomorrow.” Just like always, he is so serious about his pursuit to be my husband.
“Callahan,” I sigh out.
“Monty.”
“You’re so impatient.”
“I waited a year.”
“You only met me last year.” I nuzzle his nose, unable to help my smirk.
“And what did I say then?” he asks.
“That I was going to be your wife.”
“Exactly.”
I can’t help but giggle at the fact that he feels he was proven right. I guess to him he did wait a year to make it official, but he can wait just a little bit longer.
“I love you,” I say meaning it with every fiber of my being.
“I love you, too.”
“Every day.”
“For the rest of our lives.”
Epilogue
SixYearsLater:
In a wave of genetic miracles, she has my skin tone and his red hair. A perfect mix of her parents, she is the Blackest, most Irish little girl anyone has ever seen. With an attitude and spirit that speak to the rowdy family that raises her, she is as free-spirited as the wind.
She runs around the backyard while Farrah’s son Ezra chases her. She can’t stop giggling, and he won’t stop whining as she evades every one of his attempts to tag her. Even though he is four and she is three, she is taller than him with legs that outpace his speed.
“Mommy!” he finally screams, getting Farrah to look away from the script in her hand.
In her babying fashion, she gets up to go and make him feel better about the fact that he is a sore loser.
“Jade, come here,” I call to my daughter.
She instantly comes running and, before doing anything else, plants a kiss on her little brother’s head. I hold him up for her to make it easier.
