“Plus,” Chris joked, “I was miserable without her. I loved her from the moment I saw her. Grace is unlike any woman I’d ever met, and I knew I had to have her. We were meant to be together.” He gazed at me. “We’re exactly where we are supposed to be.”
“I guess we didn’t fail as matchmakers after all,” Rainbow said happily.
* * *
“We have officially fulfilled our contract,”Chris whooped when we walked into our penthouse. All our friends and family cheered.
“I have gasoline to burn it,” Josh hollered, hoisting a canister aloft.
“I cannot take another fire,” I warned.
“That’s okay,” Gran told me, busting by with a tray full of candles. “We can burn each page individually.”
I wrinkled my nose at the candles. “These don’t have anything weird in them, do they?”
“Now don’t get all high and mighty, missy,” Gran said. “My vag candles paid for our new place.”
“No, they didn’t!” Chris said incredulously. “I did that.”
“Well, they would have paid for a new place,” Gran said haughtily, “if my granddaughter wasn’t accepting bribes.”
“It’s not a bribe,” Chris said. “I’m not going to have my wife live in some burnt-out apartment building.”
“Besides, Gran,” I told her, “once we have the new place renovated, this one will be all yours.”
“It will?” Chris said.
“What the hell, dude, that was what you promised the night I told you we were divorcing,” I reminded him.
“I promised a lot of things. I was drunk and tired.”
I glared at him.
“Kidding! Kidding.” He grinned. “Gran, you are going to have the sweetest bachelorette pad ever.”
“That’s very generous of you, Chris,” she said, patting him on the arm then squeezing his bicep. “But I don’t need a whole place to myself! I’ll bunk up with you two in your new place.”
“Gran…” I began.
“No, no,” she insisted. “I’m not going to be a mooch. I’ll be there cooking for you all and making you all the candles you could want.”
“It’s really no trouble.”
“Nope,” she said, “my mind’s made up. I’ll be at the next decorating meeting with your interior designer. I need them to make sure that Zeus has his own room.”
“Well, in that case, our new puppy needs her own room too,” Chris declared.
“Oof. I had hoped you forgot about that.”
“You got a puppy!” Amy squealed from the dining room, rushing through the crowd.
Antonia from the animal rescue came in with a little golden-colored dachshund puppy in a wicker basket. She carefully lifted the little dog out of the basket and handed her to Chris. I reached out to pet the puppy. She wagged her tail and licked my hand.
My friends all cooed over the dog.
“She is pretty,” I said. “But puppies are a lot of work.”
“Don’t worry, Grace,” he said, kissing me. “I will be the stay-at-home puppy dad while I manage my investments from my home office.”
