“I know.”
“I mean it this time.”
“I know that too.”
“So what happens now?”
I pull her close, start swaying to music that isn’t playing yet. “Now we take it one day at a time. Four days, then five, then the rest of our lives. We figure it out as we go.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“Absolutely. But I’d rather be terrified with you than safe with anyone else.”
The DJ starts playing something slow, and suddenly we’re surrounded by other couples. Dean and Jo, wrapped up in each other. Asher and Mads, young and glowing and planning their own wedding. Even Harold and Susan, forty-three years together and finally married. In the corner, Rex and Ruffy are curled up together under a table, exhausted from all the excitement.
Delilah rests her head on my chest, and I hold her close, breathing in the scent of flowers and salt air and home.
I spent twenty years writing songs about losing her.
Now I get to write songs about staying.
Later,much later, we’re standing on the back deck, watching the sun set over the ocean. The party is still going inside, but we slipped away for a moment of quiet.
“Eleanor cornered me earlier,” I say. “Told me she approves.”
“She told me she always liked you. Even back then, when she was warning me away.” Delilah shakes her head. “Turns out she was just scared. Scared I’d get hurt, scared I’d run. Which I did anyway, so I guess she wasn’t wrong.”
“But you came back.”
“I always came back.” She turns to look at me. “That’s the thing I finally understand. Running was never about leaving you. It was about being afraid I wasn’t enough to make you stay.”
“You were always enough.”
“I know that now.” She takes my hand. “It just took me twenty years and a cemetery breakdown to figure it out.”
I laugh, pull her against my side. “Remind me to send your dad’s headstone a thank-you card.”
“He remembered you,” she says quietly. “From all those summers I cried about you. He would’ve said you were too stubborn to give up on me.”
“Smart man.”
“He really was.”
We stand there in comfortable silence, watching the colors shift across the sky. Inside, someone turns up the music, and I hear Hazel’s distinctive cackle followed by what sounds like a conga line forming.
“We should probably go back in,” Delilah says.
“Probably.”
Neither of us moves.
“Five hours,” she says suddenly.
“What?”
“The drive to Asheville. Five hours.” She looks up at me. “You drove five hours on no sleep to find me.”
“Four and a half.”
