I picked it up anyway. I couldn’t ignore it, considering.
“It’s from my dad,” I explained, still staring at the note without really reading the words.
Xander raised an eyebrow.
Milo,
The salesman told me this was the kind of thing a real professional would use. I hope I’ve gotten this right.
Good luck.
Dad
I read the note a half-dozen times over before passing it to Xander, whose eyes widened as he took it in.
“Wow,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Unexpected.”
“Yeah,” I repeated, staring at the box. “Do you think… do you think this is… forgiveness?”
“You don’t need forgiveness from him,” Xander said without missing a beat. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I smiled wryly. We’d had this talk. Late at night, once or twice. I didn’t regret my decision, I knew I’d made the right choice, but I wished… I wished I hadn’t had to make the choice. I wished thinks had just been easy.
But then if I hadn’t had to make the choice, maybe I would never have known how much Xander meant to me. Maybe I wouldn’t be here right now, at the beginning of a life I loved, with the man I loved, happy.
“I think it’s an olive branch. Or a white flag,” Xander said. “But you don’t have to take him up on it. And you definitely don’t have to take him up on it rightnow.”
“I’ll text him a thank you,” I said, decision already made. I didn’t know what the future looked like for me and Dad, but I was okay with that being something I still had to figure out.
I had Xander, and Dawn, and the twins, and a life so perfect I couldn’t have imagined it for myself just a month ago. Dad… Dad, I’d figure out. I had the space, for the first time in my life, to do that.
“Hey,” Xander turned me around to face him, then pulled me down for a kiss. “You’re so brave and you’re already being a much better man about this than I would be. Love you,” he said.
That was all I needed to hear to stop worrying completely.
“Love you, too.”
“I don’t think I can accept that,” I said as Xander offered me a flute of champagne. “I’m working.”
Muriel’s wedding was exactly the kind of event I would’ve expected her to throw. Tastefully extravagant, with enough flowers to keep Dawn in the black for six months—I knew, because the accounts were my job now—endless drinks, and fully half the town in attendance.
“Only you could grin like you’ve won the lottery while you worked,” he said, putting the glass in my hand anyway. “I’ve got something to tell you that you’ll need it for, anyway.”
“Oh?”
Xander grinned at me. “Well now I’m gonna make you wait,” he teased. “You look like you’re having fun.”
“So much fun,” I confessed. “I’ve got some great shots. I never really thought of wedding photography, but I kinda love it? I love catching people when they’ve forgotten all about me, so the camera picks up something real. I always wanted to take up portrait photography but I was too shy to ask people to take their picture.”
“Explains why I keep catching you taking pictures of me,” Xander said, his grin softening to a look I recognized, one he gave me all the time. One that saidI love you, even when you’re a dork. Especially when you’re a dork.
I shrugged. “Could just be that I like looking at you.”
Xander laughed, pressing a kiss to my cheek while I took a couple of candid shots of the crowd. People were relaxed enough now to ignore me completely, and I felt like I was really getting the hang of capturing the celebratory mood.
