Rae gave him a final squeeze, attempting energy transfer, and pulled herself out of bed. “I’ll put the omelet in the fridge,” she said.
She did, then put on her shoes and let herself out. Waiting for the elevator, she checked the stock market app on her phone, catching up on news she’d missed overnight in Asian and European markets.
The stocks were mostly red, posting losses that resonated with Rae’s heart. But love wasn’t just the days when everything was green and going up. Love was the red days, too, the losses.
She just had to stay invested, and things would come back up. They always did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LONG ON LOVE, SHORT ON STOCKS
“I’m going long on love,” Rae told Dustin that Saturday after watching Jenn and John walk down the white-rose-petal-strewn aisle as husband and wife. In investing, going long or short meant you were betting for or against something.
“And I’m going short on using stock market terminology at weddings,” Dustin said, mouth crinkling with humor.
Two hundred guests had gathered at the Long Island vineyard to watch the happy couple tie the knot under one of those elegant wooden archways Rae had overheard another guest refer to as anarbor. She and Dustin had sat hand in hand, exchanging meaningful palm squeezes as they both oozed from their eyes.
Rae found Dustin’s crying a reassuring proof point of their compatibility. She couldn’t imagine being with someone whose tear ducts were resilient to the power of unconditional love.
They were now ambling through the vineyard, just the two of them, for a quick breather from the cocktail hour commotion. Recently harvested, the leafy vines were bare of grapes, and fallenleaves masked the grass. The sky wore a veil of clouds, thin enough to be aware of the sun’s attendance.
Rae was in a rented floor-length satin dress, hemmed with safety pins. Her hair was pulled into a chignon, courtesy of Ellen, who’d helped her get ready at the Lorimer Loft this morning. Ellen and Dustin had bonded more successfully than in past attempts, which was to say that Dustin had offered her coffee, Ellen had accepted, and Dustin had delivered a hot cup that Ellen had deemed “nearly Starbucks quality.”
Dustin was in a tux, face newly shaven. He could use another ten pounds on him, but Rae couldn’t help staring at his model-esque appearance. Best of all, his mood had risen.
“There’s just something about weddings, isn’t there,” Rae went on, “that injects the most jaded heart with fresh conviction that this couple is going to defy the odds and prove all the dismal divorce statistics wrong?”
As a by-product of a failed marriage, perhaps she was supposed to be a cynic, but it almost had the opposite effect, making her marvel at how reverently so many people still took their vows.
And after watching John and Jenn stare into each other’s eyes under the arbor, it was impossible for her to wonder whether they were only getting married because they wanted to have kids before Jenn’s eggs ran out. Of course, math had likely factored into their wedding date decision—Jenn was Dustin’s age, and she’d hinted to Rae that they wanted one or two kids—but there was so much more to marriage than breathing a sigh of relief at having found a suitable mate to procreate with, so much more to it than all the meticulous math in Rae’s married-by-thirty, three-kids-by-thirty-five timeline.
Today had helped Rae realize, in both the third and first person, how walking down the aisle to the right person would feel less like checking off an item on a to-do list and more like pinching yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming.
“Take a tissue,” Dustin said, producing a pack from his pocket.
Rae realized she was tearing up again. There was just so much love compressed in one space that if she didn’t let water out of her eyes, her lungs might burst from the fullness of it. “No thanks,” she said. “It goes against my principles.”
“Which principle, specifically?” Dustin asked, with an amused expression.
“The principle that love should not be wiped away or hidden,” Rae said. “And that’s what leaking tears at weddings is—an ode to love in its surest, purest form.”
“You’re leaking poems, not just tears,” Dustin said, his arm around her waist as he shortened his stride to stay in step with her.
“Well, I have a lot of pent-up creative energy after spending all week typing phrases likeundisputed market leaderandproprietary software stack.”
“Bellini would be proud of you.”
“Areyouproud of me?” Rae asked, voice loosened by bubbly wine and bubbly love.
“Exceptionally. Thoughundeservingwould be the better adjective.” He gave her a long look that apologized for those mornings he’d pushed her away as she tried to help him out of bed.
Rae stopped walking and wrapped her arms around him to tell him he was more than worth it. Bookended by parallel vines wrapped around perpendicular stakes, they kissed, then kissed again.
She was as hopelessly hopeful as ever that two halves might sum to more than one.
“If a poem leaks in the vineyard and no one hears it,” Rae posed, once they started walking again, “does it really make a verse?”
“Do the tears hit the ground?” Dustin asked.
