Part of Your World(105)

Brian nodded at him. “Take her to work. Show her the ambulance. It’ll make you look cool.”

“Alexis won’t let me. And this fucker won’t get me the day off. Man, I wingmanned both of you idiots and this is the thanks I get?”

I looked at my watch. “If by wingmanning you mean you made us both look good in comparison, yes, you wingmanned us.”

Brian snorted.

Doug took a swallow of his Fanta. “I don’t even want to think about the shitty dick pics that’d be floating around if it wasn’t for me. You owe your entire marriage to my expertise. You know what? Fuck you. And don’t ask me to watch your dumb dog again. I’m not doing it.”

I laughed.

Alexis finished up talking to Doreen over by the jukebox and started making her way across the bar to me. I smiled as I watched her coming.

We hadn’t told anyone yet. She wanted to wait until she was twelve weeks along first. It was way too early to notice the bump, and she was wearing my camo hoodie so you wouldn’t have seen it even if you could. But it made me grin ear to ear knowing what I knew, and that made her grin ear to ear too.

We’d already decided that our kids would be Montgomery Grants. That way they could pick whatever legacy they wanted.

It was almost a year from the day that I first laid eyes on my wife. A beautiful woman in a fancy car, nose first in a ditch, talking to me through a one-inch crack in the window.

My life was so different now. I couldn’t have ever imagined how that chance encounter could lead to all this. How happy I’d be because of that damn raccoon.

We’d had the wedding three months after the gala. Alexis wanted to get married before the construction of the clinic was complete and she’d be too busy to leave for our honeymoon. The whole town shut down for it.

I’d made our wedding rings from the wood of the banister in the house. I etched them to match and waterproofed them. I thought maybe Alexis would want a diamond, and I could have sprung for one with how well my business was doing, but she loved the idea of me making the rings.

We got married at Doug’s barn. Jane’s catered, and Alexis ordered me a groom’s cake from Nadia Cakes that looked like a raccoon to commemorate how we met.

Alexis’s brother and his famous wife came, so we had to get three hundred and fifty NDAs signed.

I really liked Derek and Nikki. They flew in from Cambodia and stayed with us at the house for two weeks.

Alexis’s dad didn’t come to the wedding.

We knew he wouldn’t. But her mom did, and we both appreciated that she had made the effort. We knew it wasn’t easy for her to go against her husband. But she wasn’t willing to lose her kids because of him. Alexis said her mom had been to therapy too, which my wife was really happy about.

Dr. Jennifer Montgomery was a nice woman. And I think she liked her daughter-in-law, Nikki, too. They had quite a bit in common, being the philanthropists that they are.

Alexis’s mom stayed with us for a week. And when she left, she gifted us with a month-long honeymoon. It was a thoughtful present on many levels. But mostly because it was meant for me. Alexis told her mom I’d never been anywhere. So she sent us to Italy, Paris, Greece, London, and Ireland. It was all first-class and five-star hotels. A trip of a lifetime. We’d had a blast.

Alexis always gave me the window seat on the plane, since I’d never flown before. We ate at some of the best restaurants in the world. I’d learned which fork to use and I mastered Uber and those key card thingies that open hotel room doors. We saw ancient ruins and castles and spent days on white sand beaches. I came back even more in love with my wife than I was when we left, which was hard to imagine.

We were happy to be home though—and so was Doug, because he’d watched Hunter while we were away, and our stupid dog kept bringing live rodents into the house.

Alexis closed the distance between us, and I slipped a hand around her waist. “Ready to go?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’m feeling a little ick,” she said quietly.

“Okay.” I looked up at the guys. “Hey, we’re heading out.”

“See ya,” Brian said, still smiling at his girlfriend.

Doug nodded at my wife. “So when’s Briana coming down again? She still single?” He bounced his eyebrows.

Alexis laughed. “Doug, if she knew where you lived, she’d burn your house down.”

“What?” He looked back and forth between us. “She was totally into me!”

Everyone started cracking up.

Doug had followed Briana around with his guitar at our wedding. She’d found a spray bottle full of water and used it for the rest of the night to squirt him when he got too close. At least Nikki showed him how to tune the guitar while she was here…

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, still chuckling. I took my jacket off the back of the barstool and put it around my wife’s shoulders and walked her out.

We pushed into the brisk April night air.

We’d walked here for the exercise, so we were walking home. I took her hand, and she hugged my arm and put her head on my shoulder.

“How you feeling?” I asked.

“I’m just tired.”

“I think you should party less.”

She laughed. “Ha. I had that vaccine clinic today. I must have done two hundred shots. And not the fun kind.”