Good Time(64)

“I don’t want to fast-pass with you, Payton. I don’t want to skip anything, I want to experience every moment.”

“You do?”

“I do. You and your vivid imagination have gotten me thinking.”

“I have?”

“You have. And I want it all. I want to stand in line with you. I want to experience life with you, Payton, all of it. Every single thing. Even when the dog throws up at three AM and one of us has to get out of bed to deal with it.”

“We have a dog?” I ask.

“We do.” He nods. “And kids. The dog destroys one of their science projects the night before it’s due, but it’s fine because after a lot of tears we stay up all night fixing it. We drink a bottle of wine and laugh about what an asshole our dog is.”

“We have kids?”

“A bunch of kids.” Vince smiles and I think he must be right. I’ll be knocked up around the clock as long as he looks at me like that. Then he pauses. “At least I think we do. Do we?”

“We definitely do. We would make really beautiful babies, it was the first thing I noticed about you.”

“Was it?” His lips twitch in amusement.

“Mmm-hmm,” I murmur, biting my lip to hold back a ridiculously sized smile. I like this, all of it. It’s nice to have someone else do the imagining for once. Really nice.

“We have a date night, every Tuesday,” he continues. “We can’t do the weekends because of all the soccer and ballet and that one kid who insists on taking a sixteen-week course in ceramics, which is only available clear across town, at eight AM on Saturdays.”

I nod, because that’s exactly how I’d imagine it too.

“Our babysitter cancels on our anniversary”—he shrugs—“but it’s fine because we’ve got all those kids and we’re tired. So we stay home and order pizza and watch something on Netflix.”

“No.” I shake my head, fighting back a smile. “We never miss an anniversary because Canon is our backup sitter. We leave him with our gaggle of children while we go to dinner because we like to live on the edge like that.”

“Agreed.” Vince nods. “Lydia would be too logical a choice to fill in. We like the messy choice.”

“We love the messy choice. We’d come home to at least one kid with gum in their hair and a kitten we didn’t own when we left.”

Vince smiles and nods. “At least one kitten. Maybe three. They’d be matching kittens and it’d take us a week to figure out there were three of them.”

“Or something worse, like a drum set for toddlers.”

“Fucking Canon.” Vince shakes his head.

“So how do we get all that?” I ask, because imagining is fun, but reality is a lot tougher. Is he really committed to forever?

“It won’t be the easiest thing we’ve ever done,” Vince answers. “We’ll have to put the work in. Every day.”

“I like the sound of us.”

“It’ll be easier for me, obviously.”

“Why is that? Because you’re less crazy than me?” I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, worried he still thinks I’m nuts.

“No. It’ll be easier for me because I get the better end of the deal; I get you. Every day I get to spend with you is a win for me.”

“Oh.” He’s doing that thing where he looks at me, in that way like I fascinate him. In that way like he loves me. Every crazy bit of me. “So you want to stay married to me? A random girl who maybe sorta tricked you into marrying her while you were drunk?”

“I’ll tell you a secret, Payton.”

“What’s that?”

“I wasn’t that drunk.”

“You weren’t?”

“I was sober enough to know better, and just drunk enough not to care. I was captivated with you, and yes, it was the most irresponsible and out-of-character thing I’ve ever done in my life, but fuck it, I wanted to see where it was going to lead.”

“You could have just let me get the tattoo and asked me out like a normal person.”

“What kind of story is that for our grandchildren?”

I nod, because that’s a very valid point.

“So, Mrs Rossi, do you agree to stay married to me? Through the good times and the bad. Through the dogs who will vomit, and the kids who will fight and the babysitters who will cancel. Through all the things that haven’t happened yet and that we’ll never see coming. What do you say? Do you vow to stick it out with me and stay married till death do us part?”

“Because you’re in love with me?”

“I’m so in love with you,” he responds as he pulls something out of his pocket and drops to one knee. It’s a ring, and it’s beautiful. A large round center diamond surrounded by a halo of tiny diamonds. It sparkles in the light of the fire and I love it, but I love that he picked it out and made the gesture even more. “Love is a word that means infatuation and lust and respect and devotion,” he says as he slips the ring onto my finger. “Tenderness and affection and friendship and passion. I feel all of those things for you, Payton, and I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you just how much if you’ll agree to stay and be mine.”