The Wedding Date, page 27
She smiled, thinking back to her first bite into the still-warm doughnut.
“They did.” She gave up the fight and leaned into his hand for a moment. “Drew, what are you doing here?”
He dropped his hand. It was probably for the best, but she still missed his touch.
“I’m here . . . Shit, I had a whole beginning to this, and now I’ve forgotten it all.” He took a deep breath. “Everything went wrong that weekend.”
Now she reached out and grabbed his hand. She couldn’t help herself.
“Drew, that’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have started that fight at the party. And I shouldn’t have left without saying good-bye. I’m sorry. I should have just talked to you like a grown-up.”
He tightened his grip on her hand when she went to pull away.
“I’m sorry, too. I should have been honest about how I felt.”
She didn’t want to hear the rest. Not tonight. Probably not ever.
“No, don’t worry about it. You didn’t have to come all the way up here about that. I know how you feel; it’s okay.” Shit, was she going to start crying again? At this point, she couldn’t even be embarrassed about it.
“No, Alexa. You don’t know.” He released her hand and took a step back. “I never told you this, but I changed my flight back to L.A. that day, so I could spend more time with you.”
She looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. Why was he telling her something she already knew?
“I knew that. I was right there when you changed it.”
He shook his head.
“No. Not after the conference. After the wedding.”
She let her purse slide off her shoulder and onto the floor. Her mind was a jumble. She felt drunk. Was it all of the doughnuts and pizza? Or maybe the many cups of coffee?
“What do you mean, after the wedding? Your flight was that night, right?”
He shook his head.
“My flight was at noon. When you were in the bathroom that morning, I changed my flight so I could spend the day with you. I should have realized then that I could never get enough of you.”
What was he saying? Why was he saying this now?
“Drew, I . . .”
He reached for her hand again.
“No, let me finish, let me get this out. You . . . I . . . Alexa, I can’t imagine my life without you. I haven’t been able to since I first met you in that elevator. When I woke up that morning and you weren’t there . . . it broke me. I tried to live without you, but I couldn’t. I can’t.” He took a deep breath. “Alexa, I love you. I love you so much.”
She tried to release his hand, but he held on tight. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Drew, I . . . Are you sure?”
He smiled and took another step toward her.
“I’ve never been more sure about anything.”
• • •
Telling Alexa that he’d loved her hadn’t been as hard as he’d thought it would be. As a matter of fact, he wanted to keep saying it, over and over. But did she feel the same way? He couldn’t tell. All he knew was her hand was in his and she was here with him.
He might as well tell her everything.
“Look.” He held out his phone to her. She looked at him with a question in her eyes but took it anyway. “This is how sure I am. Read this email.”
She cleared her throat and looked at his phone. He was still gripping her hand.
“Drew Nichols, Children’s Hospital of Oakland is pleased to offer you the position of . . .” Her voice trailed away. “Is this for real?”
He took the phone out of her hand.
“Very much for real. I called my mentor on Sunday. He told me when I saw him before the wedding that there was going to be a job opening up here and tried to get me to apply for it. I said no then, but . . . I changed my mind. It was a little more complicated than he’d implied, and I can’t start until—”
She threw her arms around him and buried her head in his chest. She was crying again, but he hoped that these were good tears. He pulled her tight against him.
“I’m only going to take it if you want me to,” he said against her ear. “Please tell me you do?”
She turned her head and pulled his head down to hers for a long kiss. Eventually, he pulled back and wiped the tears from her face with his thumb. My God, he’d missed her so much.
“Tell me.”
She smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling through her tears.
“Yes, I want you to take it.”
He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her hair.
“Don’t you have something else to tell me?” he said, his lips a breath away from hers.
“I love you.” The tears streamed from her eyes as she said it. “Oh, Drew, I love you so much. I’ve been trying to deny to myself all week how much I love you.”
He brushed her tears away.
“I’ve been trying to admit to myself how much I love you.”
He held her face in his hands and kissed her, their tears mingling with each other’s, their bodies fitting together like they were made to be just like that.
“Mizz Monroe?” The voice came from the doorway. Alexa put her head on his shoulder, laughing into his mascara-stained shirt before she turned toward the security guy. “I was going to lock up. Should I, um . . .”
Alexa cleared her throat.
“Sorry about this, Stu. You can lock up. Let me just get my stuff.”
She picked her purse back up from where she’d dropped it on the ground and took Drew’s hand.
“Let’s go home.”
He squeezed her hand and walked with her out the door.
“Aren’t you forgetting that we have to meet up with everyone from your office?”
She stopped and laughed as she wiped her face with the sleeve of her suit jacket.
“I can’t believe it, but I had forgotten that. I’ll text Theo; he’ll understand. Olivia can come over . . . a little bit later.”
Drew shook his head. He wanted nothing more than to take her straight home and make up for all of their lost time, but he knew she’d regret missing out on this night with her crew.
“No, no, you can’t not go. This is your night of triumph!” He took her heavy bag from her and tossed it over his own shoulder.
She smiled up at him.
“See, this is why I love you.”
He laughed.
“This is it? Of all the things it could be, me sending you out to have drinks with your coworkers instead of locking you in the bedroom with me is why you love me?”
She reached for his hand and squeezed it.
“Yeah. It is.”
He lifted their joined hands and kissed hers.
“Now, let’s get you into the bathroom to wash your face before your whole office sees you with raccoon eyes. Plus, if you walk in there looking like that, your sister is going to draw and quarter me.”
She laughed.
“Come with me upstairs to my office so I can repair myself.” She pulled his face down so she could whisper in his ear. “And you know, my office door locks, so no one will interrupt us there.”
He liked the sound of that. He gestured to the hallway with his free hand.
“Lead the way, Monroe.”
Epilogue
“Why can’t Carlos meet us at the restaurant?”
They walked into the Fairmont, almost a year after they’d met there. Carlos was in town and was staying there for some reason, instead of one of the more convenient hotels downtown. Drew had insisted on meeting him in his room, instead of at the restaurant where they were having dinner. Alexa was trying not to complain about it, but it was a Thursday night at seven, she’d had a long day, and she was ready for a cocktail and an enormous plate of French fries.
“He needs your opinion on his outfit. I don’t know.” Drew had been distracted their whole drive there and kept checking his phone. She knew he had a few patients he was worried about, but this was unusual for him.
She pressed the button for the elevator and looked up at him and smiled, ready to reminisce about their elevator, but he wasn’t looking at her; he was looking off in the distance. Okay. She tried not to take it personally.
In the past year, they’d had their ups and downs. They’d learned how to deal with two busy careers and a relationship, too; what the other person was like on an early Monday morning and a stressful Thursday night instead of just their idyllic weekends; that she never made the bed; that Drew always left the lights on.
They’d also learned how to talk to each other about their feelings, even when they were scary. And throughout everything, they’d loved each other. Those two things helped them get over all of the bumps, big and little.
The corner elevator—their elevator—opened, and he grabbed her hand and led her inside. She looked up at him to ask another question, saw something out of the corner of her eye, and turned.
There were bouquets of flowers lining the elevator. Deep red roses, fat pink peonies, bright orange gerbera daisies, golden yellow daffodils, purple lilacs, all in vases along the floor. In one corner was a picnic basket, in another was an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne inside, and a pink bakery box was in the middle.
“Drew? What’s . . . Is this . . . Are we . . .” She didn’t even know what to ask him. At first, she’d thought it must be some mistake, but then she saw the way he was smiling at her, looking relaxed for the first time that day. He took both of her hands in his, and her whole body warmed at his touch.
“Alexa. I love you. I love you so much. You know that, right?”
She nodded, tears springing into her eyes. Damn this man for always making her cry. Except now, almost always, it was from joy.
“Me, too. I love you so much, too.”
The elevator shuddered to a stop, and she looked around and laughed.
He kissed one of her hands.
“I know you do. We met right here, three hundred sixty-four days ago, and it was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He pulled her down to the floor, where they sat cross-legged, like they had the last time they’d been stuck in an elevator together. “Alexa Monroe, will you marry me?”
A tear slid down her cheek. At least she’d switched to waterproof mascara ever since Drew had moved to Berkeley.
“Yes, I’ll marry you. I would LOVE to marry you.” She pulled his face toward hers, and they kissed until they were lying on the floor, the flowers surrounding them.
He pulled back and smiled at her, then sat bolt upright.
“Wait! I forgot something!” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a jewelry box. “Do you like it? I had Maddie give me some ideas, but if you . . .”
She held out her left hand for him to slide the ring on her finger. She glanced down and saw the sparkle but couldn’t keep her eyes off the look on his face. She couldn’t remember ever having been this happy in her life.
“The ring is perfect, and I can’t believe Maddie was able to keep this secret from me.” She looked around at the elevator. “How did you manage to do this? How long do we get the elevator for? Wait. Carlos isn’t really upstairs, is he?”
He intertwined their hands and laughed.
“Nope, safe and sound in L.A. We only get the elevator for thirty minutes, and that took a lot of sweet-talking to the hotel manager and implied promises of having a wedding here. I wanted to do this tomorrow, on our actual elevator anniversary, but I had to compromise. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind a single thing right now.”
He grinned at her.
“I’m going to open that bottle of champagne as soon as I manage to let go of you. We don’t have much time to drink it.”
He seemed in no hurry to let go of her, though, and she was in no hurry for him to let her go. He wrapped his arms around her again, and they sat there on the floor together, her head against his chest. After a minute or so, he gestured to the picnic basket and said the magic words.
“I brought the fancy cheese and crackers this time.”
Photo by Andrea Scher
Jasmine Guillory is a graduate of Wellesley College and Stanford Law School. She is a Bay Area native who lives in Oakland, California. She has towering stacks of books in her living room, a cake recipe for every occasion, and upwards of fifty lipsticks. Visit her online at jasmineguillory.com and twitter.com/thebestjasmine.
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Jasmine Guillory, The Wedding Date
