Chapter Twenty-Seven
Trey
The flight is packed, and we’re in the second to last row. I peer at my boarding pass once more, then at Harley’s, as we wait for the family ahead of us to stow their luggage. The flight attendant helps them find room in the cramped compartments.
“Crap. You’re in 34E. I’m in 35E,” I say over Harley’s shoulder when I notice the seat assignments.
She pushes out her bottom lip. “Bummer. I’ll have to write you notes and slip them into your seat like in high school.”
“Make mine dirty.” I place our bags in the overhead.
“Have a good flight,” she says, as she takes 34E.
“You too.”
As I buckle my seatbelt, the woman next to me clears her throat. She’s knitting something silvery, maybe a sparkly scarf or something, and her dark blond hair is pulled into a clip. “If your wife doesn’t mind a middle seat, I’d be happy to switch,” she offers.
“Oh, she’s not my wife,” I say, then quickly realize the semantics aren’t important. “But thank you. I think she would like that.”
I lean forward to tap Harley. “This awesome lady is offering to switch. Want to sit with me?”
She raises an eyebrow. “I believe the offer was for your wife,” she teases.
“Then you should just be my wife,” I say, and once the words have been said, I realize how absolutely f*cking perfect they sound. And how I might not have a ring, and I haven’t planned this, but hell, if this isn’t what our life together is all about, then I don’t know what is, because I can’t think of a better moment. That’s what she’s been teaching me, in her own quiet way. To live each day, to embrace it, to seize the moment, because that’s all we ever have.
Moments. With each other. Without regret.
I unbuckle my seat belt, stand up, and then bend down on one knee in the aisle as the flight attendant adjusts more bags for the passengers across from us. I take Harley’s hands in mine. “Marry me,” I say. “Be my wife.”
Her eyes are as round as saucers, and they shine brightly with happiness. I don’t doubt for a second what she’ll say, and it’s an amazing feeling to have this kind of certainty in another person. Still, I want to hear her yes.
“You’re proposing to me on an airplane?”
“Why the hell not?”
The noises quiet down, and everyone is watching us. The flight attendant’s hands are poised on a suitcase, the gray-haired dude in the seat in front of Harley has stopped texting and is staring, and the woman next to me has popped up to watch, goggle-eyed.
“Like there’s any other answer but yes,” Harley says as she cups my cheeks and presses her lips against mine.
Then there is clapping and cheering all around, and a few rows ahead, I hear a guy shout, “Where’s the ring, man?”
“No ring,” I say to everyone, but as I pull up Harley from her seat and into the aisle, I point to her belly. “But we’ve got this to seal the deal.”
“That’s a commitment right there,” the guy calls out.
“Yeah, it is,” I say, and then I kiss her once more.
“When’s the wedding?”
It’s the same guy again, and this time I look over to him. He’s a few years older than me, but not by much. He wears hipster glasses and a hoodie.
“I don’t know. She just said yes.”
“How about now?”
I don’t say anything at first. I’m not sure what to say. But Harley pipes up, shouting to the guy. “Why? Are you a minister or something?”
He nods. “Got ordained online to perform my brother’s wedding. If you want a wedding in the sky, let me know.”
Then he disappears into his seat, and Harley joins me, while the blond woman takes my wife-to-be’s seat.
“I can’t believe you just proposed to me on a plane,” she says, with a smile that can’t be erased.
“Sometimes, you just have to live each day. That’s what someone I love madly once told me,” I say, nuzzling her nose.
“Excuse me, sir.”
I turn to the flight attendant.
“You need to get buckled in,” she says. “Oh, and congratulations. Now I have a good story to tell my friends on my layover in New York tonight.”
The flight attendant starts to leave, but Harley reaches for her arm. “It could be a better story possibly . . .”
* * *
Harley wears jeans, combat boots and a T-shirt. I know she’d look gorgeous in a wedding dress, but this is even better than white. I stand in the middle of the aisle, next to Andrew, the newly ordained minister, who also runs an Internet startup, and whose brother is a bio-tech engineer.
The bride carries a bouquet of pretzels and peanuts, tied together with silver yarn, courtesy of her former seat inhabitant. The flight attendant holds up my iPhone, playing Arcade Fire’s “Tunnels” as our wedding song.
The band sings about digging a tunnel from my window to yours and that feels fitting for Harley and me.
“It’s on airplane mode,” the flight attendant says, so the other passengers know she’s not breaking the rules.
We are flying high, ten thousand feet over Arizona, and my pregnant girlfriend is about to become my wife. Fine, I know we will need to get a marriage license and make it official before the state of New York, but this is our kind of wedding.
When Harley reaches me, she turns and hands the bouquet to the blond-haired knitter who’s become her impromptu maid of honor.
Andrew clears his throat. “Dear passengers of Flight 305 from San Diego to New York City, we are gathered here by chance, circumstance, and Expedia, in many cases, for the unplanned and unexpected wedding of Trey Westin to Harley Coleman. But then, as the groom has told me, other things between them were a bit unexpected, too,” he says, staring pointedly at Harley’s bump, and punctuating his comment like a stand-up comedian. “So, before we get in too much trouble with the captain, let me move onto the details quickly.” He looks to me. “Do you, Trey, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to love her and cherish her, in sickness and health, for richer or for poorer, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?”
“I do,” I say, and you’d need some serious cleaner to wipe the industrial-strength grin off my face right now. I can’t believe I’m almost twenty-two years old, I have a scar on my face from how I used to debase the marriage vows of others, and now I’m getting hitched to a girl I inked one night, went with her to sex and love addiction therapy, then knocked her up, and now we’re going to move across the country to raise our kid.
“And do you, Harley Coleman, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to love him and cherish him, in sickness and health, for richer or for poorer, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?”
“I do,” she says, and then bounces once on her toes and sneaks in a quick kiss.
Andrew gives her a chiding look. “Now, now,” he says playfully. “Rings, please.”
The blond knitter opens her palm and holds out two paper rings that I drew a few minutes ago. On each piece of paper is a heart with an arrow in it, and the rings are held together with Band-Aids, since that’s all the flight attendant had.
I slide a paper ring onto Harley’s ring finger, and she does the same to me.
“And now by the power vested in me by the awesomeness of the Internet and my $35 license to become an ordained minister, I now pronounce you man and wife, and you may kiss the bride. Or the bride may kiss you again.”
Harley threads her hands in my hair, and whispers against my lips. “I love you so damn much,” she says, before she silences any reply with a kiss.
Four hours later, she’s asleep on my shoulder when the captain announces that we’re about to make our descent into New York. Other passengers stand up to make final bathroom trips, and a short, chubby bald guy walks down the aisle to the restroom. Something about him seems familiar, but I can’t place him. Maybe he’s a customer, but in his button-down shirt and dress slacks he hardly seems the tat type. He could be a friend of my dad’s, though my dad doesn’t have many friends. I tense briefly, hoping he’s not the husband of some woman I used to screw. That would be just my luck. I’ll land another scar, a matching one on the other cheek.
I close my eyes briefly, but after I hear the door unlock to the bathroom I can sense someone standing close to me. I open my eyes, and he’s there, in the aisle, staring at Harley.
At my wife.
And holy f*cking shit, I know why I recognize him.
It’s Mr. Stewart from the gala last summer, where I stole Harley away from him. My heart clenches, and my veins run with ice.
He smiles, but it’s not a happy look. More like a cold sneer, as his gray eyes meet mine. “Congratulations, Mr. Trey Westin,” he says slowly, making sure to enunciate each word, “on your wedding to Layla.”