The Wedding Night

A Bonus Chapter from Best Friend’s Sister
by Aurora North

This is the wedding night I couldn’t put in the book.
Sophie. Elle. The apartment above the bookstore. Ten months of waiting and one promise made on the porch of Mercer Books and Brew. Welcome home, baby.

Elle

Sophie drives us home.

That is the first thing I want to put on the record. It is eleven forty-seven on the second Saturday in October, exactly seven hours after the words I marry you, Elle were said out loud in the children’s section of a bookstore on Main Street, and my wife — my wife, the word still buckles me at the knees every time I say it in my head — is driving us home from the reception at her parents’ house in her mother’s old Subaru, because neither of us trusts the other to drive after the amount of champagne the two mothers poured into us at dinner.

I am in the passenger seat. I am still in my white dress. My good boots are off and tucked between my feet on the floor. My hair is half-down because at some point during Theo’s speech — which lasted, I will say for the record, nineteen minutes and made every adult human in the Mercer dining room cry — my hair started escaping the gold barrette and I have not, since, attempted to fix it.

Sophie is in her ivory satin.

Sophie is in her ivory satin and she has one hand on the wheel and the other hand on my thigh on top of the dress, fingers spread, and she is humming something I do not recognize, low, under her breath, and the inside of the car is warm and the streets of Juniper Falls are dark and empty at almost midnight on a Saturday, and we have been married — married, the word is going to follow me around for a year before I stop having to test it in my mouth — for exactly seven hours and twelve minutes.

“Sophie.”

“Mm.”

“You’re humming.”

“I know.”

“What is it.”

“I don’t know. I just — I’m humming. I have been humming for the last hour. I cannot stop. I think it’s a thing my body is doing instead of screaming.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“You are very calm, Elena.”

“I am the opposite of calm, Sophie. I am — I have my hands folded in my lap and I am looking at the road and I am simply vibrating in place.“

She laughs.

She laughs and her hand on my thigh squeezes once, gentle, and she says —

“Almost home, baby.”

She parks on Linden Street.

She parks on Linden Street the way she parked on Linden Street on Christmas morning at five-thirty in the morning when I knocked on the glass and asked her to ask me again. The same spot. The streetlight is the same streetlight. The bookstore window is dark — the Christmas lights are off, because Maggie made me unplug them after the ceremony, because Maggie said those lights are for working hours only, Elena, you and Sophie are going home to do other things — and the apartment above is dark too.

I get out.

I get out of the car in my dress and my bare feet and my coat over the dress because it is forty degrees in October and the grass on the side of Linden Street is cold under my feet, and Sophie is around the front of the car holding her hand out for me, and I take it.

She walks me to the door.

She does not, I will say honestly, carry me. We have been married for seven hours and twenty-one minutes, and we have decided in the brief planning of this moment over the course of the summer that we are not, either of us, going to be carried over a threshold by the other, because we are both too proud to be the one who gets carried and too short to easily carry the other. So we walk. We walk hand in hand to the little unmarked door on Linden, and Sophie unlocks it, and she looks at me, and she says —

“After you, wife.”

“After you, wife.”

“I am not going to fight you about who goes first.”

“Okay.”

“I am also not going to leave you on this sidewalk.”

“Okay, Sophie.”

“Together.”

“Together.”

We push the door open together. We climb the stairs together. We stop on the landing in front of the apartment door at the top, and she — without breaking eye contact, without saying anything, with the kind of grin I have only seen on her face four times in twelve months — she lifts me about three inches off the floor, just to prove she can, and she walks me, lifted, the last two feet through the doorway.

I laugh.

I laugh against her shoulder, and she laughs, and she sets me down on the rug just inside the door and kicks the door shut behind us with her heel, and she says —

“There. We did the thing.”

“Sophie Mercer.”

“What.”

“You picked me up.“

“For two seconds, Elena.”

“For two seconds.”

“I am going to be claiming for the rest of my life that I carried my wife over the threshold of our home on our wedding night.”

“You may claim it.”

“Thank you.”

The apartment is — the apartment is the apartment.

I want to be on the record about this. The apartment has been the apartment for ten months. I have lived in this apartment four nights a week for ten months. I have folded my own laundry on the green couch. I have made coffee at this island with this woman, in pajamas, fifty times. I have stood at her windows and watched snow on Main Street and rain on Main Street and the slow June light at nine thirty at night in summer, and I have, somehow, in all of that, never seen this apartment look like this.

It looks like itself.

The lamps are on, low. The woodstove is going, low — I can smell the small thread of smoke from a fresh log, which means somebody — Maggie, probably, who left the reception twenty minutes before us, who had the keys, who has been a saint — somebody snuck in here twenty minutes ago and got the woodstove going for us so we would not walk into a cold apartment on our wedding night. There are two glasses of champagne already poured on the coffee table next to the couch. There is a small white card propped up against one of them.

I cross the room. I pick up the card.

It says, in Maggie’s small careful handwriting:

Sophie & Elle —

The fire is on. The wine is opened. The neighbors are away. The world is asleep. Take care of each other. With love, M.

I read the card twice.

Sophie reads it over my shoulder. She makes a small sound, the kind of sound she makes only at her mother’s house, only at certain dinners, only when somebody has been kind to her without asking.

She kisses the back of my neck.

“Mags.”

“Mags.”

“I love that woman.”

“I love that woman, Sophie.”

“Read me the line again.”

“Which one.”

“The world is asleep.“

I read it.

She kisses the back of my neck again, slower this time, and her hand slides around the front of me and rests, flat, against my stomach over the white satin of my dress, and she says, very quietly, into my hair —

“Elena.”

“Yeah.”

“I have been thinking about this for ten months.”

“Yeah?”

“Not the wedding night. The taking off the dress. The minute I saw the dress in Brooklyn in August. I have been thinking about taking it off.”

“Sophie.”

“Hold still, baby.”

I hold still.

She undoes the dress.

She undoes the dress slow.

She does not, I want to say for the record, hurry it. She has been waiting for ten months. She has been waiting, in some ways, for thirteen years. We have all night and we both know it. She is going to take her time.

She finds the small concealed zipper at the back, between my shoulder blades. She slides it down. She slides it down one inch at a time, and her mouth is at the back of my neck and her other hand is flat on my belly through the satin and she is — she is breathing very slowly into my hair, controlled, the way she breathes when she is trying not to do something fast.

The zipper reaches my waist.

She stops.

She kisses the spot at the very top of my spine, between my shoulder blades, where the dress has fallen open. She kisses it open-mouthed, slow, and she says —

“This is the spot I have been thinking about since you walked into the children’s section.”

“Sophie.”

“I had to look at this skin all afternoon.”

“Sophie.”

“You have a freckle here.”

“I do not.”

“You do, baby. Right here. I am kissing it.”

“I have never seen that freckle.”

“I will show you in a mirror tomorrow. Tonight it is mine.”

“Okay.”

She slides the dress off my shoulders.

She slides it down my arms — slow, deliberate, with her palms flat against my skin as she goes — and the satin pools at my waist, and she presses against my back, and her mouth finds the side of my neck.

“Wife.”

“Sophie.”

“My wife.”

“Yeah.”

“My wife.“

The dress goes the rest of the way down. It puddles on the rug at my feet. She steps me out of it, careful, and she picks it up and lays it across the back of the green couch, because it cost what it cost and because Sophie, in the middle of doing what she is doing, is still a woman who folds, and then she comes back to me.

I am in white underwear.

I am in white underwear and the small gold chain with the crescent moon and the wedding band and the engagement ring on my left hand, and that is it. That is what she has left me in. She turns me around, slow, with both hands at my hips, and she looks at me.

She looks at me for a long second.

Her eyes go everywhere. They go to my mouth. They go to my throat. They go to the chain at my collarbone. They go to the band of the bra, the lace at the cups, the soft skin of my stomach, the slight line where the dress was tight around my ribs. They go to my hipbones and the white waistband of my underwear and the curve of my thighs. She takes her time.

I let her.

I let her, and I feel my pulse climb in my throat, and I feel — for the first time in my life — that I am a thing being looked at by a person who has been in love with me for thirteen years and who is, finally, allowed to look without limits.

“Sophie.”

“Mm.”

“You — “

“Wait. I am still looking.”

“Okay.”

She looks for another full second.

Then she puts her hand on my jaw, gentle, and she says —

“Bed.”

“Yeah.”

“Now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She undresses too.

She undresses on her way to the bed. She walks me backward through the apartment with her mouth on mine and her hands at the side ties of her ivory satin, undoing them, and the dress slips off her shoulders and down her arms — she lets it fall on the floor, she lets it fall on the floor, which is a thing about Sophie she does only on certain nights — and by the time the back of my legs hit the edge of the bed she is in her own underwear and her own gold chain, and she is unhooking her own bra and dropping it without breaking the kiss, and I am unhooking mine and dropping it, and we lower onto the bed together, skin to skin from the throat down for the first time as wives.

The lamp on her nightstand is on.

She has, I notice, lit a candle. Her bedroom smells like cedar and the small floral note that is her perfume and a thing I cannot identify that I will, tomorrow, find out is a small bowl of orange peels she put on the dresser for tonight specifically.

She lays me down.

She lays me down and she covers me with her body, her thigh sliding between mine, her chest against mine, her mouth at my mouth, and she — she does the thing she does, which is the thing where she settles into me like she has been carrying something heavy and is finally allowed to set it down.

“Wife.”

“Sophie.”

“My wife.”

“Sophie — “

“Say it.”

“What.”

“Say it. Say what I am.”

“Sophie — “

“Elena.”

“You are my wife.”

“Yeah?”

“You are my wife.”

“Again.”

“You are my wife, Sophie Mercer.”

She makes a sound.

She makes a sound I have not heard her make before. Low, deep in her throat, almost a growl, and she kisses me hard, and her hand goes down between my thighs — she does not, I want to say for the record, take her time on this part, which is a thing I have learned about Sophie, which is that Sophie takes her time about almost everything except the moment when she has been told something she has been wanting to be told — and her hand goes down between my thighs and slides under the waistband of my underwear and she finds me, already wet, already so ready I am embarrassing myself, and she breathes out a small reverent —

“Oh.“

“Sophie — “

“You — “

“I have been ready for an hour.”

“An hour.“

“Maybe two.”

“Elena.”

“Theo’s speech, Sophie. Theo’s speech. He talked about you walking down the aisle for ten minutes. I — “

“I was watching you.”

“Yeah?”

“I was watching you cry, and I was watching your face, and I was — Elena. I have been ready since spring.“

“Spring?”

“April. I have been ready since the day I gave you the ring. Don’t fact-check me. Just — “

“Just?”

“Just lie still and let me make love to my wife.”

She makes love to me.

She makes love to me with her fingers first. She slides two of them inside me, slow, all the way, and she strokes me with the heel of her palm and her thumb at the same time, and she watches my face, and when my eyes flutter she says, low —

“Look at me.”

“Sophie — “

“Look at me, baby. I want to see you.”

“Okay.”

“On our wedding night, I want to see you.”

I look at her.

I look at her, and her hair is falling around her face and her mouth is open a little and the candle is throwing soft light against her shoulder and the gold chain at her collarbone is catching it and the wedding band on her left hand is right there, pressed flat against the top of my hipbone, and I —

I come fast.

I come fast, with her fingers inside me and her eyes on my eyes and the wedding band against my hipbone, and I make a sound I have not made before, a long shocked Sophie that turns into a wail at the end, and she works me through it slow — slow, slow, slow, the slowest she has ever brought me down — and when I am still, finally, breathing in pieces, she leans down and she kisses me, and she says against my mouth —

“That was one.”

“What.”

“That was one, baby.”

“Sophie.”

“I have a list.”

“You have a — “

“I have a small list of things I have been planning for tonight. That was the first thing on the list.”

“What’s the second.”

“Mm.”

“Sophie — “

“Patience, wife.”

“Sophie.”

“I am going to put my mouth on you now.”

“Okay.”

She kisses down my body.

She kisses down — slow, the way she did on Christmas Day, the way she has done every night since — and she settles between my thighs and she says, looking up at me from there, with her cheek against my inner thigh —

“Do you remember what I told you in February.”

“In — “

“On the quilt. In front of the picture window. In our cottage.”

“Yes.”

“What did I tell you.”

“You — you said I was going to come on your hand in front of the kitchen window for the rest of my life. And I was going to remember it every time I walked past the window.”

“Mm.”

“Sophie.”

“Tonight I am going to give you a new one.”

“Oh.”

“Tonight I am going to make you come on my mouth in this bed, on our wedding night, and you are going to remember it every time we lie down here for the rest of our lives. Okay?”

“Yes — “

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am. Yes, Sophie, please — “

“Good girl.”

She puts her mouth on me.

She puts her mouth on me and I am — I am gone, I am immediately gone, I am undone in about thirty seconds because I have been wound up since the reception and her mouth is — her mouth is her mouth, her mouth is the mouth I have been thinking about since five forty-two in the morning on December 26 in this exact building one floor down — and I come on her mouth in less than two minutes, with my hand fisted in her hair and my hips lifting off the bed and her arm pinning me down at the waist, and she keeps going, she does not stop, she keeps her mouth on me through the aftershocks, and as soon as I am breathing again she starts again.

The third one is different.

The third one is slower. The third one she takes her time on. She uses her tongue and her fingers at the same time, alternating pressure, watching my face, listening for what I want, learning the new things — because tonight, with the rings on, every part of my body is a slightly new part — and when I come the third time it is not a wave, it is a long slow drowning, the kind of orgasm that does not crest so much as lower me, slowly, into deeper water, and I am crying, openly, when it ends.

She crawls up.

She crawls up over me, her face wet, mine wetter, both of us laughing, and she kisses me — she kisses me hard, with my taste in her mouth, and she does not care, she does not care, she has never cared — and she says against my mouth —

“That was three.”

“Three.”

“Elle.”

“Yeah.”

“There is one more thing on the list.”

“Sophie — “

“It is — it is a thing I bought.”

“Oh.”

“In August. I bought it in August. I have had it in a drawer in my desk at the bookstore. Maggie does not know about it. I want to be very clear that Maggie does not know about it. If Maggie knew about it I would die.”

I laugh.

I laugh into her shoulder, breathless, half-coming-down, and I say —

“Sophie Mercer.”

“Yes.”

“What did you buy.”

She lifts her head off my shoulder.

She looks at me.

Her eyes are very dark. Her mouth is curved at one corner. Her hair is a mess. She looks like a woman who has had her mouth between her wife’s thighs for ten minutes, which she has, and who is about to ask her wife a question, which she is.

“Elena.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember what we talked about in June.”

I do.

I do remember what we talked about in June. We talked about it on her couch. After dinner. With a glass of wine. We talked about it because Sophie, in her careful Sophie way, brought it up — quietly, with no pressure, with the light off the woodstove on her face — and asked me what we both knew was the question. We talked about whether I’d be open, eventually, to her using something between us. I told her yes. I told her I’d been thinking about it. I told her I trusted her. I told her tonight was the kind of night I’d want it to be.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“I remember.”

“Are we — are we — “

“Sophie.”

“Yes?”

“Are you asking me a question on our wedding night.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, Sophie.”

“Yes, you remember, or yes — “

“Yes, yes. I want to. Tonight.”

“Are you sure.”

“I am — Sophie. I am the surest woman in this town. I am — yes.“

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Stay there. I will be right back.”

She gets up.

She gets up and walks across the apartment. She is naked. She is naked and her hair is down and the chain on her neck is the only thing she is wearing, and I am lying on her bed in the candlelight watching her cross her own apartment to her own desk in the corner — the small writing desk she bought from an estate sale in March, the one I helped her carry up the stairs — and she opens the bottom drawer.

She comes back.

She comes back to the bed. She is holding a small black velvet bag.

She climbs back over me. She kneels between my thighs. She holds up the bag.

“I want to be very clear about a couple of things.”

“Okay.”

“This is — this is a thing I picked specifically for us. I read reviews. I asked questions. I bought the most expensive one, because I am — I am that kind of woman.”

“Sophie.”

“I will, if you would prefer, return it to the drawer. We do not have to. I do not need this to happen. I want — I want what you want.”

“Sophie.”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

She opens the bag.

She opens the bag and she takes out — the thing. The thing we talked about. It is — I want to say, for the record, since we are putting things on the record — it is a beautiful object. It is a deep matte teal color. It is the right size — not absurd, not punishing, the kind of thing a thoughtful woman picks for her wife on her wedding night because it is her wife on her wedding night. It is attached to a soft black harness. It is very obviously expensive. Sophie has, evidently, done the research.

I look at it.

I look at her.

I cannot speak for a second.

“Sophie.”

“Mm.”

“Sophie, this is — “

“Yeah.”

“This is teal.”

“It matched my dress.”

“Sophie Mercer.“

“What.”

“You picked it to match your dress?“

“It is a beautiful color, Elena.”

“You picked the color of the strap-on to match your wedding dress.“

“I — yes. Yes I did. And you look at me right now and tell me you don’t love that.”

I do not, in fact, tell her I don’t love it.

I am laughing. I am laughing hard, into my pillow, and Sophie is laughing too, and we are laughing on her bed at twelve forty-six in the morning on the night after our wedding, with a teal silicone strap-on between us that she has had in a drawer at her bookstore for two months, and I am — I am so — I am so happy I cannot — I cannot —

“Sophie.”

“What.”

“Put it on.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Put it on, wife.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She puts it on.

She puts it on with a focus I have not seen her bring to anything in this apartment except baking sourdough. She straps the harness up her thighs. She buckles. She adjusts. She tugs. She glances down at her own body, evaluating, and she nods, satisfied, like a woman finishing a tax return.

She is unbearable.

She is unbearable, and I love her, and she climbs back over me on her hands and knees, and she lowers her body down onto mine, and she is — she is between my legs, she is over me, she is heavier than she usually is, and the thing presses against the inside of my thigh, and I make a small involuntary sound at the feel of it, and she —

She holds very still.

She watches my face.

“Elena.”

“Yeah.”

“Are we still good.”

“We are good.”

“You have to tell me.”

“Sophie. We are — Sophie. Yes.“

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“I am going to take this slow.”

“Okay.”

“It has been a day, baby.”

“It has been a day.”

“Take a breath.”

“Okay.”

She slides into me slow.

She slides into me slow, slow, watching my face, and her hand goes to my jaw and her thumb traces my bottom lip, and she pushes the rest of the way home, and I — I make a sound I have not made in twelve months of doing this with her, a long startled oh, and her face does — her face does the thing she does when I make a sound she likes, the small private smile that is a thing only I have seen, and she says, low —

“Mm.”

“Sophie — “

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, oh, yeah, Sophie — “

“Good girl.”

She moves.

She moves slow, careful, watching me the whole time, with her forehead against mine and her hand splayed flat on my throat, not pressing, just there, warm, present, and the thing between us is — it is exactly as right as she promised, exactly the angle she needs, and she rocks into me slow, deep, again and again, and I —

I am crying again.

Of course I am crying again. I am Elena Rose Harrison and I have cried, in twelve months of being with this woman, more than I cried in the previous twenty-six years combined, and I do not even bother to pretend not to anymore, and Sophie does not pretend not to notice. She kisses my temple. She kisses the wet at my eyes. She keeps moving.

“Sophie.”

“Mm.”

“Sophie — “

“I know, baby.”

“Sophie, I am your wife.“

She — she stops.

She stops, half-buried inside me, and she lifts her head off my forehead and she looks at me, and her eyes are wet, and her mouth is open a little, and she says, very quietly —

“Yeah.”

“You are my wife.”

“Yeah.”

“We are wives.“

“We are wives, Elle.”

“Don’t stop.”

“Okay.”

She moves again.

She moves harder. She moves with intention. The bed is moving with her, in a small steady rhythm, and I have my hands on her shoulders, and one of my hands slides down to the small of her back and stays there, fingertips against the dimples just above her hips, and I — I feel her, I feel every inch of her, I feel the shape of her over me, and the wedding band on her left hand is the metal touching my throat, and she says, against my mouth —

“You can come whenever, baby.”

“Sophie — “

“I am going to keep going. You can come as many times as you want. I am not going to stop. Tell me when you need to stop.”

“Sophie — “

“My wife.”

“Yeah.”

“My — wife.“

I come the fourth time.

I come the fourth time with her hand at my throat and her mouth at my mouth and her hips moving against mine in a slow steady rhythm and the teal between us doing exactly what it was bought to do, and I make a sound that is not a word, and she — she keeps moving. She keeps moving. She keeps her promise. She does not stop.

She brings me up again.

She brings me up again the same way she brought me up the second time on Christmas Day, and the second time on the green couch in April, and the second time in the cottage in February, which is the way she brings me up every time, which is the way I have learned, in twelve months, that this woman does it — slow, patient, deliberate, until I am gripping the sheets with both hands and I am saying her name in a voice that does not sound like mine and she is saying mine in a voice that does not sound like hers and I —

I come the fifth time.

I come the fifth time and it is — I want to say, for the record — it is the longest one, and she rides it out with me, slow, and she stops moving only when I am down, and she presses her forehead against mine, and she breathes, hard, in and out, and her arms shake a little, and I realize —

“Sophie.”

“Mm.”

“You — “

“I’m okay.”

“Sophie. Roll us over.”

“What.”

“Roll us. Roll us, baby.”

“Elle — “

“I have been on my back for an hour. Roll over.“

She rolls us over.

She rolls us over and I am on top of her now, with the thing still inside me, with my hands flat on her chest and her hands at her hips, and she is looking up at me from her own pillow, and her eyes are huge and dark and her mouth is open, and I —

“My turn.”

“Elle — “

“My turn, Sophie.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I move.

I move on top of her. I move slow, until I find the angle, and then I move with intention, and I watch her face — I watch her face go, I watch her face do the thing it does, the open thing, the wrecked thing — and she is, after twelve months, still surprising me, she is still surprising me, because under me on her own bed in the candlelight she looks — for a moment — like a woman who is about to cry, and then a moment later like a woman who is about to laugh, and then she settles into looking like a woman who is, simply, completely overcome, and her hands tighten on my hips and she says —

“Baby.”

“Sophie.”

“Baby — “

“I know.”

“You — “

“I know, Sophie.”

She comes.

She comes under me, with her hands on my hips and her mouth open and her chest flushing pink and her hair fanned out and her eyes locked on mine, and she comes with my name in her mouth — Elle, Elle, Elle — and I keep moving slow, slow, until she is down, until her hands relax, until she can breathe again, and then I lower myself carefully off of her, and she pulls me down against her chest, and she wraps her arms around me, and she says, very soft, into my hair —

“Elena.”

“Yeah.”

“That was — “

“Yeah.”

“That was — “

“Sophie.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, wife.”

“Wife.”

She unhooks the harness.

She unhooks it — careful, slow, with one hand still in my hair — and she sets it on the nightstand, and she pulls the duvet up over both of us, and she tucks me against her chest, and she kisses the top of my head.

The candle is still going.

The lamp is still on.

Outside the window, Main Street is empty and dark. The world is asleep.

We lie there.

We lie there for a long time. My head is on her chest. Her hand is in my hair. Her heartbeat under my ear is slow and steady, going down from where it was, and I am — I am awake, I am wide awake, I am the most awake I have been in my life, but I am also, somehow, the most relaxed.

After a while she says, quietly —

“Elle.”

“Yeah.”

“I have one more thing.”

“Sophie. I am done.“

“Not that. A — a thing to give you.”

“Now?”

“Now. Right now. While we are both — while we are both this.”

“Okay.”

She slides out from under me, careful. She gets up. She puts on a tee shirt. She walks to her dresser. She opens the top drawer. She comes back to the bed.

She is holding a small box.

It is a small, flat, dark green box with a gold ribbon. It is, I will note, suspiciously the size of a journal.

She sits on the edge of the bed.

She holds it out.

“For me?”

“Yes, baby.”

I sit up. I take the box. I undo the ribbon. I open the lid.

It is — it is the journal.

It is the journal she told me about on our anniversary morning. The bound one. From the binder in Rochester. Green leather. Gold endpapers. A ribbon marker. Sixty-three pages of things she has been writing down for a year.

But — wait. It is not — this one is — this one is thicker.

I look at her.

She is — I want to say, for the record — she is grinning a little. A small private grin.

“Sophie.”

“Yes.”

“This is — “

“Open it.”

I open it.

I open to the first page.

The first page says, in Sophie’s small careful handwriting, in dark green ink:

October 11, 2025. The first one.

Today she came home for Christmas. She wore a sweater I had not seen on her. She walked into her parents’ kitchen and she looked at me across a basket of bread and her stomach did a thing. I could see it. I could see her stomach do the thing. And I sat at that table for two hours and I watched her not eat and I thought — oh. Oh, oh.

I look up.

Sophie is — Sophie is, I will say for the record, watching my face in a way I have only seen her watch my face four times in my life.

“Sophie.”

“Keep reading.”

“This is — “

“Keep reading, baby.”

I keep reading.

I keep reading through the first three pages, which are about December — the bookstore the first morning, the kiss against the counter, the pretzels at seven a.m. — and the next page is about January and the next about February and the next is a small list, three lines long, that says:

The way she fixed the gutter on the cottage in March even though I told her three times we had a guy.

The way she showed up with three bags of groceries on April fourth without me asking.

The way she said “yeah” when I asked if she’d marry me. Like there was no other word.

I cannot — I cannot speak.

“Sophie.”

“There are sixty-three pages.”

“Sixty-three.”

“Yes, baby. Every day. Since the first day I knew you were coming home. Since the morning of October eleventh, when my mother called me and said Catherine is having Elena home for Christmas and I want you to bring a pie. I started writing then. I have not missed.”

“Sophie — “

“I want you to read all of it.”

“Sophie, I — “

“Tomorrow. Tonight just the first three pages.”

“Sophie.”

“And then I want you to start your own.”

“My — “

“Your own list. I bought you a journal too. It is in the bookstore office. You will start in the morning. You will write me one thing a day. For our second year. And in three hundred and sixty-five days, on our second anniversary, you will give it to me. And I will read it. And we will both, on every anniversary for the rest of our lives, give each other one of these. Okay?”

“Sophie.”

“Okay?”

I am crying.

I am crying with the book in my lap and the duvet around my waist and the candle still going and the lamp still on, and Sophie pulls me into her chest and she holds me, and I cry into her tee shirt for — I do not know — a while, and she does not say anything, and after a long time I say, very quietly, into her chest —

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, Sophie. Yes. Sixty-three. I will give you sixty-five. I will give you ninety. I will give you — I will give you a book — “

“Elle.”

“What.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, wife.”

“Wife.”

I close the journal.

I set it on the nightstand next to the lamp.

I lie down with her.

She wraps me in.

The candle goes out at some point.

The lamp is still on. The clock on her nightstand says two-fourteen a.m. I am tangled with her, my head on her chest, her arms around me, the duvet pulled up to my shoulder, the journal on the nightstand inside my line of sight. Her breath is slow and even against my hair. I think she is asleep.

I close my eyes.

I lie awake for a long time, listening to her heart, watching the small pulse at the side of her neck where the gold chain disappears, looking at the journal on the nightstand.

I think about the year ahead.

I think about three hundred and sixty-five days. I think about the first thing I am going to write tomorrow morning, which is — already — I know what it is. I am going to write the way she carried me three inches over the threshold and counted it. I think about the second thing — the way she picked the color of the strap-on to match her wedding dress. I am going to laugh out loud writing that one and Maggie will hear me from the cafe and Maggie will know.

I will not tell Maggie.

I will not tell Maggie.

But Maggie will know.

I lie there in the warm dark of my wife’s apartment above her bookstore on Main Street in our hometown, on the first night of our marriage, and I think — for the very last time, before I let it go and finally, finally fall asleep —

This is what I waited for.

This is what we built.

This is the room.

More from Sophie & Elle

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