Chapter 131 Exchange Of Vows

Chapter 131 Exchange Of Vows
I'd been to two weddings in my life before this one.

My cousin's, when I was eleven, which I remembered mostly for the cake I'd eaten too much of and regretted immediately.

And Harper's and mine. City hall. Four people. Done in twelve minutes. The officiant had mispronounced my last name and Rose had been the size of a secret and Harper had worn a white dress she'd found two days before and I'd thought — standing there watching her walk toward me across twenty feet of municipal flooring — that I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life and probably never would.

I'd been wrong about the probably never would part.

Because Maya Park was standing at the front of that heritage building in Gastown looking at Simone Kwon with the expression of someone who had finally arrived somewhere they'd been walking toward for a very long time and the look on Simone's face looking back at her was the kind of thing that made you understand why people had been writing about love for as long as people had been writing about anything.

Simone didn't cry.

She just looked at Maya the way you look at something you've been waiting for long enough that seeing it finally arrive doesn't feel like surprise. It feels like recognition. Like your mind's saying; "there you are.”

Maya, for her part, was crying enough for both of them.

Rose was on my lap.

She'd climbed up during the processional with the empty basket and positioned herself with her back against my chest facing outward, watching everything with the serious attention she gave to things she'd decided were important.

"Maya's crying," she whispered.

"I know," I whispered back.

"Why?"

"Because she's happy."

Rose considered this. The concept of crying from happiness was one she was still working through — it contradicted her current understanding of how crying operated.

"Oh," she said finally. Like she was filing it away for later review.

……….

The officiant was a woman in her sixties with the kind of voice that made everything she said sound considered and true. She'd clearly known Maya and Simone for some time — there was familiarity in how she spoke about them, specific details that weren't generic ceremony language but actual knowledge of who these two people were and what they'd built together.

She talked about love not as a feeling that arrives fully formed but as a choice made repeatedly in ordinary moments — in the patience and the showing up and the staying even when staying is the harder thing.

When it came time for the vows Maya pulled out a folded piece of paper from somewhere and unfolded it with hands that were shaking slightly.

"I had this whole thing written," she said, looking at the paper. "I rewrote it eleven times. Simone knows about the eleven times because I read her most of them at two in the morning when I couldn't sleep and she listened to all of them without complaining, which is honestly the most marriage-ready behavior I've ever witnessed."

Laughter moved through the room.

Simone smiled.

"But standing here now," Maya continued, "looking at you — I don't actually want to read what I wrote. Because what I wrote was about the past. About how we got here. And I already know how we got here." She folded the paper back up. "What I want to say is about what comes next."

She took a breath.

"Simone. I spent a long time thinking love was something that happened to you. Something you fell into or out of without much agency in the matter." She paused. "You showed me it's a decision. Every single day, a decision. And every single day since I met you, choosing you has been the easiest decision I've ever made." Her voice cracked slightly. "I want to keep making it. For the rest of my life. In all the ordinary moments and all the hard ones and all the ones we can't see yet. I choose you. Today and every day after it."

Simone took a moment before she spoke.

When she did her voice was steady in the way of someone who had prepared for this and was going to deliver it properly because that was who Simone Kwon was — someone who showed up prepared and then stayed anyway when things went sideways.

"Maya. You are the most exhausting person I have ever loved." She said it so warmly that the room laughed. "You have opinions about everything. You reorganize spaces you don't live in. You send voice notes at six in the morning. You rewrote your vows eleven times and then didn't use them." A pause. "And every single one of those things is why I'm standing here. Because a person with that much investment in getting things right — in getting everything right — chose me. Keeps choosing me." She took Maya's hands. "I'm not going to waste that. Not a single day of it."

The room was very quiet.

Rose had stopped wiggling.

I looked down at her and she was watching the front of the room with an expression I recognized — the one she wore when she was absorbing something, taking it in, filing it somewhere internal for reasons she couldn't have articulated yet.

She was three years old and she was watching two people choose each other in front of everyone they loved and something about it had stilled her completely.

I pulled her slightly closer.

She let me.

………

After the rings and the officiant's pronouncement and the kiss that made the room erupt in the particular joyful noise of people who had been waiting for this moment and were not going to be quiet about it, after Maya and Simone walked back down the aisle together through a shower of petals that came from somewhere because apparently there had been a backup supply that nobody had told Rose about, which would have been useful information earlier….

After all of that, in the slightly stunned and celebratory shuffle of people finding their way from ceremony to reception, I felt Rose tug my hand.

I looked down.

She was holding out the empty flower basket to me.

"I did it," she said simply.

Not to the room this time. Not to anyone else. Just to me.

I crouched down to her level.

"You did," I said. "You really did."

She studied my face for a moment with the careful attention she'd always had — this child who had been reading me since before she had words for what she was reading.

Then she put both arms up.

I picked her up and held her and she rested her head on my shoulder and looked out at the room full of people celebrating and I stood there in the middle of all of it feeling the particular fullness of a day that had given you more than you expected and you hadn't even gotten to the best parts yet.

Ryan appeared beside me.

"You good?" he said.

I looked at Harper across the room, laughing with Maya, sage green dress, tears on her face, the most herself I'd ever seen her.

"Yeah," I said. "More than good."

Rose patted my shoulder once, generous and unbothered, and went back to watching the room