24. Mandy

The reception kicked off with a bang. Everyone was on the dance floor, spinning around to some upbeat song, Jackson and I included.

When they introduced the bride and groom, they did it by their first names only. Jack had told me that Tiana was keeping her maiden name, and I liked the rejection of traditional values in that. Instead of a first dance, they joined the rest of us. Tiana had swapped her long, form-fitting white dress for a shorter, more casual one. It hung from her thin frame, white crisp satin, down to her calves with a slit up one thigh. Comfortable enough to dance in, yet still bridal. She looked incredible.

Fred shared Tiana with everyone on the dance floor. Together, they spun, danced, and held hands with every single person who had come to the wedding—all two-hundred-something of them.

"I'm so glad you came!" Tiana shouted at me over the music, her hands interlocked with mine as I spun her on the spot. "I thought maybe you wouldn't."

"Why?" I laughed as she tripped over herself, nearly falling over into the crowd.

"Because my bridesmaids weren't very nice to you."

I shrugged, spinning her again, catching her before she could misplace her feet. She was never very coordinated.

"It's nice to see you and Jack together," she said, giggling at her own words. She knew the engagement was fake, but she, along with everyone else in her family it seemed, didn't care. "It's been a long time since I've seen him like this."

"Like what?"

"Happy."

Off she spun a second later, landing in the arms of someone else, leaving mine empty as Jack danced with his mom across the floor.

I took the moment to catch my breath, making my way through the sea of people and toward where apparently everyone had jointly decided to place their shoes. I wasn't used to wearing heels for solong, and my feet were screaming at me to take them off.

"Mandy."

I turned toward the deep voice as I kicked off one of my shoes into the pile. Jack's dad loomed over me, nearly as tall as his son, the smallest smile on his face as he held out one hand toward me. "Hi, Paul."

"Would you like to dance? Tiana seems a little too busy and Jack's taken Kate from me."

My eyes went wide as I realized what he was asking. It almost felt like I was somewhere I didn't belong, yet was being overly welcomed, nonetheless. "Uh," I hesitated, kicking my other shoe into the pile and righting myself. "Yes. Of course."

He took my hand in his as he led me out to the dance floor, my break far too short, feet still screaming. Paul was an awkward man, always had been, and his dancing was absolutely no different as he tried to slow dance with me in the middle of another upbeat song.

It felt strange dancing with him. He was so similar to Jack in all the weird ways, but also different at the same time. It was odd to think how Jack wouldn't exist without him, how he had physically made him, brought him into this world, turned him into the man I loved and was still falling for.

He let out a light little laugh as his eyes met mine. "I know this is all for publicity and what-have-you," he started, spinning me in place slowly, "but I see the way he looks at you. The way youlook at him. It was always you. Always has been."

A knot formed in my throat as I watched him. I didn't know what to say, was it really that obvious?

"Every other girl he's been with over the years… none of them ever made him light up like you did. Like you do. I know he and I aren't close, and I know he avoids us, but he can't hide how he feels about you. He's never been good at covering it up," he chuckled, his eyes landing on Jack across the floor as he passed his mom off to someone else. "I've just been patiently waiting for both of you to end up back together."

He made a move to let me go, but I pulled him back. "Do you mean that?" It felt too good to be true, too much like an overblown fib.

"Of course I do. I just wish it hadn't taken ten years."

His words hung heavy in my head as he let me go, my bare feet padding across the dance floor toward Jack. I wanted him, needed him to calm me down because damn,that was heavy.

Jackson plucked me from the crowd, spinning me into his arms and planting a kiss on my cheek. These were the arms I belonged in, the ones that felt like home, and the idea that I'd been blind to that made me want to cry for being so stubborn. "Looking a little lost, princess," he smirked, his thumb dragging across my stained lower lip. "Penny for your thoughts?"

I breathed a laugh as the music slowed. "Just… your dad."

"Not like that, I hope."

"God, no," I giggled, kissing the inside of his palm as I looked up at him. "He uh, he said to me, ‘it was always you,' and then a few other things about how he'd wished we'd fall back together someday."

He tried to cover up the humor he found in my words with a little confused grin. "Really? Dad said that?"

I nodded. "Yeah. He said he wished it hadn't taken us ten years," I continued, my cheeks warming. It felt overwhelming to say it out loud myself. "I wish it hadn't taken us ten years, too. I should have reached out. I shouldn't have been so angry when you showed back up. I should have given you the benefit of the doubt, instead of assuming?—"

"Hey, hey," he interrupted, pulling me flush against his chest and kissing my lips, my cheeks, my forehead. "We can't change that. There's no use in wishing it was different, okay? But what we can do," he started walking us back off the dance floor, "is not waste another second."

"What do you mean?" I asked, stumbling over my feet and nearly falling on my ass. He caught me, lifted me, and planted my feet on top of his.

"Let's get some fresh air. You and me," he grinned, taking us through the sea of people, off the dance floor, and over to the pile of shoes. "We can cool off, have a breather. Get away from all the people."

"Why'd she invite so many?" I asked, slipping my shoes back onto my sore feet.

————

The venue itself sat on the side of a mountain, with incredible gardens overlooking the small bit of Rocky Mountain National Park that covered this area. We walked hand in hand down the slope in the brisk air, the sun setting as the music faded in the distance. It really did feel like we were all alone out here.

Although we had been together almost nonstop for the last week, this felt different. Things were becoming real much faster than I thought they would. I'd meant it when I told him that I loved him, but I wasn't sure if I was expecting the reality of what would come from that, the position it would put us in. The temptation to talk about the fake engagement was becoming overwhelming and I needed clarity.

A bench sat at the end of the slope, perfectly set up for a view of the river that ran between the mountains below. It was drying up, too little of the snow atop the peaks melting for it to run as quickly as it normally did. Jack led me over to the bench as he shucked his jacket from his arms and wrapped it around my shoulders.

"You're quiet," he said, motioning for me to sit before he did. He sat beside me, immediately putting his arm around me, pulling me close. I didn't want to say that this all seemed too good to be true, that I was wondering when things would start to go wrong. It seemed everything was fitting together too easily and I wasn't used to that.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I said. "Can I ask you something?"

He chuckled. "Is this our new thing?"

"Maybe."

"Then yes. Anything."

"Say you hadn't left, and you'd proposed, and I'd said yes, and we'd gotten married," I said, snuggling in closer to the side of his chest. "Where do you think we'd be now?"

One of his fingers wrapped itself in a curl of my hair, spinning it in his hand. "Boulder. I'd have still moved for you," he said. "Two kids, a dog or two. A cat. Maybe we'd even be in the house I have now. I never wanted anything as tacky and big as my parents have."

My lips twitched at the mention of two kids. I'd told him back in the day that I wanted two—a boy and a girl.

"We'd have named our daughter Jess. She'd probably end up a bit of a tomboy like her mom. And our son…" he hesitated only briefly, his chin resting on the top of my head… "We'd have named him Arthur."

The backs of my eyes burned as he said it. Arthur, after my dad.

"We'd have filled one of the rooms with pinball machines," he continued, a little smile to his voice that I wished I could see. "And you'd be running your business, I'd be running mine. I would have opened my headquarters in Boulder instead of back in Chicago. You would have helped me design every inch of it, from the ground up. I'd work from home most days so I could be with the kids while you went off to your meetings and consultations."

I wanted that. I wanted that more than I could say.

"We'd spend Christmas with your mom. Tiana would fly in. Then we'd do New Year"s with my parents, and alternate Thanksgiving. You'd probably start a garden and everything would die," he laughed, "but I'd sneak out there in the middle of the night and replant everything, make you think they'd come back to life. I'd take you on trips while your mom watched the kids, anywhere you wanted to go."

"We'd be happy," I choked, my voice cracking as a tear broke free.

"Yes, princess. We'd be happy."

The silence we fell into was more comfortable than any I'd ever experienced. Just him, his breathing, the cold air, the low hum of the music. The setting sun and the mountains. The buzzing in my purse. The quiet whisper of the wind through the aspen trees, the slow trickle in the stream below. The buzzing against my breast in the pocket of Jack's blazer.

The buzzing.

I sat up as it clicked, fishing my phone from my bag as I handed him his. Text after text from Amanda littered my screen and Jackson's, and as I went to swipe it open, a call came through.

"Hello?" I asked warily, turning to Jack and watching his face pale as he scrolled through the texts.

"Fucking finally," Amanda rasped. The sound of sirens filtered in through the phone, accompanied by the wonderful arrangement of flash photography. My stomach dropped. "You need to come home."

"What's happened?"

"Your house. It's trashed, Mands."

And there it was, the other shoe that had to drop.