“After the kids leave the table,” says Tanner. It pains me how much like a surrender his voice sounds. “They always do. Dinner, dessert, then can’t seem to get away from the table fast enough to play their games.”
“We’ll tell them after,” I agree, returning to the bed, sitting next to him. “In our own way. Together.”
“Together,” he agrees softly.
Then falls silent again.
I glance at him. “What if this actually saves us? To end this and … and go back to being justyouandme? Before the pressure. Before … everything else.”
So much I omit with those two words.
Everything else.
He peers at me softly. “You know I love you, right?”
“Yes. Of course. I love you, too.”
“Like … in the big way?” he goes on. “The way that ain’t no damned thing in the world can come between? You’re the center of my whole universe.”
“Tanner.”
“I just … want you to know that.” He swallows, then takes my hand. “Before we do this.”
I look down at our hands. “Eight good years.”
“Eight good years,” he murmurs back, almost automatically. Then as quickly, he adds, “Are you sure, Billy? Are you totally sure we can’t—?”
I bring my arms around him right then and rest my head on his shoulder. He doesn’t move for a while. Then I feel him gently reciprocate my embrace.
We just stay like that for what feels like hours, our words and thoughts kept inside.
If we have any at all.
Nineteen hours later, in the main house on the Strong ranch where Tanner’s parents live, just a walk down a path from ours on the same property, we’ve finished up dinner. My parents are three drinks in, laughing way too much and sharing something funny that happened at Biggie’s Bites, our family diner. Tanners’ parents have a nice buzz going, too—the lively Mayor Nadine Strong, who just wrangled all of us into a sudden selfie mid-meal, and her soft-spoken husband Paul, my in-laws. Their housekeeper Jacky-Ann is laughing joyously with our kids, who are on their second helping of dessert, Joshua’s nose dotted with blue icing. Then, as usual, the kids are excused from the table—after Joshua’s icing is wiped off his nose—and up the stairs theygo to play on the big guestroom TV, leaving us adults to chat away at the table.
I really hate to kill the buzz everyone’s got going.
But there’s no time like the present.
I rise too quickly, bumping the table on accident and earning everyone’s attention when the plates rattle. I still lift my glass and tap a fork on it for some reason. “Mom, Dad … andMom, Dad,” I repeat for Nadine and Paul’s benefit—then realize with a pang of sadness that I might have just exercised that privilege for the last time. “Jacky-Ann. I’m sorry to interrupt our festivities. And good times. But … um …” This is a hundred times harder than I could have predicted. A thousand times. “There’s not really a … a great time to say this. Or an easier way … but …”
The wine must have driven the words off like a flock of birds, because my mind is blank, all of the words I’d prepared, taken flight, far as fuck away from me as anything can possibly be. My hands are shaking again, too.
Oh, just fucking say it, Billy. “Tanner and I—”
Tanner rises. “—are renewing our wedding vows!” he then finishes for me, grinning proudly.