“I want to watch you sometime,” she says.
“You would?”
“Yes. But the thing is, I love fucking you so much, I’d probably make you stop so you could be inside me every time.”
“It’s my favorite place to be,” I tell her, and she starts to move faster. Her breathing becomes labored, and I know she’s not far now, and I’m on the brink, too. “Harley? Can I fuck you hard right now?”
“Yes,” she says, and I grab her hips and thrust into her. Long, hard, deep strokes, and she moans with each one, her cries all I need to keep up the pace, and soon her mouth is on my shoulder again, and she’s biting down, and I feel her clench around me, and draw in a deep, endless breath. And I do the same, coming hard and fast inside her.
“I love California,” I say.
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 fucking 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.