good enough for me
It’s a Tuesday when the news breaks. Dani is going through their mail in the back office, flipping through the junk mail and weekly savings coupons, and she pauses when she gets to the newspaper. Unfolds it carefully on the desk in front of the desktop. Blinks down at it thoughtfully.
“Huh,” she breathes, reading over the headline—bold, black letters saying words she’d never actually thought she would read.
It’s not that she hadn’t known—or even been a part—of the fight against the laws and the courts keeping so many people apart from one another. People like her and Jamie, like some of their friends, like everyone in the pulsing crowd parading across Burlington every June. There’s a ring on her finger, yes. One that’s been there for the last seventeen years, and a bundle of documents tucked in their safe at home declaring their civil union but…
Huh.
In a sort of dreamy daze, Dani gets to her feet, tucking the newspaper under her arm, and goes out into the shop. Jamie is sitting in the chair by the window, a book open on her lap. They’ve only been open for an hour and, with all their orders filled for the week, there’s precious little to do but sit around and enjoy the sunny September day.
There’s no reason to be nervous, not really, but the sight of Jamie has never failed to make Dani’s heart sing in tone and pitch too fevered to make her feel anything less than woefully in love. Even twenty-three years later.
Dani bites her lip and drifts over, closer, toying with her necklace—diamond, in the shape of an infinity symbol, the bottom shaped with the same hands, crown, and heart that adorn the ring on her left finger. A ten-year anniversary present that she’s worn every day for the last thirteen years.
Jamie looks up as she gets nearer, her smile as dazzling as the light shimmering on her graying hair, pulled away from her face for the day. She looks a little confused, and Dani knows it’s because they know one another far too well. There isn’t any way that Jamie can’t read her body language or read what is likely a very anxious expression on her face.
“Hey,” Dani greets, trying to sound collected. “Um…”
Jamie closes her book and frowns. “You alright?” she asks, always so concerned. So ready to jump to Dani’s defense.
Dani nods. “Yes. Perfect, actually, I just wanted to…” She trails off. Thinks it over. Finally, she says, “I know I’ve already...done this, but…” and then she gently lowers herself to one knee, setting the newspaper down on the ground so she can grab Jamie’s hands in her own.
“Dani, what are you—?” Jamie begins, but Dani cuts her off.
Says, “Jay, will you marry me?”
A sputtered laugh is the first response she gets. Then a, “We’re already—”
But Dani shakes her head. “No, I mean...I know we are, but...Would you want to...do it legally?”
“Legally?” Jamie asks, dumfounded.
Dani pulls one of her hands away from Jamie’s and picks up the newspaper, handing it over. She watches as Jamie opens it and looks it over, silent for what seems like forever. And then she looks up, all watery eyes and tearful smile and nods, the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth crinkling in that beautiful way they do.
In an instant, she’s out of her chair and kneeling on the floor, too. She wraps her arms around Dani’s neck, trembling in her arms as she tucks her face into Dani’s shoulder. She can feel the warmth of Jamie’s tears as they land on her neck and slip down her skin and into the fabric of her blouse.
“Is that a yes or…?” she jokes and Jamie pulls away, clutching her close the way she did all those years ago with that first proposal, standing there in the kitchen as the world shifted beneath their feet.
“It’s a yes,” Jamie says. “Of course it’s a yes.” She leans in and presses a quick kiss to Dani’s mouth. “That good enough for you?”
Dani gives a breathy laugh, cupping Jamie’s face and brushing away some of her tears. “Yeah,” she says. “That’s enough for me.”
They stay there together, kneeling on the floor, for a long while—hugging and kissing and marveling at the distance they’ve crossed together over the years. The life they’ve built.
___________________
There’s an inn in Warren, just an hour away, that they decide on and Henry flies in from California. Owen flies in from Paris. Flora, expecting her second child, sends her congratulations via her uncle and Miles calls them both from Los Angeles. Their most important friends make the drive, but the only real thing that matters is this:
Their fourteen-year-old daughter, Jack, serving as Maid of Honor to them both.
She insists on wearing an old dress of Dani’s, the one—she’s told—her mother wore that afternoon three years before she was born when she proposed. When her other mother said yes. It’s a little big on her, still growing and just as scrawny as Jamie, but she doesn’t stop grinning the whole time. Doesn’t stop sweeping in to hug her parents, squeeze them tightly and happily.
There are some traditions they allow for. Others that they break. They refuse to spend the night before apart, because they’ve been married, really, for so long already. There’s hardly a point to willful separation. The ceremony is just that: a ceremony. A chance to do things they hadn’t had the option to do almost two decades before. And, importantly, it’s for the legal document they’ll sign at the end, that they’ll file and keep a copy of and have for the rest of their lives.
Dani buys an actual wedding dress for the occasion, wanting to take advantage of the opportunity to have the real wedding they’ve been denied so far. And even though Jamie had been there when she’d picked it out, tried it on, and bought it, the sight of Dani wearing it as she comes down the aisle on Jack’s arm is almost too much for her to take.
When they’re standing there in front of the white arch covered with flowers they’d both picked out together—in front of the officiant and their daughter and their friends—Dani smiles, trying not to cry and says, “I love you.”
The ceremony hasn’t even really started yet, but already Owen is dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief, Henry is giving them a proud, beaming smile, and their daughter—
And Jack is sitting in the front row crying and smiling and holding Owen’s hands, watching her mothers as they are finally, finally given this simple, monumental privilege.
The cool, October breeze whispers through Jamie’s graying hair and she’s still the most beautiful thing Dani has ever seen.
“I love you, too,” she says. “Now shut up and marry me already, will ya’?”
..