Gray could hardly focus on the song playing. It was one of your favorites—he’d picked out for this dance—but he didn’t care about that. He didn’t care that the cake had arrived partly smashed, or that his tie had somehow ended up with dirt, none of that mattered.
You walking down the aisle had. You saying ‘I do’ had. You, right now, in front of him mattered more than when his band, Cherry Burns, released their first album.
It felt like a dream. He’d imagined marrying you since middle school, then into high school when he’d hopelessly pined after you. Gray had song after song written about you, lyrics about this moment, but none of it compared to reality. You were perfect. There were no words—in either English or Tagalog—that could encompass everything you were to him.
Gray gently turned with you. “I love you,” he said. How many times had he said that today? He couldn’t remember. “Mahal kita.”
At one of the tables he could hear Alon cheering. Isaac and Alon, his childhood friends and bandmates, had watched Gray love you from afar for years. It’d been Emil, their newest bandmate, that’d given him the push to actually pursue. ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t,’ was all Emil had said. Gray begrudgingly agreed.
That was a few years ago. Gray was your husband now. Husband. Not boyfriend or fiancé, but your husband.
Gray moved his hand to your jaw, his thumb resting on it as he took in every detail of your face. He could stare at you for hours if you’d let him.
“Thank you.” He didn’t explain what he was thanking you for. Gray wasn’t sure himself. Everything? You’d changed his life, after all.