How to Say I Do

by Tal Bauer

It was enough, I thought, to fall in love, even though he wouldn’t fall, too. It was enough to go a little crazy inside myself, and to feel like the world had lit on fire, and for these few days, to pretend that anything was possible.

Feet over my head. My dreams were soaring for the moon. Anything could happen here. I could fall in love. Maybe I already had.

He laughed, and our eyes met and held, and then I almost walked us face-first into the wall.

Lord, I was gone for this man. Pure gone, and you couldn’t have beaten my soul back into my body with a baseball bat, or nailed my heart down when it started to run.

It was indescribable, these feelings Noël sparked inside me. I wanted to crawl into his lap and cradle his face in my hands, look into his eyes and whisper, Where have you been all my life?

I held him beneath all those glittering constellations, and as the tide rolled in, I wished on every shooting star I saw that this little moment could grow into forever.

Wyatt tasted like sea salt and waves, chapped lips, and the coconut margarita he’d had earlier. Like promises and patience and the way he’d touched his fingers to his hat brim when he’d said “Howdy” in Dallas. Like sweetness and adoration and the first blush of falling in love.

He gazed at me like I had climbed into the sky and hung the sun just for him. If I could have, I would. I would have done anything for him in that moment. Hammer stars to the night sky or gather the ocean into a jar and give it to him to keep.

Nothing existed beyond his touch and the starlit glitter of his eyes.

I was in love. Heartbreakingly and profoundly in love. I loved him, I did, even in such a short time. I knew it wasn’t supposed to be possible. What did I honestly know about Noël? Well, I knew enough, I thought. I knew I wanted forever.

He never needed to beg. I’d make love to him forever, any time he asked for it. I’d love him until the end of time.

Happy ever afters didn’t begin with exes and rebound sex, no matter how amazing the orgasms.

I couldn’t be with him, but— I wasn’t sure I could be without him, either.

This house was filled with ghosts and broken dreams, so what was one more night, or one more lonely stretch of hours?

If I could have, I would have taken apart the world and rebuilt it until everything was knowable to Noël again.

“You’re built out of platinum. No one can fuck with you. Noël, you astonish me. You stopped me in my tracks the moment we met. There is nothing about you that is fucked up.”

Looking at him, I realized: even with all the heartache and the unknowns, and even if Noël, with all his luminosity and his prickliness and his brilliance, his defensiveness and his shyness and his hidden sweetness, ultimately wasn’t meant to be with me, I was still unbearably lucky to have him brush against my life.

My sweet, sweet cowboy, who was shy and didn’t like selfies and said goodnight to his horse, and who made the lives of everyone he touched remarkably and extraordinarily better. My dearest, darling Wyatt. The man of my dreams.

I seemed worth it to him.

I’d have stayed, and we would have started the rest of our love story that morning.

But I loved him, more than I thought it had been possible to love anyone or anything.

“I think—” My voice wavered. “I think becoming your brother-in-law would be the best thing that could happen in my life.”

You don’t have anything to be afraid of, he’d said. You are exactly the way you are meant to be. Don’t be afraid, Wyatt. You have nothing to be scared of. And you’ll never be alone. I’ll always be with you.

My whole world and all the beautiful things within it were here already.

Wrong. Texas, as it turned out, was fucking massive. Another five hours passed, and I cried at a truck stop outside Houston into a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. This state was endless, just unbearably endless.

I was exactly where I was meant to be. I was home.

I loved the way Wyatt looked at me, with a glint in his eye, a smile on his lips, and an unconditional understanding between us that transcended words.

Wyatt was my best friend, my lover, my everything.

“Hitch your star to mine, and let’s spend the rest of this life in long certainty with each other. Let’s raise children and grapes and cattle together. Marry me, Noël?”