All Your Perfects

  "You know what this is?"

  I take the envelope from him. The last time we were at this beach house, Graham asked me to write him a love letter. As soon as we got home, I spent an entire evening writing him this letter. I even sprayed it with my perfume and slipped a nude pic in the envelope before I sealed it.

  After I gave it to him, I wondered why he never mentioned it again. But I got so caught up in the wedding, I forgot about it. I flip over the envelope and see that it's never even been opened. "Why haven't you opened it?"

  He pulls another envelope out of the box, but he doesn't answer me. This one is a larger envelope with my name on it.

  I grab it from him, more excited for a love letter than I've ever been in my life. "You wrote me one, too?"

  "First love letter I've ever written," he says. "I think it's a decent first attempt."

  I grin and use my finger to start to tear open the flap, but Graham snatches it out of my hands before I can get it open.

  "You can't read it yet." He holds the letter against his chest like I might fight him for it.

  "Why not?"

  "Because," he says, putting both envelopes back in the box. "It's not time."

  "You wrote me a letter I'm not allowed to read?"

  Graham appears to be enjoying this. "You have to wait. We're locking this box and we're saving it to open on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary." He grabs a lock that goes to the box and he slides it through the attached loop.

  "Graham!" I say, laughing. "This is like the worst gift ever! You gave me twenty-five years of torment!"

  He laughs.

  As frustrating as the gift is, it's also one of the sweetest things he's ever done. I lift up onto my knees and lean forward, wrapping my arms around his neck. "I'm kind of mad I don't get to read your letter yet," I whisper. "But it's a really beautiful gift. You really are the sweetest man I know, Mr. Wells."

  He kisses the tip of my nose. "I'm glad you like it, Mrs. Wells."

  I kiss him and then sit back down on the bed. I run my hand over the top of the box. "I'm sad you won't see my picture for another twenty-five years. It required a lot of flexibility."

  Graham arches an eyebrow. "Flexibility, huh?"

  I grin. I look down at the box, wondering what his letter to me says. I can't believe I have to wait twenty-five years. "There's no way around the wait?"

  "The only time we're allowed to open this box before our twenty-fifth anniversary is if it's an emergency."

  "What kind of emergency? Like . . . death?"

  He shakes his head. "No. A relationship emergency. Like . . . divorce."

  "Divorce?" I hate that word. "Seriously?"

  "I don't see us needing to open this box for any other reason than to celebrate our longevity, Quinn. But, if one of us ever decides we want a divorce--if we've reached the point where we think that's the only answer--we have to promise not to go through with it until we open this box and read these letters. Maybe reminding each other of how we felt when we closed the box will help change our minds if we ever need to open it early."

  "So this box isn't just a keepsake. It's also a marriage survival kit?"

  Graham shrugs. "You could say that. But we have nothing to worry about. I'm confident we won't need to open this box for another twenty-five years."

  "I'm more than confident," I say. "I would bet on it, but if I lose and we get divorced, I won't have enough money to pay out on our bet because you never signed a prenup."

  Graham winks at me. "You shouldn't have married a gold digger."

  "Do I still have time to change my mind?"

  Graham clicks the lock shut. "Too late. I already locked it." He picks up the key to the lock and walks the box to the dresser. "I'll tape the key to the bottom of it tomorrow so we'll never lose it," he says.

  He walks around the bed to get closer to me. He grabs me by the waist and lifts me off the bed, throwing me over his shoulder. He carries me over the patio threshold and back outside to the balcony where he slides me down his body as he sits on the swing.

  I'm straddling his lap now, holding his face in my hands. "That was a really sweet gift," I whisper. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome."

  "I didn't get you a gift. I didn't know I was getting married today so I didn't have time to shop."

  Graham slides my hair over my shoulder and presses his lips against the skin of my neck. "I can't think of a single gift in the world I would push you off my lap for."

  "What if I bought you a huge flat screen TV? I bet you'd push me off your lap for a flat screen."

  He laughs against my neck. "Nope." His hand slides up my stomach until he's cupping my breast.

  "What about a new car?"

  He slowly drags his lips up my throat. When his mouth reaches mine, he whispers hell no against my lips. He tries to kiss me, but I pull back just enough.

  "What if I bought you one of those fancy calculators that cost like two grand? I bet you'd push me off your lap for math."

  Graham slides his hands down my back. "Not even for math." His tongue pushes between my lips and he kisses me with such assurance, my head starts to spin. And for the next half hour, that's all we do. We make out like teenagers on the outdoor balcony.

  Graham eventually stands up, holding me against him without breaking our kiss. He carries me inside and lays me down on the bed. He turns out the light and pushes the sliding glass door all the way open so we can hear the waves as they crash against the shore.

  When he returns to the bed, he pulls off my clothes, one piece at a time, ripping my shirt in the process. He kisses his way down my neck and down my throat, all the way to my thighs, giving attention to every single part of me.

  When he finally makes it back to my mouth, he tastes like me.

  I roll him onto his back and return the favor until I taste like him.

  When he spreads my legs and connects us, it feels different and new, because it's the first time we've made love as husband and wife.

  He's still inside me when the first ray of sun begins to peek out from the ocean.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  * * *

  Now

  Graham does nothing after I open the box. He just stands next to me in silence as I grab the envelope with his name on it. I slide it to him and look back down in the box.

  I lift the envelope with my name on it, assuming it would be the only thing left inside the box since all we put in it before closing it were these two letters. But beneath our two letters, there are a few more letters, all addressed to me with dates on them. He's been adding letters. I look up at him, silently questioning him.

  "There were things I needed to say that you never really wanted to hear." He grabs his envelope and walks out the back door, onto Ava and Reid's back porch. I take the box to the guest bedroom and close the door.

  I sit alone on the bed, holding the only envelope from him that I expected to find in the box. The one from our wedding night. He wrote the date in the top right corner of the envelope. I open the other envelopes and I pile the pages on top of each other in the order they were written. I'm too scared to read any of it. Too scared not to.

  When we locked this box all those years ago, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that we wouldn't need to open it before our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. But that was back before reality set in. Back before we knew that our dream of having kids would never come true. Back before we knew that the more time that passed and the more devastating moments I experienced and the more Graham made love to me, that it would all start to hurt.

  My hands are shaking as I press the pages to the blanket, smoothing them out. I lift the first page and begin to read it.

  I don't think I'm prepared for this. I don't think anyone who gets married for the right reasons ever expects this moment to come. I stiffen like I'm bracing myself for impact as I begin to read.

  Dear Quinn,

  I thought I would have more time to prepare this letter. We aren
't supposed to get married yet, so this gift is all very last minute. I'm not even that great of a writer, so I'm not sure I'm even going to be able to convey what I need to say to you in words. I'm better with numbers, but I don't want to bore you with a bunch of math equations, like Me plus you equals infinity.

  If you think that's cheesy, you're lucky you met me later in life, rather than when I was in junior high. When I was in the seventh grade, I concocted a love poem that I was going to write down and give to my first girlfriend. Thank God it was years later before I actually got my first girlfriend. By then, I realized what a bad idea it was to rhyme a love poem with the Periodic Table of Elements.

  However, I'm so comfortable in my masculinity around you, I think this is the perfect time to finally put that Periodic Table of Elements love poem to use. Because yes, I still remember it. Some of it.

  Hey, girl, you're looking mighty fine

  Feels like I'm breathing Iodine

  Your smile gets all up in my head

  Feel so heavy, like I'm dragging Lead

  Your skin is smooth, it looks so sleek

  It's like someone dipped you in Zinc

  Kissing you would never get old

  Marry me girl, I'll flank you in Gold

  That's right. You're the lucky girl who gets to marry the author of that poem today.

  Good thing it'll be twenty-five years before you read it, because as soon as we're married this afternoon, I'm never letting you out of this marriage. I'm like Hotel California. You can love Graham any time you like, but you can never leave.

  The minister will be here in two hours. You're upstairs getting ready for our wedding as I write this letter. On our way here yesterday, we stopped at a bridal store and you made me wait in the car while you ran inside to pick out a wedding dress. When you got back to the car with the dress hidden inside of a garment bag, you couldn't stop laughing. You said the ladies who were helping you thought you were insane, buying a dress just a day before your wedding. You said they gasped when you told them you're a procrastinator and that you still haven't picked out a groom.

  I can't wait to see what you look like walking down that aisle of sand. It'll just be you in your dress on a beach with no decorations, no guests, no fanfare. And the entire ocean will be our backdrop. But let's just pray none of your dream from last night comes true.

  This morning when you woke up, I asked what I had missed while you were sleeping. You told me you had a dream that we were getting married on the beach, but right before we said I do, a tsunami came and washed us away. But we didn't die. We both turned into aquatic killers. You were a shark and I was a whale, and we were still in love, even though you were a fish and I was a mammal. You said the rest of your dream was just us trying to love one another in an ocean full of creatures who didn't approve of our interspecies relationship.

  That's probably my favorite dream of yours to date.

  I'm sitting out here on the patio, writing the love letter I thought I had five more months to write. Part of me is a little nervous because, like I said, I've never been much of a writer. My imagination isn't as wild as yours, as evidenced by the things you dream about. But writing a letter to you about how much I love you should come pretty easily, so hopefully this letter and this gift to you will serve its purpose.

  Honestly, Quinn, I don't even know where to start. I guess the beginning is the most obvious choice, right?

  I could begin by talking about the day we met in the hallway. The day I realized that maybe my life was thrown off course because fate had something even better in store for me.

  But instead, I'm going to talk about the day we didn't meet. This will probably come as a surprise to you because you don't remember it. Or maybe you do have a memory of it but you just didn't realize it was me.

  It was a few months before we met in the hallway. Ethan's father held a Christmas party for their employees and I was Sasha's date. You were Ethan's date. And while I will admit I was still wrapped up in all things Sasha at the time, something about you was engraved in my memory after that night.

  We hadn't been formally introduced, but you were just a few feet away and I knew who you were because Sasha had pointed you and Ethan out a few minutes before. She said Ethan was in line to be her next boss and you were in line to be his wife.

  You were wearing a black dress with black heels. Your hair was up in a tight bun and I overheard you joking with someone about how you looked just like the caterers. They all wore black and the girls had their hair styled the same way as yours. I don't know if the catering team was shorthanded that night, but I remember seeing someone walk up to you and ask for a refill on his champagne. Rather than correct him, you just walked behind the bar and refilled his champagne. You then took the bottle and started refilling other people's glasses. When you finally made it over to me and Sasha, Ethan walked up and asked what you were doing. You told him you were refilling drinks like it was no big deal, but he didn't like it. I could tell by the look on his face that it embarrassed him. He told you to put down the champagne bottle because there was someone he wanted you to meet. He walked off and I'll never forget what you did next.

  You turned to me and you rolled your eyes with a laugh, then held up the champagne bottle and offered me a refill.

  I smiled at you and held out my glass. You refilled Sasha's glass and proceeded to offer refills to other guests until the bottle was finally empty.

  I don't remember much else about that night. It was a mundane party and Sasha was in a bad mood most of the time so we left early. And to be honest, I didn't think about you much after that.

  Not until the day I saw you again in the hallway. When you stepped off the elevator and walked toward Ethan's door, I should have been filled with nothing but absolute dread and disgust over what was happening inside Ethan's apartment. But for a brief moment, I felt myself wanting to smile when I laid eyes on you. Seeing you reminded me of the party and how easy-going you were. I liked how you didn't care if people thought you were a caterer or the girlfriend of the Ethan Van Kemp. And it wasn't until the moment you joined me in the hallway--when your presence somehow brought me to the brink of smiling during the worst moment of my life--that I knew everything would be fine. I knew that my inevitable breakup with Sasha wasn't going to break me.

  I don't know why I never told you that. Maybe because I liked the idea of us meeting in a hallway under the same circumstances. Or maybe because I was worried you wouldn't remember that night at the party or refilling my glass of champagne. Because why would you? That moment held no significance.

  Until it did.

  I would write more about our meeting in the hallway, but you know all about it. Or maybe I could write more about the first night we made love, or the fact that once we finally reconnected, we never wanted to spend a single second apart. Or I could write about the day I proposed to you and you so stupidly agreed to spend the rest of your life with a man who couldn't possibly give you all that you deserve in this world.

  But I don't really want to talk about any of that. Because you were there for all of it. Besides, I'm almost positive your love letter to me details every minute of us falling in love, so I'd hate to waste my letter on repeating something you more than likely put into words more eloquently than I ever could.

  I guess that means I'm left with talking about the future.

  If all goes as planned, you'll be reading this letter on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. You might cry a few tears and smear the ink a little. Then you'll lean over and kiss me and we'll make love.

  But . . . if for some reason, you're opening this box because our marriage didn't work out how we thought it would, let me first tell you how sorry I am. Because I know we wouldn't read these letters early unless we did absolutely everything we could to prevent it.

  I don't know if you'll remember this, but we had a conversation once. I think it was only the second night we spent together. You mentioned how all marriages have Category 5 moments
, and how you didn't think your previous relationship would have made it through those moments.

  I think about that sometimes. About what could make one couple survive a Category 5 moment, but a different couple might not. I've thought about it enough to come up with a possible reason.

  Hurricanes aren't a constant threat to coastal towns. There are more days with great weather and perfect beach days than there are hurricanes.

  Marriages are similar, in that there are a lot of great days with no arguments, when both people are filled with so much love for each other.

  But then you have the threatening-weather days. There might only be a few a year, but they can do enough damage that it takes years to repair. Some of the coastal towns will be prepared for the bad-weather days. They'll save their best resources and most of their energy so that they'll be stocked up and prepared for the aftermath.

  But some towns won't be as prepared. They'll put all their resources into the good weather days in hopes that the severe weather will never come. It's the lazier choice and the choice with greater consequences.

  I think that's the difference in the marriages that survive and the marriages that don't. Some people think the focus in a marriage should be put on all the perfect days. They love as much and as hard as they can when everything is going right. But if a person gives all of themselves in the good times, hoping the bad times never come, there may not be enough resources or energy left to withstand those Category 5 moments.

  I know without a doubt that we're going to have so many good moments. No matter what life throws at us, we're going to make great memories together, Quinn. That's a given. But we're also going to have bad days and sad days and days that test our resolve.

  Those are the days I want you to feel the absolute weight of my love for you.

  I promise that I will love you more during the storms than I will love you during the perfect days.

  I promise to love you more when you're hurting than when you're happy.

  I promise to love you more when we're poor than when we're swimming in riches.