Page 157 of Harrison's Wedding

“Sure, that would be nice.”

I head to the kitchen, where I take one of my strong painkillers before I make us all coffees, which we carry out to the balcony. I ease myself carefully into one of the chairs in our outdoor setting and place my coffee onto a coaster on the marble table.

“That wasn’t too bad,” Maddy breaks the silence.

“It really wasn’t,” Heather agrees. “I do hope that it has a positive effect on your life, Maddy.”

“Even if it doesn’t, the money will make up for it,” she gives a short, almost humorless burst of laughter, then says, “I can’t believe that you guys did that for me.”

“It’s the least that we could do,” I tell her gently. “I really am sorry for what happened, Maddy.”

“Don’t be. It happened, and none of us can change that. If I could go back in time and not drink that wine, I would. I’ve spent so long dwelling on that, but since I talked to Heather, I’ve realized that there’s no point in doing that. I’ll just end up bitter as hell if I do. I have a therapy session booked for next week,” she smiles at Heather.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Heather smiles back at her.

“It’s really helped me deal with what happened,” I assure her.

“Me, too,” Heather agrees and reaches her hand up to squeeze my arm.

Maddy just nods, and our conversation moves onto general talk until we finish our coffees. Heather and I hug Maddy before she leaves our apartment. As I wrap my arms around Maddy, her scent fills my nostrils and I’m reminded of that night. I fight the nausea, and smile politely at her as we say goodbye. I’ll have to talk to Brendan about this in our next session, but I’m sure he’ll tell me that it’s a normal reaction.

It’s hours before the crew finishes setting our apartment back to normal, but when they’re done, there isn’t a single sign they were ever here. Finally, Heather follows the last of the crew over to the door of the apartment to see them out.

“Come here, angel,” I say to her as she closes the door behind them.

I’m sitting carefully propped up on the chaise section of the sofa. Cooper moved some of the promotions we were meant to do from Los Angeles to Chicago. The guys did them while I was still in the hospital, and the doctors have barred me from flying. So I get to stay here with my angel, and my friends have continued with the promotional schedule as planned.

I’ve been excused from everything until the release party on Heather’s birthday next Friday. This interview is the only press event I’ve had to do, and now that it’s over, I feel completely free. It was hard, but I’m glad we did it.

Heather stretches out next to me on the chaise and carefully wraps her arms low around my waist, avoiding touching my ribs. I close my eyes and rest my head on hers. We sit together in silence, and I listen to her breathing.

This is the best feeling in the world. I have her back, and I’m so incredibly grateful for that. I’ve been thinking about our wedding, and I want to ask her something, but I’m not sure how she’ll react to it.

“Angel, I’ve been thinking…”

“Do I want to know?” she asks with a laugh.

“I wanted to know if you still want to get married on the ninth of May?” I ask, pretty sure she’ll be resistant, at least at first.

Unsurprising, Heather pulls back to look up at me in apparent disbelief, “Are you serious?” I nod. “You want to get married next month?”

“I do, angel. I know what that date means to you, and I don’t want to wait another year to call you my wife.”

“Harrison James Fletcher, you dated me for ten years, and now you suddenly can’t possibly wait another year to get married?” She raises an eyebrow at me.

I laugh at her reaction, “Well, yes, that was dumb. I should’ve proposed to you long before I did.” A wave of regret hits me that I didn’t do it sooner so that her dad could be there with us. “I was happy just having you in my life; I didn’t need a ring or a piece of paper to prove our love.”

“For the record, neither did I!” she grins at me.

I know it’s true. She was never subtly hinting at me about rings or engagements or anything like that. So, I want to explain what changed for me.

“Then Gabriel got back together with Ariana. He was so happy, and it made me really assess what you and I had. It made me realize that I did want to be able to call you my wife, because having seen what Gabriel went through, I knew that I didn’t want to spend a day of my life without you in it.”

I hate everything that happened to us, and I want Heather to understand why it’s important to me for us to get married on the day we originally planned.

“I was so happy when you said yes. I couldn’t wait to stand up in front of the world and swear to our love. Then all that other shit happened, and I did have to live my life without you in it. I just feel like we’ve been through so much since then and they already took five months from us, I don’t want them to take our wedding date as well.”

Heather looks at me for a few moments, not saying anything. I’m on edge as I wait for her reply. If she does want to wait so she has more time to plan, I will be fine with that.

---