Page 98 of Falling for You Again

“You?” I look at him, miffed.

Kidder smirks. “He bet you’d quit before you started.”

“No faith.” I playfully shove Aaron.

“I do love you, though.”

“I know. Love you too. Now.” I clap my hands. “Let’s get to work. We have a business to build.” I cup my hand behind Aaron’s head and bring his mouth down to mine. “And a partnership to nurture,” I say against his lips and kiss him.

Lucky in love at first collision, he kisses me back.

Chapter 29

Glue, Nails, and Screws

Ten Months Later

“Three . . . two . . . one!”

Aaron tears off the paper we used to cover our new signage for today’s open house, and the crowd cheers at the reveal. The double-layered dark-gray matte-acrylic sign with laser-cut lettering over a copper backplate looks gorgeous in its prominent space on the side of the building.The Joinery.

“Where luxury meets lumber,” I announce, reading our slogan under the business name.

Joinery is the process of joining pieces of wood with glue, nails, screws, or any number of fasteners. Aaron and I thought the term perfectly summed up our partnership. A joining in work and in life.

After a hectic fall and busy winter, we are finally ready to officially celebrate our opening. Everyone is here: Charlie and Murphy; Uncle Bear and my parents, though they aren’t here together. They circle around, avoiding one another. Their bowling team came, as did Graham and Oriana. Aaron was pleased they made it. So did Emi and others from the Chamber of Commerce. It’s our official ribbon-cutting ceremony, and Shae and Tam, who embarked on their own afew months back to launch a video production company, are here to document the entire event.

Aaron swoops me into a hug, swinging me around. “I’m so proud of us.”

“Me too.”

We’ve had our share of ups and downs, but that comes with the territory when you launch a business; I see that now. I can also fully attest that I was right: finding a perfect balance between work and life is impossible. Plenty of times, we’ve been consumed with work. Plenty of nights and weekends, we haven’t put each other first because our new venture demanded our attention. But when you share a teeter-totter with your person, the one you don’t need but absolutely, wholeheartedly want to be with, you push off the ground when your partner is up there with their legs dangling. You reach out and grab their hand when they’re spinning out. You check in when they’re seriously stressed, take a temperature reading on the relationship. Then you remind them that you love them, and you tell them so because it comes from the heart. You truly become one another’s center of gravity.

Sure, we aren’t perfect. We bicker. And, holy moly, do we argue. Standing up to each other? We have that item on our list nailed down. But we also cherish, love, and adore. We admire and support. We stand up for one another. And we do so with kindness and respect.

Surprisingly, this long-term relationship we’re in is a lot of fun. Life with Aaron is fun.

I kiss him to show how happy I am with him and with what we created together. Always together.

He puts me down, and we look at our sign.

“I love our sign,” I say. “I love the name. I love our partnership. I love you.”

“I’m justinlove with you.”

Our eyes meet and his palm cradles my cheek. “Love you,” he whispers and I smile. We kiss again.

“Enough of that, you two.” Shae interrupts the moment. “Plenty of time for that later. We need photos.”

“Line up here, guys.” Tam gestures at me, Aaron, the Chamber president, and a few other VIPs. “Everyone else, stand behind them.”

Someone unrolls a thick red ribbon and hands me a giant pair of scissors.

“Would you like to do the honors?” I ask Aaron.

“We’ll do it together.”

He takes the bottom handle and we position the ribbon between the scissors’ blades. At Shae’s order, we smile for the camera. Someone counts down and when everyone shouts, “One!” Aaron and I cut the ribbon. More cheers go up.

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