1. Third Time's the Charm

I wake up to an empty bed. The sound of the shower running comes from behind the  bathroom door. 

He is in the shower. Should I take this chance to run? Not run. Go back to my room. This is his room. I should not be here in the first place. 

This is either going to turn into nothing, something, or…a colossal mistake. 

What if this was a mistake? 

We’ve been waiting so long for the right time to get together but put us together at a wedding and suddenly it’s like we can’t wait. 

It’s the stupid wedding fever.

All those flowers and lovey dovey-ness and suddenly everything was all rainbows and the next thing you know we are sneaking upstairs in the middle of the night while everybody else partied hard…

Everybody else.

Holy fuck.

The last thing I want is for everybody else–or just one of them, really–to see me sneaking out of Jude’s room early in the morning. I’ll never hear the end of it. Ever.

I push away the covers and then just as quickly pull them back over me when I realise I’m stark naked. Why am I surprised? The clothes that we left scattered all over the hotel room’s floor are sitting at the bottom of the bed, folded.

I get on my knees and crawl to the other end of the bed. I pull on my panties and strap on my bra. I’m pulling my dress from last night–a dead giveaway of my waywardness if I do run into anyone in the hallways–over my head when the bathroom door opens.

I tug the fabric down, revealing my face. Jude is standing in the bathroom doorway, hair damp, droplets of water on his chest, only wearing a pair of boxers. 

Butterflies swarm my stomach and the muscles a little down south clench. 

Wrong reaction. 

I should be getting the hell out of here–not gawking at him like I want a repeat of last night. Right now.

He walks forward, a small frown on his face. “What are you doing?”

What was I doing?

I swallow and turn away from him, pulling the dress further down my body as I edge towards the side of the bed.

“I need to go back to my room,” I say, getting to my feet.

“I can get your stuff,” he tells me, coming to stand in front of me.

I nibble on my bottom lip. “Why would you do that?”

His eyes narrow and he leans forward–hands on knees and all–and gives me a close look. The kind of close look you’d give someone when trying to decide what’s wrong with them. “Did you forget?”

It’s hard to think with him so close. “Forget what?”

“We agreed you’d move in here for the rest of the weekend.”

We did?

When?

Why would I agree to something like that?

My family is also staying in this hotel until tomorrow. The moment they realise I’m staying in Jude’s room, Lilian, her new husband, and her beach wedding will no longer be the topic of discussion. I’ll be.

“We didn’t,” I say.

“We did,” he counters. “You were half-asleep, so maybe you don’t remember.”

Shit. Maybe he is telling the truth. I poke his shoulder so he can stop peering down at me like he’s talking to a five-year-old. He straightens to his full height.

“If I’d been a little bit awake, I wouldn’t have agreed to something like that,” I tell him. 

“Why not?”

I shrug and look down at my dress as I smooth down the skirt. Not that I need to. It’s an A-line chiffon dress that falls to my knees perfectly without trying. “It’s not like we are back together.”

“Aren’t we?”

I look up at him. “What?”

Did we agree on that too? While I was half-asleep? I would never forget something like that. Not when I’ve been waiting for close to three years. If we agreed on something like that, I would come back from being half-dead, leave alone being half-asleep.

He scratches the back of his neck. “I thought after last night…I thought that was what last night meant.”

When ‘last night’ was happening, I didn’t think it meant that. Did I want it to? God, yes. I never wanted to leave his arms again. I didn’t want morning to come only to be thrust back into a life where I couldn’t be with him like that. 

Last night is not the kind of thing I can walk away from without looking back. I would think about it every waking hour and dream about it every time I went to sleep. 

That’s what I was prepared for–to take the piece of him from last night to survive on until whenever we got back together. 

It must have skipped my mind that ‘whenever’ is totally up to us.

“Okay,” I say.

A minute ago, I was terrified of what my family would say for the next ten years if any of them saw me leaving Jude’s room. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter what anyone would say.

“Okay we are on?” Jude asks.

I nod. “We are.”

The words are barely out of my lips before he is picking me up and twirling me around. I laugh. There’s so much joy overflowing inside me that I can’t help but laugh. 

It’s been a while since I felt this happy, this light. It’s as if at this moment, everything has fallen into place.

I wrap my arms around Jude’s shoulders and hug him tight. He eventually stops twirling me around and we stand there–just him, really, because my feet are a foot off the ground–just holding onto each other.

When we pull back, my eyes are teary. I blink rapidly and wipe away the wetness. I can’t believe this is happening.

Jude holds my face between his hands and leans forward. I turn my face away at the last moment. 

“I don’t get a kiss?” he asks. He sounds amused. 

I reach up for his hands and pull them down. “I haven’t brushed.”

“Did I say that was a–”

“Shhh.” I put my index finger over his lips, shutting him up. “Don’t ruin this moment with a gross comment.”

He grins. Then he nips my finger.

I pull it away and look around for my shoes. “I’ll go back to my room and–”

“There’s an extra toothbrush in the bathroom,” he says, already pulling me towards the bathroom’s direction. “You can brush here.”

“I still need to go to my room, that’s where my stuff is.”

“Give me your keycard, I’ll get them.”

“It’s in my purse.”

He urges me into the bathroom with a hand on the small of my back. “Alright. I’ll be back in a minute.”

When he is gone, I turn to the mirror and check my reflection. Other than my puffy hair, it doesn’t look like I just woke up. My face is glowing. It must be the happiness. And the sex. 

My cheeks heat up when I think about that. I cannot tell at what point we decided we were going to cross the line that had remained between us for over two years. 

But I would say the end of our just-friends phase began yesterday noon. I was at the front of the altar with the rest of the bridesmaids. Jude was sitting on the second pew from the front, next to Trey. 

His eyes were on me when I first saw him, but not on my face. So it took a few seconds for him to find out I caught him checking me out. 

When our eyes met, there was nothing friendly about his glance. It was heated and all-consuming, betraying the nature of his thoughts as he looked at me.

My stomach somersaulted and I pulled my eyes from him quickly.

That moment meant a lot because believe it or not, we’ve been perfect friends since we took a break. If any of us had any non-platonic thoughts or feelings–I sure did, a lot–we kept them hidden perfectly well. There were no stolen moments or lingering gazes filled with longing.

So when he looked at me like that, it sent my heart racing and by the time the service was over, I was sweating beneath my floor-length gown from thinking too much.

Because I knew, and I think he also knew, that look changed things.

Later on at reception, when the night had worn on and almost everybody who was still at the party was half-drunk and dancing, we ended up at the same table with Trey and Sam and Simon and Liam. 

It was the first time in a long time that I felt awkward around him. 

It was such an uncomfortable feeling. 

We’d been so comfortable around each other for the past couple of years, and then one look changed everything.

When I couldn’t take it anymore–and also because Simon was starting to give me suspicious looks–I excused myself and went looking for the bathroom.

I had just walked past the elevator when Jude caught up to me. He gripped my hand and asked if I wanted to go upstairs with him.

The elevator doors were barely closed before we were all over each other. The earlier awkwardness was gone. The rest is what led up to this morning.

I’ve just finished cleaning up when Jude reappears. He props his shoulder against the doorframe and crosses his arms over his chest. 

He is now dressed, in a pair of black trousers and a white T-shirt. It’s crazy how he makes such a simple outfit look like it belongs on the cover of a magazine. “Can I get my kiss now?”

I smile and walk over to him. I get on my toes to kiss him but end up shrieking instead when he grabs me around the waist, throws me over his shoulder, and carries me back into the bedroom. 

He puts me down on the bed and I barely regain my balance before he is kissing me. I end up on my back while he covers my body with his. My hands end up in his damp hair while my legs go around his hips. 

His lips move from mine and travel down my jaw towards my throat. I throw my head back as he kisses along my collarbone. He stops too soon and raises his head to meet my eyes. “When are we getting married?”

It’s the furthest thing from what I expected him to say. I chuckle. “What?”

He wiggles his brow. “You caught the bouquet yesterday, remember?”

Fuck. Yeah, that happened. 

I tried everything I could to avoid the bouquet, but the thing still ended up in my hands. It was as if Lilian had a GPS pointed directly at me and the cursed thing would find me no matter what I did. 

Needless to say, a lot of teasing followed after that. And yes, I’m a hundred percent sure it was intentional on my sister’s part. I wouldn’t put it past her to have conspired with the other bridesmaids to ensure I got it. 

“When are you two going to stop acting like you are just friends and get married already?”

That’s the question she has asked me about five different times in the past few years. She does it every time we are home for some holiday and Jude happens to be there–because my parents always invite him.

“I don’t know, when are we?” It’s only a joke, but there’s some part of my brain that doesn’t acknowledge that. My heart speeds up as I look into his eyes, as if I’m expecting a serious answer from him.

I’m crazy. It’s been barely ten minutes since we agreed to start dating after a two-year break and here I am, thinking about marriage.

The wedding fever is still at large, I’d say. 

“As soon as you want to.” He brushes a few unruly hairs from my face. His eyes are dead serious as he holds my gaze. “I mean that.”

“What about you?”

“I’m leaving it up to you because if it’s up to me, I’d be driving us to the registry office first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t want to ruin things with my over-enthusiasm.”

I arch an eyebrow. “You are assuming I won’t do the same?”

“It’s fine if it’s mutual over-enthusiasm. The risk gets spread around and all that.”

I can’t help but laugh. He smiles and rolls to his side and embraces me. My hand curls against his chest and I realise his heart is beating just as wildly as mine.

“Baby steps, huh?” We’ve been way too careful about getting the timing right this time round to ruin it with overexcitement. 

Marriage is a whole other level, and much as I’ve been certain for years that he’s the one I want to spend the rest of my life with, it’s wiser to take it one step at a time.

He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Baby steps.”

We remain like that for a while, forgetting about breakfast and such mundane stuff. Currently, this feels like a dream. It might take the entire day to sink in, or longer. 

I can only hope we’ve got it right this time. They say third time’s the charm, right?

It better be.