Laughing, I pull her into me and kiss her quickly to avoid a hard-on. “We have guests.”
She grabs my jacket and pulls me against her. “They aren’t even supposed to be here until tomorrow.”
In the distance, I hear, “This damn thing work?” and then the sound of someone tapping the mic. “I said, introducing Mr. and Mrs. Matteo Arias!”
“That’s us.” She smiles.
“That’s us.” I laugh.
She squats down, grabs her shoes, then my hand, and begins running. “That’s us!”
At the doorway, Tris peeks in. “I found him! He was trying to run.”
Everyone laughs, and I pull her back. “Is this how I’ll win them over?”
“I’m not even sure they heard me.” She starts to step in again, and I pull her when I hear Catalina begin playing the introduction to the song that the girls and I collectively chose for Tris.
“And reintroducing Mr. and Mrs. Matteo Arias,” Xavier says into the mic.
“After you.”
“Together,” she insists.
We walk in, and I point to the girls, Elena and Martina, sitting at the grand piano that I had delivered this morning as Martina grins and starts to sing, in English.
“I’ll tell the world; I’ll sing a song. It’s a better place since you came along.”
Once in the middle of the area cleared for a dance floor, I extend my arm and bow before spinning her in a circle. She tosses her shoes, and I pull her in for our first dance … ever.
Arms wrapped around her, I lift her and twirl her in a circle, hoping she will stretch her arms out, because it’s one of the most beautiful and unforgettable moments of my life. She doesn’t disappoint.
Once I have stopped, she grabs my face, eyes bursting with emotion, tears instantly falling. “I love you so fucking much.”
My eyes mist over, and I bury my head in her neck. We stay just like that, swaying to the music until the song ends, and a little bit after.
Stepping apart, we both brush away one another’s tears, and then Tris turns, squats down, and opens her arms.
The girls come running, faces full of happiness and pride for what they learned, and I’m sure the excitement from the applause surrounding them and the sheer joy on Tris’s face. I immediately realize each one of them are trying to get to her first and step behind Tris, holding out my hand as Tris squeals in laughter on impact that sends us all crashing to the floor.
Amongst the laughter and her thanking the girls, telling them that they have “mad talent,” Xavier comes across the sound system.
“And not to be outdone by the kids, here’s Max and Amias.” Then his voice drops an octave as he says, “Let’s do it.”
Laughing, Max says, “Wrong song, Uncle X.”
“This ones better, though. Right, Trouble?”
Tris sits up and laughs so hard that she snorts, which shocks me, and she notices. “Sorry.”
“No, happy, with or without the snorting, looks amazing on you.”
Her two youngest nephews both come over and extend their hands.
One of them, the one in the cowboy hat, scowls at me. “Ladies shouldn’t be on the floor.”
She looks back at me and wags her eye brows as they pull her up. “Did you hear that Uncle Matteo? Ladies shouldn’t be on the floor.”
“Girls, up,” Hugo says sternly from behind me.
I help them each up, even though they don’t need it, kiss them each on their cheeks, and nod to Samuel. They scurry away, and I turn to Hugo. “For once, allow them to be children.”
“They’re in dresses, and we’re in formal attire. They should act appropriately.” He looks over my head, smiles, and lifts his drink to someone.
As he steps around me, I step in front of him, blocking him. “I’d like you to remember whose party this is.”
“Oh, brother, I know. And might I say, I am very proud of you.” He leans in and whispers, “Seventeen, I’m impressed.”
Arms wrap around my waist from behind. “Can I steel you away, husband?”
“Of course, Mrs. Arias.” He leans forward. “If he can’t keep up on the dance floor, I’d be glad to step in.”
“You—”
Tris squeezes between us, her back to him, and wraps her arms around me then looks over her shoulder. “Thanks, Hugo, but I’d rather fuck myself with a razor blade and sit in a vat of rubbing alcohol.”
He looks confused. I, however, understood exactly what she said.
I drag her away.
“What a dick.” She rolls her eyes.
“Tris.” I shake my head.
“Sorry, but he was mean to my nieces and—”
“Jesus,” I groan and pull her into a kiss. Feeling it everywhere, I step back.
She blinks for a few seconds, clearly shocked, and then she smiles. “You want me.”
“I have you.”
The song changes, and so does her smile. “It’s one of those sticky sweet love songs that used to make me want to vomit. Not anymore. Come dance with me.”
Standing in the middle of the dance floor, she wraps her arms around my neck and begins to sing along, to me. Also a first. “I just wanna be somebody to Matte-o. I wanna be somebody to Matte-o. I never had nobody and no road home. I wanna be somebody to Matte-o.”
I wonder if she knows she’s not just somebody. She is everything to me.
~~~
After dinner, she seems to have calmed down a bit, physically. She’s still talking a mile a minute about how she was nasty to Brisa and how wrong that is. She also heard Brisa talking to her cousins about wanting to take a year off and travel but stopped talking when she noticed Tris.
“She tries to like me, but I know she doesn’t really. It’s that whole empath thing. She just thinks—”
“She loves you, Tris,” I interrupt her. “You just have to stop pushing people who love you away.”
“Rain says she is amazing with social media, and she did that whole thing with our shoot on the beach. Plus, she seems to be awfully click happy. So much so that she hasn’t even noticed Ranger.”
“You mentioned she had a crush on him years back, correct?”
“Yeah.” She grins. “If years were measured in minutes, that would be accurate.”
“You mentioned she wants to travel. Have you put any thought into where you’d like to honeymoon? Ibiza still or—”
She leans forward. “I could totally hire her to do my social media, and yours, too. I could sell it on the premise that we need her for our honeymoon and have her take pictures. Force the two of them together and see how it goes. And then maybe”—she shrugs—“maybe we could, like, get close again. Maybe I could even tell her about my crazy.”
“Your genius,” I correct her then casually ask if she has taken her medication today.
She ignores me and looks around.
“Brisa was talking to Hugo, and I told her that he was the married one. She turned red. I wasn’t doing it to upset her. I was doing it to piss him off.”
I look around the room and see he and Brisa are both missing.
“I’ll kill him.” I stand from where we are sitting.
She jumps up. “Do you think—”