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“You’re looking,” Aaron said. “I can see you looking at that guy in those tight pants. My underwear isn’t that tight, not compared to those pants.”
“I’m not looking,” Amy said, tearing her eyes away from the waiter and focusing on Aaron. Vegas was beautiful at night, and yeah, it was full of types of hot bodies Amy’d always gone for, but this was special. “I’m looking at my boyfriend, who I’m on vacation with, for the very first trip I’ve ever taken with said boyfriend.”
Said boyfriend smiled at her. “It’s not entirely a vacation.”
“I know, you gotta talk with that basketball guy about the thing with the joint pain.”
“Close enough,” Aaron said. “I got guys out here I have to see.”
“Well,” Amy said, pressing a kiss to his cheek before turning back to the waiter. “I do, too”
***
Settling into a life of monogamy should’ve been harder. Amy wasn’t her sister, hadn’t ever wanted to be, but now, with Aaron, things had reached a really comfortable place, like she wanted to go to farmer’s markets and go on her new treadmill and actually stay in sometimes and watch Netflix together. She didn’t even really get what she wanted to do at those farmer’s markets. She knew she liked peppers on her pizza but somehow looking at a whole pepper reminded her that cooking was really complicated. Most weeks, the stuff they bought at the farmer’s market went to waste in favor of take out, but still. They went every Sunday.
The half-work but mostly vacation trip to Vegas had been a surprise from Aaron; an anniversary present if one counted their anniversary from that first time they went home together and forgot the five months they didn’t speak.
She’d texted Kim from the bathroom of the tapas place.
Amy: what would you say if I told you I’m going to Vegas next month
Amy: with Aaron
Kim: I’d say domesticity looks good on you.
***
She really didn’t drink much anymore, but it was Vegas, and even Aaron was realized this was the place to pop bottles.
They ordered fancy vodka and drank like teenagers.
She pointed to a woman at a slot machine. “I’m five thousand down, but I’ve got my lucky cat shirt, so I know all I have to do is pull once more.”
Aaron laughed. “I can do this too!” He pointed at a guy at the roulette table. “I’m betting it all on black. Including my marriage, as evidenced by the woman I’m surely paying to stand next to me.”
“Diapers make casinos so much better.”
“I’m not in the mob, but I’m hoping if I just keep buying these suits, someone will invite me in. I swear I’d be good at it!”
***
The two of them were giggling as they tried to navigate their way to the elevators, like this should not have been nearly so difficult and yet she still almost stumbled into a potted plant.
She snaked her hand into his pants, and despite all the vodka, he grew hard.
“Elevators are public places!” he hissed, his eyes on the door like it might pop open at any moment.
“That’s what makes it exciting,” she whispered back. She snaked her other hand around his neck and pulled him down into a kiss, simultaneously stroking him, a talent she wasn’t even sure she possessed while sober.
The door opened around the thirtieth floor. It was another youngish couple. She felt Aaron try to pull back, because his humble midwestern beginnings meant he had to smile at literally everyone.
She gave him an eye roll, then pulled him close again, angling him so the other two couldn’t see his dick even if they wanted to.
The woman gave her a wink when they left the elevator, and Aaron gave Amy— well, exactly what she’d been hoping for.
***
She was down with monogamy, she just didn’t want sex to become that thing they did every Sunday, switching off who was on top depending on who carried the bags from the farmer’s market. She still wanted the excitement.
Which is why she told him to fuck her in the hot tub the next morning.
“This can’t possibly be a good idea,” he said. “There’s a natural pH balance you want your vaginal canal to be at—”
“I will tell you what I want my vaginal canal to have,” she said, mounting his thighs, a thin layer of bubbles all that was shielding her from the south-facing hotel windows.
She pressed against him, and from the top up, it looked like they were just making out, two people in love, making out in a hot tub, no big deal. Underneath the water, though, they had to adjust swimsuits and find an angle and all that.
He got into it, too, despite the fact there were people in the pool right next to them, despite his innate and occasionally annoying goodness. He whispered all sorts of dirty stuff in her ear, and clutching her ass, and she could feel herself clenching down, about to crest.
When the actual orgasm hit her, she bit down on his neck.
***
He slipped his fingers under her skirt at a club, the bass pounding around them as he pushed her against one of the dozens of casually placed stripper poles that decorated the dance floor.
***
Twenty minutes later, he was sucking on those fingers while she blew him in a bathroom stall.
***
On the cab ride back to the hotel, he held her hand, stroking her thumb with his own.
“Amy, I think we should—” he faltered.
“Right here, in the cab? Absolutely we should fuck in this cab.”
The cab driver looked at her in the rearview mirror. “I charge extra.”
Aaron, who’d just blew a load in a bathroom not a hour earlier, look appalled. “What? No, I wasn’t going to ask— I think we should get married. Here in Vegas. Tonight.”
“You want to get married, here in Vegas, two thousand miles from home and everyone we know and love?”
“When you phrase it that way—”
“No, that sounds amazing, let’s do that.”
Aaron smiled. “Can you turn this cab around?”
***
She texted her sister on the way.
Kim: You’re joking.
Kim: You’re not joking!!
Kim: I can’t believe I’m missing this.
Kim: My only sister.
Kim: You know, most people don’t text this info
She read it to Aaron, who read LeBron’s responses. “He says he can’t believe he’s not my best man, and that it’s cold. Real cold. There’s emojis I can’t pretend to decipher. No, at least one of them is a sad clown, which is a metaphor.”
She sighed. “We gotta go back to the hotel.”
Aaron sighed too. “Driver, turn it around.”
***
“OK, we’re ready to do this, right?” Aaron ticked off his fingers. “We got the iPad, you changed your dress, we’re ready.”
“To the chapel!” Amy said. “You know, I was never one of those girls that dreamed of her wedding day.”
“I’m shocked.”
“Like we’d all be on the playground and all the little girls would get married to each other, like someone new every other day. It was a really lesbian sort of group marriage thing, in retrospect. And there was always someone that played the priest, and I was the one that was trying to object.”
“How many child-on-child marriages did you prevent?”
“Not nearly enough,” she said. “Once, my Dad made me throw out my Barbie just because she had a veil on.”
“That sounds about right.”
“I wish he could be here, but I guess it’s for the best. He’d probably have a heart attack in the sanctuary, in the middle of telling me I was throwing my life away.”
“I miss him too.” He grabbed her hand at that.
“There’s one more thing I have to do first,” she said.
“Driver? Turn it— yeah, like that.”
***
“OK, I know you’ve got your whole thing, with the Elvis songs, and I’m into it,” Amy whispered. “I just think if you could whip out a little Billy Joel, it would be really nice.”
“Could you have brought this up before we were walking up the aisle?” Pretend Elvis asked.
She patted his arm, bouquet in hand. “Is money the problem? Because he’s a doctor for sports.”
“Anything you want, little lady. But I’m still doing ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love.’”
“Deal.”
Aaron reached for her before she was even at the end of the aisle, and she definitely almost knocked Elvis over in the process.
He recovered gracefully, and took his place as the King of the chapel. “Live, from Las Vegas, it’s showtime.” He launched into ‘Uptown Girls.’ Amy looked at Aaron, who was biting his lip like he might jump out of his skin.
“I need you to grab hands—”
“Actually, can we wait just like one second on that?” Amy pulled out her phone. “LeBron James wanted to do— we wanted him to do a reading first.”
“You want me to stop the ceremony so LeBron James can do a reading over your phone?” Elvis asked.
“Can you talk louder?” Kim yelled from the iPad. “The acoustics aren’t great in there.”
“Hello? LeBron yelled from the speakerphone.
“That’s really him,” Elvis said.
“The reading I’m doing today comes from the wisest doctor I know, only unlike Aaron, he’s more a doctor of the human spirit. Congratulations!/ Today is your day./ You're off to Great Places!/ You're off and away!”
“Great,” Amy said.
Lebron continued. “You have brains in your head./ You have feet in your shoes...”
“That was beautiful,” Aaron said, when it was finally over. “Wasn’t that just beautiful, Elvis?”
“I’m from Miami,” Elvis said, darkly.
“I thought you were from, like, Kentucky,” Amy said.
Then Elvis launched into a meditation on love. “Now repeat after me. I offer you this ring—”
“We’re actually not doing rings,” Amy said.
“We didn’t even think about them,” Aaron said.
“You gotta have rings,” Tom yelled from the iPad.
“He’ll just lose his, like there’s some important golfer who’s going to die on the field because Aaron’s ring is floating around him,” Amy said. “Only no one will be able to tell because golfers might already be dead.”
“I would never,” Aaron said.
“You might,” Amy said.
“Can we get you two married?” Elvis asked.
***
“I can’t believe you’re my wife,” he said afterwards.
“You’re not just my husband, but my hunka hunka burning love,” she said, full imitation out. “I can’t return you to sender.”
“I cried.”
“I noticed. Most of Vegas probably noticed, just like all the people watching terrible magic shows and over the hill pop stars and everyone doing coke in a bathroom noticed.”
“No one noticed. You can’t even tell in the souvenir photo.” He pulled out the picture from his coat pocket, and the only way someone wouldn’t notice if they were distracted by his eyebrows or her legs.
“It was just like when you think someone’s going to cry that single solitary tear, like a really manly tear, and instead they start blubbering and then there’s just this weeping, and you think, I’m married to this guy, I picked him out of the eight billion men in New York.”
He laughed, and she leaned against him. “That was even sweeter than your vows.”
***
“I have this for you,” a bellhop said, and Aaron practically dropped her on the threshold. “Is this really from LeBron like LeBron James, or did someone name their baby after him?”
“Yeah, an eight year old send us this,” Amy said, grabbing the bottle.
Aaron still tipped the guy anyway.
“This is the cheapest possible bottle,” Amy said, pouring them both a glass. “I think you can buy this brand at gas stations.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Aaron said. “Assuming we’re not getting a bill for this later.”
“I absolutely believe he told them to add it to our tab. If we’d had a traditional, white dress and flowers and all that bullshit wedding, we’d be paying for his tux.”
Later, when she took off her super non-traditional red dress, and pushed her husband down on the bed, she thought about how glad she was they’d skipped the big to-do.
“Not that I’m not loving what you’re doing,” Aaron said. “Like really loving it. But do you think you could cover that thing up?” He crooked a finger at the bedside table.
On the table, next to the same phone and alarm clock that was in literally every hotel room, there was a snowglobe. It had I LOVE VEGAS on the bottom, and a miniature version of the strip covered in tiny, non-geographically accurate snow.
She was glad they’d made that last trip to the souvenir shop. Having a snow globe sitting on one of the chairs in the chapel just seemed appropriate, somehow.
Amy laughed. “Are you afraid it’s going to bounce off the table and hit you across the head? Do you think I’m going to grab it instead of my vibe? Are you planning on using the table for some new special type of married sex?”
“I feel like your father’s going to come down and slap me upside the head for all the things we’ve done so far, and all the things we’re going to do.”
“Dad would be super proud, I think.” She smiled, then threw Aaron’s pants over the table. “Besides, out of all the filthy things we’ve been doing, this would be the thing that upsets him?”
“Nah, the only thing he'd be really mad about was if the Astros won the World Series."
She kissed him. “You’re so hot when you’re talking nonsense.”
***
JFK was a nightmare, as it always was. By the time they got to the baggage carousel, Amy was exhausted. So exhausted, she didn’t even notice—
“Welcome back!” a young person yelled, and when she turned she saw LeBron, Kim, Tom and their kids. The baby, or rather Tom, was holding up a sign that said, “Welcome to the Family, Aaron!” and Allister, bless his weird little heart, had written, “Love is a Series of Compromises.”
“We got you a limo, very classy, not one of the pink Hummers,” LeBron said. “And I tied my own Sprite cans to the back. LeBron Mix, it’s delicious. There’s also cold cans in the limo.”
“I can’t believe you’re married,” Kim said, kissing her on the cheek.
“We just wanted to take you to dinner,” Tom said. “Because she doesn’t think you’ll actually throw a reception— oww! Elbow to the side, really?”
“Because we wanted to take you to dinner,” Kim said.
“This is so weirdly sweet,” Amy said, fondly. She almost wished they could’ve all been at her wedding.
But then Aaron grabbed her hand, pulling her and her gaggle of people towards the limo they were going to take to their makeshift reception, and she was glad she'd followed her heart, or whatever.