When they walked into the reception hall hand in hand, the feeling of love and excitement in the room overwhelmed Lizzy. Waving as she pa**ed the candle lit tables filled with her family and friends, she looked up at Adam whose cheeks were already flushed with excitement and surely Jack Daniels. When he squeezed her hand, she had to hold back the tears of joy threatening to escape, and she knew beneath the Ray Bans, Adam was fighting to do the same. As they walked toward the center of the room, memories of the last time they almost shared a dance floor filled Lizzy's mind.
She remembered back to when the two were thirteen years old and awkward as can be, how her heart sank when she thought she was the only girl without an invitation to his bar mitzvah, and how the image of him leaning out of the school bus frantically waving an envelope in the air would be burned into her memory for decades. She must have skipped the whole way home.
Lizzy tried her best to recall the details of the bar mitzvah, but the years had blurred specifics. Besides Adam's grand entrance on a go-kart and the souvenir t-shirt she now had tucked in her pajama drawer, the only memory left that was sharp in her mind was hearing Adam choose Tiffany Houzer for his first dance and not her. Her thirteen-year-old heart was crushed, and while it made for a good story, she still had yet to let him live that choice down.
It was strange for Lizzy to see her husband across the dance floor once again. She had imagined this moment over and over for close to fifteen years, dancing around her room to Etta James with a broom named Adam. To think that it was finally here made her giddy with excitement.
Countless homecoming dances and prom nights had pa**ed, college formals and socials were long gone, and nights at the club were evolving into nights of Netflix and wine. But Adam still managed to spin Lizzy around the kitchen every once in a while as she packed their lunches or washed dinner dishes.
As the DJ announced the new Mr. and Mrs. to the mob of smiling faces, Lizzy couldn't help but throw her hands into the air in jubilation. Laughing, Adam took her right hand in his and slid his arm around her waist. The violins began to swell and Etta James' voice rang out with two words that Lizzy had been thinking all day long. After nearly twenty years of going to school together and more than a decade of dating, she could call Adam her husband at last.
Smiling big enough to reveal both rows of teeth, Lizzy got on her tiptoes and whispered into Adam's ear, “Take that Tiffany.”