Page 27 of Wrapped Up in Holly

“Well…the girls helped me make it.”

“You made me a bracelet?”

“Like the one you made me.” Then I showed her the one I’d kept hidden behind my back, and she gasped. I’d stopped wearing it sometime in college because it had broken from being so old and worn, but I never threw it away. I think she’d assumed I did. “The girls fixed it. That’s why it looks…different.” They’d done their best, re-braiding the strings with new ones. It was much thicker than the original one Holly had made me over twenty years ago.

“Oh, my god.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “I can’t believe you still have it.”

“Of course I do. Here.” I tied her bracelet on and then held my wrist out so she could tie on mine. “Friends forever.”

She grinned at me. “Friends forever.”

I wrapped her up, lifting her feet off the floor, and she grunted out a breath, both of us laughing like kids as I spun us around. Once I finally set her down, I kissed her. “Marry me again.”

“Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you again.”

And that’s how we found ourselves in the barn, decorated to the hilt in garland and lights, with me in a button down and Holly in my favorite burgundy dress and our girls between us, smiling, as we promised, in front of our friends and family, to love and care for each other all the days of our lives.

“You may kiss the bride,” my dad said, dressed up as Santa. Mom, Mrs. Claus, clapped and threw fake snow at us.

But it was Ari who tugged at my hand. “Daddy, real snow!”

Riley led the charge outside, Ari on her heels. Ryan sprinted out, shouting about a snowball fight, though I doubted there was enough to make ammunition. But with how the rest of the family followed, it seemed a proper battle was ensuing.

Except for me and Holly. We watched them giggling and rolling on the ground, the snowflakes slowly but increasingly becoming heavier. My wife shivered in my arms, so I held her closer, draped my arm around her.

Home. Wrapped up in Holly.