Brandon's Notebook (A TMMM Bonus Material)

Journal 14: Today, I Vow...

A/N: Hello everyone! Sorry for the long wait on this next installment. It's been scorching hot here in my slice of heaven that writing has been difficult. I intended to finish this bonus material by the end of July but if the weather continues in this direction, it's going to be a bit challenging. But we shall persevere! 

Anyway, this newest journal covers the rest of Chapter 12 and part of Chapter 13 in TMMM. I hope you like the little something about their wedding that I threw in here. 

This post is also dedicated to shanoni here in Wattpad who'd created the book trailer I featured with this entry. Such talent! I love it! Thank you, shanoni!

***

It wasn't even ten in the morning when Jake handed me a drink on my wedding day.

He told me I was making him nervous with all my pacing. I hadn't even been aware I was pacing.

I woke up this morning with my head perfectly clear on what was about to happen.

I was marrying Charlotte. 

Or she was marrying me. 

Either way, we'd belong to each other in front of God and man.

Jake asked if I was having second thoughts. Actually, he didn't ask. He more or less warned me that I better not be having second thoughts—not if I'm marrying the most perfect girl fate could find for me.

I told him I wasn't having second thoughts. The pacing wasn't because I was nervous. It was because I was impatient.

I'm not entirely sure what Jake got out of that admission but he studied me for too long a moment as if his brain was having trouble catching up with reality.

We were at my office, slowly drinking the single glass of scotch we were each to have before the ceremony, and probably coming to some kind of epiphany as grown men who were just about to realize they could still grow further and be more than they ever gave thought to.

It both hit us that we're at that point in our lives when we could be husbands. Fathers, too.

I expected Jake to mutter or curse and loudly claim that no, he won't be having any of that till he's well and ready. He'd said the same thing before the few times we'd mentioned it when one of our friends were getting married or expecting a child. I enjoyed my eventful bachelor years but I didn't cling to it as much as Jake did to his—at least not until I met Charlotte anyway. Given, I probably never had my bachelorhood feel like it was being dragged away from me at a chokehold until Charlotte but still.

But Jake did none of that. He just rubbed his chin and asked if I ever saw it coming, this soon or this late in my life, depending on how you look at it.

I told him flat out that no, I didn't. I joked that at Charlotte's size, it's very possible it was well on its way toward me and I just didn't see until I was knocked off my feet and left sprawling in my ass at the impact. She's terribly cute, my Charlotte. But she's a formidable force of nature—all stubborn, unconfined energy the size of an atom but with the devastation of an atomic bomb. I'm quite romantic, I know.

Then Jake asked me if it scared me.

It was a valid question.

Jake knows how I liked to live my life in an organized, well-planned manner. I never liked surprises and I never handled them well. Until Dad sprung his ultimatum on me, every single thing in my life was practically running like clockwork.

After meeting Charlotte, yes, it's become pure chaos inside me—this instinct to possess and protect and this sometimes irrational urge to strip away all the restraints of order I'd carefully strapped around my daily existence so I could be free to wander away with Charlotte and laugh as much as I want with her. Yet amidst all this chaos I can't deny finding this new kind of peace and quiet I could never pin down in the past twenty-nine years of my life, no matter how much I tried to box everything up in their own little space so that nothing was out of place. And that peace and quiet sometimes comes in the most unexpected, even absurd moments, like when Charlotte's laughing so hard, or when we're debating something silly, or when I'm sometimes just sitting there listening to her babble on about anything.