You know, I'd never really thought I'd be the girl to talk about her first marriage. Then again, here I am, at the altar once more. I guess I thought I was getting too old, that no one would want me soon. I guess I get that after what happened between my Pop and Edna, although they were back together, at least for a little while.

            Kind of sad, though, considering he wasn't around to see too much of it. And I think that's what scares me the most. To finally find happiness, and not be alive long enough to enjoy it. I'd figured I'd be an old maid by the time I found the perfect guy, and if he really was that perfect, he'd already be married anyway.

            So I settled, big deal. Everyone settles. True, it was a little hasty. After all, I hadn't known him more than two weeks, but for a reason, it didn't matter then. I was fresh off my father's death, I was living alone, two weeks behind on the rent: I had nothing to loose.

            I shift my weight in the itchy lace dress that is too tight, looking at the emotionless face of the minister, reciting vows that he secretly knows have meant nothing in the majority of people he's spoken them to. How sad to think marriage has lost it's meaning, but not this time around.

            I've gotten it. I understand now.

            I arch my neck, looking up at the strangely beautiful man that's been staring at my face the entire time. Smiling, I clasp his hand. My heart flutters oddly in my chest, and I wish I could say the feeling takes me back, but it doesn't. It's new; at least it has been for the past month or so.

            How could I have been so stupid? To immediately ignore something that has been underneath my nose the entire time. And I'll ask myself why, but know that the answer isn't near.

            But the answer to another one of the why's in my life is standing next to me, his blue eyes shining, an expression of childish glee hiding the fact that I know he's a bundle of nerves. His hand shakes in mine, and all I can do is squeeze it harder.

            I'm calm, though, unlike my last wedding. Wisdom comes only through experience, after all. It had been cheaply, hastily put together, in the same church my father's memorial service had been held. That was the basic driving force of me getting married, I think: to make my father proud. And I'm beginning to realize now, that all he ever wanted was the best for me.

            This is the best for me, I've decided. Never in my entire life have I felt so safe, and strangely understood. For a while, I thought I'd been reaching to see all of this magic in him, until I discovered that, in fact, I'd been trying my best not to see it because it scared me. No one else, save for Shirley, seems to get me the way he does. And she left.

            Maybe I thought he'd leave. Yet, he's still here. That, in itself, is a very big deal to me. To have someone stand by me, for over fourteen years, even when I've paid him no attention and never really understood his devotion to me. I guess he just saw something in me before I even took a second glance at him, but I have no doubt now that I see it in him.

            Someone who will love me, protect me, cherish me, and be my best friend. Forever and ever, till death do we part.

            "I do."

            "And do you, Leonard Kosnowski, take Laverne DeFazio to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?"

            The minister's voice still holds that cold and indifferent ring, but I'm no longer bothered by it when the blonde man I've experienced so much with looks into my eyes. And I know that he's thinking the same things, feeling the same feelings, and loving me just as much as I'm loving him.

            Amazing how you can see that in someone's face, and in someone's voice, as he proudly says, "I do."