“I feel like I’m going to puke. Or crap my pants. Or both at the same time.”

Charlie put a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll do fine, bro. Just breathe.”

We were standing in front of a dais, under a big white tent. And we were waiting for my wedding ceremony to begin.

I shook my head. “What if I screw this up? What if I flub saying my vows? What if I can’t make her happy? What if--”

“Frank.”

I looked at Charlie, my best man, standing right beside me. He put both hands on my shoulders, and looked me right in the eyes.

“Frank,” he repeated. “You got this, man. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

We took a couple moments, just looking at each other, then I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. I nodded. “Thanks, Charlie.”

“Anytime,” he replied, smiling.

Eighteen months had passed since that night at the hospital. As a result of our complaints, Tony had been promoted to Inspector, but kept chained to a desk job at the station ever since: an almost textbook definition of being kicked upstairs. Nominally he was in charge of an entire shift, but he had very little authority.

Me, Michelle and Charlie had grown closer. He’d been appointed as the officer in charge of our case, and we found that we had many things in common; I’m not talking about him being trans, or not just about that anyway: he was almost as big a movie buff as Michelle, but he also liked books a lot and often came over to Stevens Books to pick up some new releases. The three of us had quickly become fast friends, so when it came time to choose a best man, it only made sense to pick him.

Charlie had also been promoted, to Sergeant, because he’d been the one who’d captured Danny.

Admittedly, it had been a complete stroke of luck. The goon whose foot Michelle had stomped on, Pete, had suffered a couple broken toes, and he’d been dumb enough to try and get them fixed at the hospital. The same hospital we’d been taken to after being attacked.

We ran into him at the entrance, right as we were leaving and he was arriving. When he spotted us he tried to run away, but could only hobble at half speed because of his broken foot; when we pointed Pete out to Charlie, he had not trouble chasing him down and tackling him to the ground in the parking lot. And then he’d handcuffed Pete, read him his rights, sat him down in a chair, and told him he’d put in a good word with the court if Pete would just tell him where Danny was hiding. And Pete did.

The capture itself had been a complete anticlimax. After securing some backup, Charlie kicked in the door to the small two-room flat where Danny had been staying (Will’s flat, as it turned out); Danny was asleep on the couch, and he was still out of it when Charlie threw him to the ground and cuffed him.

Danny was sentenced to twelve years. Wounding with intent, premeditated, aggravated by being a hate crime. He’d been locked up in the same prison Michelle and I had been.

We’d had no more contact with him after the trial was done. Simone was keeping tabs on him on our behalf, using the “resources” she had gathered over her years as a solicitor, and we’d learned that the first thing Danny had done was start a fight with another prisoner, and got thrown into solitary as a result. That was probably intentional; Danny wasn’t stupid, and he was probably fully aware that the people who’d loaned him the money could probably reach him even in jail. Solitary confinement was the safest place he could be, short of being free and in hiding somewhere.

I turned and looked at assembled crowd. Every one of our friends was there, and also everyone from Michelle’s family (except Danny, obviously). Aunt Sylvia, and cousins John and Jill; Simone, and her parents Annie and Andrew; cousin Daniel; and several more I’d only met in passing and could not name for the life of me. On the other side of the aisle were Michelle’s friends from her workplace, with Francesca and her wife, Kari (formerly her husband Harry), sitting in the front row.

As it turned out, Kari was also transgender, though Francesca had no idea when they’d got married; Kari had simply tried to keep on living her life, without mentioning or even thinking about her feelings, because she saw them as wrong. When Francesca came back home the day Michelle had come out to her the two of them talked about it over dinner, and Kari had become really really quiet. It took a couple weeks before she could gather the courage to talk to Francesca about it, and it was only because knowing about Michelle her the push she needed.

It hadn’t been all sunshine and rainbows: I’d honestly lost count of how many times Michelle and I had to do crisis management, to avoid Francesca and Kari splitting up, or worse. The first half year was especially bad. But now they’d gone four months without a serious argument, and there they were, holding hands. And even wearing matching dresses.

The music started, and I looked up the aisle; Michelle was walking towards me, stunning in her cream-coloured sleeveless wedding dress. I frowned slightly when I saw the scar on her arm, where Danny had stabbed her: it was much less noticeable than it was at first, but it had yet to fade completely, and probably never would. Em didn’t mind it, though; she’d once mentioned that she saw it as a medal of honour, a proof of her resilience and survival.

Walking Michelle down the aisle was Ralph. Em’s dad had died many years before, but she still wanted someone to give her away; sometimes she was old-fashioned like that. When she thought about who to ask, Ralph was the only one who made sense: he’d been like a father to her, watching over her since she’d moved into the house on Marshall Drive. Ralph enthusiastically agreed.

Jennifer was Michelle’s bridesmaid. The two sisters had long since gotten over their years of separation, and were now really close. As the trio reached me and Charlie in front of the dais and I took Michelle’s arm from Ralph, Jennifer smiled at Charlie, and reached over to squeeze his hand. They had first met eighteen months ago, in that hospital room, and then several times at our house, but they’d really become close these past six months, as they had to help plan the wedding together. Maybe there would be another wedding in the family in the near future.

The ceremony went by extremely fast, despite my anxieties. I barely remember any of it… Except for the I Dos and the kiss. Em, the little devil that she is, refused to kiss me for a full month prior to the wedding, “So you’ll be looking forward to it!” Well, it worked. That moment will be seared into my memory forever, as will the dance, surrounded by our family and friends. We kept dancing until well past midnight, and kept going until everyone had left.

And then we shared one last kiss for the night, and it was time to go back home: home to our boring daily routine, to our cat Conroy, to the first day of our new lives.

The End.