The Day After Tomorrow

It was a cool and breezy winter morning day, on a black-sand beach on the island of Kauai where “cool” was the Mid-Western definition of warm, where bride and groom reminisced on all that led them to this moment, 

12 years after Aoi and Sam first met each other at a nearby grocery store around the same time of day, where Aoi was buying daikon and miso for his parents since neither desired to make the walk and converse with the cashier in English, where Sam was in order to bring back a 49 cent coffee for her grandfather, and where both met each other by chance as the coffee machine wasn’t working and Sam thought Aoi might be able to help a middle schooler like herself, and while they learned they were both only a year apart and that Aoi wasn’t exactly a handyman, they found themselves laughing at each other’s jokes as they waited for the coffee machine to be fixed and they agreed to meet up again tomorrow, 

8 years after both had gotten into role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder and had been spending much of their spare time getting to know each other better through these campaigns of goblin slaying and indirectly flirting, where eventually Aoi asked Sam out for a real date that would end up being a mixture of awkward, hilarious and endearing moments for both since neither had any experience with dates that weren’t between a half-elf bard and a dwarven sorcerer, and then both agreeing on the drive home to have another try at a date tomorrow, 

6 years after Aoi had graduated from his small town high school and had to leave for Texas to attend university, telling Sam that he would be back with his business degree in half a decade, and where she told him that she had gotten a cell phone so she would be able to call and make sure he landed safely tomorrow, 

4 years after talking with each other over the phone, or when one of them was feeling romantic, through a package or letter, and doing their best to communicate, console, and grow with each other despite the thousands of miles of land and ocean between them and promising to call each other again tomorrow, 

3 years after both had archived thousands of arguments, but also just as many reconciliations, as Aoi was struggling to get through his classes and where Sam had managed to save up just enough money from her job as a sales associate to come and visit him with the flight leaving tomorrow, 

2 years after Aoi managed to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in business and learned a couple of hours before his flight that he managed to land a job an hour commute from his hometown, and when Sam was ecstatic about the news promising to talk to him more about it when his flight got back in tomorrow, 

1 year after Aoi asked Sam to marry him after a Pathfinder campaign’s finale where the party’s elf bard proposed to the dwarven sorcerer, when Sam was left so giddy and excited she wasn’t able to fall asleep until the day after, 

1 day after all the preparations were completed and Aoi was left red with embarrassment as he learned his parents joked to Sam that they’d want lots of grandchildren starting tomorrow, when Aoi and Sam stood together and said “I do”, both filled with anticipation at what laid in store for them the day after tomorrow.