Standing at the edge of the water, Molly looks out at the night sky, which was alive with the twinkling of the stars above. The moon cast its cool glow upon the ocean as it softly lapped at her feet. Closing her eyes, she listened to the pounding of the waves against the beach, drowning out the thumping of the music from her reception behind her. She pulled her shawl tightly around her, as the warm breezes of the early evening had yielded to the cooler night winds. Her eyes still closed, still listening to the rhythmic pounding of the waves, Molly could also hear the unmistakable cadence of someone trudging through the sand behind her.

“Hey, babe,” she says, leaning her head back onto Shane’s shoulder, as she is wrapped in her arms.

“You cold?” Shane asks, noticing Molly’s tightly wrapped shawl, as she rubs her arms briskly up and down Molly’s arms.

“A little.”

Shane squeezes her tighter to warm her up and places light kisses on her shoulder. “I was told to come get you.”

“Oh yeah?” Molly asks, spinning around in Shane’s arms.

“It’s time for our dance,” Shane says, smiling. It was the one tradition that Molly had insisted on. Railing against convention, Shane maintained that their reception be as non-traditional as possible, opting for the beach house instead of the hotel, the beach instead of the dance floor, hors d’oeuvres instead of a seated dinner, a DJ instead of a band, and modern music instead of the time honored wedding classics, but Molly would not budge on the first dance. That was one tradition that she intended to keep.

Taking Molly’s hand, Shane leads Molly back up the beach to the party. As they get closer, the DJ, having noticed them approaching, announces that it is time for their first dance. “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds begins to play. As the opening notes of the piano sound, Shane takes Molly’s hand in hers and entwines her fingers with hers. Looking up through heavy lidded eyes, she smiles and pulls Molly close to her. Wrapped in each other’s arms, they sway slowly and gently to the music, forgetting that all eyes were on them in that moment.

The lyrics of the song held such meaning to Shane. Every misstep, every mistake, every falter that she thought that she had made along the way, had all led her here, to this moment, to Molly’s arms. She could no longer consider them mistakes because they were all just stepping stones to this, to her, to love. The message of the song resonating so deeply with her, Shane buries her face in Molly’s neck and lets a single tear escape her tightly closed eyes as she realizes just how lucky she is.