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The sun rose over the trees the morning of the Davenport wedding, into a sky so blue it seemed improbable. A breeze kept the temperature from being too hot and sticky but there wasn’t so strong a wind as to blow anything over.
It was a day designed for a perfect June wedding on the front lawn.
“If I liked Delilah less, I would be really annoyed that her wedding, which costs the same as a Manhattan flat, has also apparently been blessed by the gods with perfect weather,” Levi said as he sat on the front porch swing with his morning coffee, a hand on her knee.
“Don’t say that!” Hannah shrank back in horror. “You’ll jinx it!”
“I don’t think that’s how meteorology works.” He smirked, like an asshole.
Three hours later, as they were putting the last tiny finishing touches on the chairs and aisle runners, a wall of black clouds stampeded across the sky so fast it looked like all the electricity in the world had gone out. She looked up and muttered, “Damnit, Levi.”
But she didn’t have time to run back to the kitchen to destroy him for cursing her. She had to move the biggest event of her career inside. Which she’d planned for because she’d planned for everything.
Everyone at Carrigan’s, from temporary catering staff to the day maids, was roped into helping. The couches and settees in the great room of the inn were whisked into Noelle and Miriam’s living room in the carriage house through the back door, while white wrapped chairs were whisked inside, ribbons tied around the backs trailing behind. The fireplace that traditionally hosted battles between the Carrigan’s nutcrackers at Christmas became an explosion of ribbons and flowers to act as a backdrop for the officiant. Buntings were hung from the rafters and lit up with tiny fairy lights.
The cavernous room was transformed into a magical faerie queen’s summer bower in seemingly the time it took to blink.
“Young lady,” the governor said, coming up behind her as she relayed orders through her earpiece, “you are a marvel. You are truly excellent at your job.”
Hannah turned to deflect the compliment graciously, because she’d long ago learned that it was off-putting to people when you agreed with them about how great you were at your job, but the man wouldn’t let her.
“Oh no, I’ve seen a lot of event planners at work. Very few of them make it look this effortless or make clients this comfortable. I know this must be a high-stress job for your crew, as you’re in your first year of ramping up events, but I want you to know, if the rest of the day is as smooth as everything leading up to it has been, I’ll be recommending Carrigan’s to everyone I know for their event needs.”
Hannah tried not to choke at this. No pressure or anything, just make sure the reception was a masterpiece and they would have more business than they knew what to do with. Although she did know what to do with it, she had an extensive five-year plan with budget projections and could recite a dozen dream projects that kind of income would help launch.
She positioned herself in the back of the room and watched the wedding planner send the groom and groomsmen down the aisle on her exacting beats. She was glad Delilah’s mother and the wedding planner had insisted they hire a day-of planner’s helper to take care of the hundred thousand emergencies that arose on any wedding day. Hannah could do wedding day coordination but trying to put out bridal fires and make sure her team was in place might be a superhuman act of organization, even for her. The woman they’d hired was both excellent and relatively local. Hannah was already planning to talk about collaborating with her on future weddings.
As Delilah walked down the aisle to the instrumental version of theFlight of the Fordhamtheme song—a compromise Hannah had orchestrated between her and the governor—Hannah could hear Levi’s voice over her comms getting the reception service ready, making sure everyone was in place. She loved how calm and measured he was with the staff he oversaw.
Delilah floated up to her waiting groom on a cloud of tiny blush roses, which decorated the hem of a gown that made her look as if she ought to be reclining on a chaise longue in a forest bower. In Hannah’s ear, Levi’s gravelly voice, like some sort of accidentally erotic ASMR, told someone they had to get everything perfect because they couldn’t let Hannah, Miriam, or his mom down, and Carrigan’s had a lot riding on this.
Goose bumps rose on her skin, and she brushed a tear away.
This man, who had made her dreams feel so insignificant, who had hated Carrigan’s for so long, was putting the people he loved first and working his ass off for something he knew mattered to them, even if it didn’t matter to him. He was putting her needs in front of his wants, without even pausing. It was everything she’d ever asked him to do, and it terrified her. She wanted so badly to ask him to stay, but it was almost time for her to decide, they were almost out of dates, and they still didn’t have anything close to a plan for how to not explode again.
And if he still couldn’t hear her, when she’d told him what she needed, it would really be over.
She kept half an ear on the comms to make sure she didn’t need to slip out to take care of something but kept the rest of her attention to the vows. The governor was a devout Episcopalian, and the priest they’d chosen to do the ceremony was, Cole assured her, known as kind of a maverick badass among in-the-know Episcopalians (of which, she’d learned, Cole was apparently one). She was currently reading a Mary Oliver poem, as if Hannah needed more reason to ruin her mascara at this wedding.
What would they have chosen to incorporate, she wondered, if they’d had a real wedding, with a rabbi and a chuppah, if they’d had months of premarital counseling and time to work with their parents about what traditions they most wanted to incorporate? What pieces from her mother’s Sephardic background would they have found room for? What parts would solely have been for them as a couple?
She had begun to plan their real wedding, after they’d eloped, but had never finished.
Watching Delilah marry in a ceremony that fit her relationship exactly, that celebrated their family, their faith traditions, and—even within the enormous constraints of a political society wedding—their personalities, made Hannah long for what they’d missed. Would they get a do-over? Could they?
“Hannah, I need you!” Blue’s urgent voice cut through her wandering thoughts. Immediately she moved out of earshot of the guests.
“I’m on my way, LB. I’ve got you covered.”
“I never doubted. Can you get me eyes on the cake table?”
The ease with which they worked together made her heart ache. This thing they were doing, where they used their past connection to make amazing new things happen in their passions and careers…it made her feel like their love was opening doors for their future that would never have existed otherwise.
It made her feel free instead of trapped. Rooted and safe so she was able to explore into the stars. Before, they’d always been making themselves less to stay together, but this version of them, they made each other more.
Blue, Age 31
Levi walked into the kitchen ready to fight. He was angry at the morning light and the ancient oven Cass refused to replace, the electric smell of summer hanging thick in the air. He was sick and fucking tired of this place, of being stuck here in the same old dynamics, in the same literal walls he’d been born in, in the middle of fucking nowhere, surrounded by the same trees and the same sky and the same bullshit drama. He was suffocating inside this version of himself no one would let him grow out of, and out of spite, he kept leaning all the way into it, getting pricklier and sharper and more cutting because fuck them, it was already who they thought he was.
