The Other Oak: A Wedding Hookup Erotic Story

The vows hadn’t started yet.

I stood in the row of bridesmaids beneath the oak, wearing the dusty-rose gown Cora had picked out for the four of us, my hair pinned up loosely enough that a curl had already worked itself free at my temple. Cora had been my best friend in school back in my hometown of Millbrook, long before I moved to Blackthorn and before either of us had ever thought about Savannah. She’d moved east the year she met Wes and never left, and now the whole wedding party stood sweating under two hundred years of live oak, waiting for her to become his wife.

It was half past three. The heat had settled over the ceremony with real weight. Every guest in the folding chairs was sweating through their linen.

Cora stood at the front in ivory, flushed pink at the throat, her bouquet trembling slightly in her hands. Wes waited across from her — sandy-haired, a little sunburned already, wearing the stunned look of a man who still couldn’t quite believe his luck.

Across the aisle, the groomsmen stood in a row, hands folded in front of them, like men trying to forget they had to pee. One of them was taller than the rest by half a head, his jacket suiting him well despite how broad he was — no fidgeting, no tugging at his collar, just the dutiful bearing of a groomsman who had obviously done this before.

I noticed him before I meant to. He looked like nothing could surprise him, and I found myself wondering what it would take. I already knew he was mine, in a manner of speaking — the two of us were paired up for the reception by whatever logic Cora had paired people with, though we hadn’t yet said a single word to each other.

Wes, for his part, looked like a man who already knew he’d won. He grinned through the entire thing, blinked fast when Cora started her vows, and didn’t take his eyes off her once. Somewhere behind me, someone sniffled loudly.

When they had finally said vows and kissed to seal the deal, there was a sea of people trying to get out of the Savannah summer heat.

“It feels like yesterday, but also another lifetime,” Cora said. “When we were sitting behind the gym at Millbrook swearing we were getting out of that town, and now look. How’s Blackthorn?”

“It’s been kind to me,” I said honestly. “It’s big, but it has some small, quiet areas for me to just be… me.”

“I get what you mean,” she said with a smile. Cora was already being pulled sideways by someone’s aunt, still holding on to me. “Rose. Promise me something tonight.”

“Anything short of a speech.”

Her eyes were wet and she was grinning anyway. “Have fun. The kind you’d have to leave out if my mother asked.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you. I’m so happy you were able to be here today.”

Then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd, and I was pulled toward the barn where the wedding party was lining up for the reception entrance.

The barn was enormous, all exposed beams and string lights strung corner to corner, long tables set along the walls, trays of hors d’oeuvres already circulating, a dance floor laid down in the middle like a dare. Near the back, the DJ was testing his microphone, feedback shrieking once before he got it under control.

A woman with a clipboard and a headset was sorting bridesmaids and groomsmen into their pairs, working down her list with the brisk efficiency of someone who had done this a million times. Around us, the barn had become a sea of tulle and rented tuxedos — bridesmaids touching up lipstick in compact mirrors, groomsmen loosening ties, everyone jostling into some rough approximation of order.

“You two are with each other,” she said, glancing between me and the tall groomsman from across the aisle.

Most of the wedding party already had a pair — husbands, wives, the on-and-off boyfriend who’d flown in for the occasion. We were simply the two left over, the ones nobody else had claimed.

Then he held out his arm.

“Beau,” he said, before I could ask. “In case the clipboard didn’t mention it.”

“Rose.”

He looked down at me — a good foot of height between us, easily — and one corner of his mouth went up.

“This should be interesting,” he said. “You planning on standing on something?”

“I’ve been matched with worse,” I said with a smile.

He smiled back at me.

I took his arm, wondering where this night would take me, if I let it.

The entrance to the barn was almost overwhelming — the DJ shouting our names into the microphone, the crowd already clapping before we’d made it through the doorway. Matching his long strides was a challenge, until I gave his arm a little tug. He caught himself and slowed to a gentle pace. After all, there was no need to rush tonight.

Then the DJ announced the wedding party dance, and there was no getting out of it.

He put a hand at my waist, and I jumped slightly at the contact, a small sound slipping out before I could catch it. His shoulder was well above my eye line, out of reach without an awkward stretch, so I settled for the solid width of his upper arm instead — and immediately understood exactly how hard that jacket was working. My hand barely spanned half of it.

The band eased into something slower once the entrance noise settled — strings underneath, a warm horn line, a song built for a room full of people who’d just watched two other people get married and were feeling generous about romance in general.

Neither of us said anything at first — it was too loud to talk over anyway — but up close, for the first time, I actually got a good look at him.

Dark hair, thick and full, medium-length and slicked back for the occasion, a strong hairline starting to give up its shape at the temple in the heat. His nose had a slight crook to it, like it had been broken once and never quite set straight, which made the rest of his face more interesting instead of less handsome. His eyes were a deep, heavy-lidded green, and when they landed on you the room got smaller. Broad through the chest and shoulders in a way that owed nothing to a gym and everything to actual physical work.

He was watching me back. Not the polite, glancing way people watch a stranger they’ve been paired with for an hour. Like he was taking inventory, same as I was.

We danced, surprisingly in sync, while three hundred people watched the bride instead of us.

When the song ended, he stepped back and gave a slight bow, like a thank-you.

I did my best impression of a curtsy back.

We both smiled.

* * *

Dinner tables filled a whole wing of the barn on their own — round tables scattered in loose rows, facing a raised platform where Cora and Wes would sit above everyone else, presiding over the whole reception like a particularly happy jury.

I found my place card and raised an eyebrow. Beau’s name sat right beside mine.

“Look who it is,” he said, appearing at my shoulder like he’d been summoned. “Imagine that.”

“Small barn,” I said, giggling.

He pulled out my chair before I could reach for it myself, waited until I was settled, then took his own seat beside me.

“So,” he said. “What do you do, when you’re not going to weddings?”

“Florist, mostly. Sometimes greenhouse. Sometimes just a girl standing in the garden talking to plants that don’t talk back.”

“That sounds peaceful.”

“It really is. Ferns don’t ask you when you’re getting married.”

He laughed — and my chest went tight in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

Other bridesmaids and groomsmen filled out the rest of the table, trading names and old inside jokes I didn’t know. None of it reached us.

“How do you know Wes?” I asked.

“College buddies.” His eyes flicked toward the head table, fond in a way he didn’t bother hiding. “Very happy for him. Even happier that this is the last wedding of the year — I’m officially done with groom-related obligations.”

“How many is that?”

“Four. This one included.”

He turned his glass slowly on the tablecloth. “You’re the best company I’ve had all year, though.”

“The others set a pretty low bar, huh?”

He looked at me with a coy smirk. “Not particularly, no.”

That hit me.

Waiters began circling with the first course before I’d even noticed dinner had started — a little crab and corn bisque in a shot glass, a single seared scallop resting in something bright and citrusy beside it. Champagne appeared without either of us ordering it, poured into glasses so cold they’d fogged before we’d even picked them up.

“To the happy couple,” Beau said, lifting his glass toward the head table.

“To the happy couple,” I echoed, and drank.

The champagne was good — with real bite to it.

“Good champagne. Wes doesn’t do anything halfway,” Beau said.

Dinner came in courses, the way expensive weddings do: salad, filet with bourbon reduction, grits rich enough to count as their own course. A server kept our wineglasses full without asking.

I don’t remember when I stopped watching the room. It just happened, somewhere between the second course and the third, the way falling asleep happens — no single moment to point to, just a slow narrowing until there was only the table, the candlelight, and him.

He asked about the greenhouse. Not idle small talk, but questions with depth — what I grew, what died on me first, whether I talked to the plants and if any had talked back.

“They don’t usually say much,” I said, laughing. “But there’s a forsythia that likes to tickle me while I water it.”

“Your turn,” I said. “What do you do, when you’re not being a groomsman?”

“Restoration work. Old houses, mostly — the ones nobody else wants because the wiring’s from the fifties and the floors are even older.” He’d started the business himself, he said, after a few years working under somebody else’s name and deciding he didn’t like taking orders from people who cared more about the profit than the project. Now it was just him and a small crew, patching tabby foundations and re-hanging twelve-foot Federal windows on houses that had been standing since before the new owners were born.

He lit up talking about it — plaster, old joinery, the particular satisfaction of fixing something everyone else had written off. I watched his hands move while he talked and thought about very little else.

Behind us, the band started up again. The sun kept sinking, spreading gold over the tablecloths and the string lights and everyone’s flushed, sunburned faces. I didn’t notice the shift happening — not until a burst of laughter from the next table made me flinch — and I realized, with something like surprise, that I had almost forgotten about the room full of people. It had felt, for a while, like it was just him and me.

I had been here before — not at a wedding in Savannah, but inside the trick of it. A new place, a man I would never have to run into at the market, and I knew what I wanted, but wasn’t sure it was what he wanted.

Sitting beside Beau, I resented this night ending before anything had even started.

We were somewhere in the middle of a conversation that had started teasing and was quickly becoming something else — his hand had found the back of my chair, his voice had dropped a register, and I was leaning close to listen — when one of the other groomsmen appeared behind him and murmured something low in his ear.

Beau’s expression changed instantly, a private calculation clicking into place.

“I’ll be right back, Rose,” he said, already standing. “I hope no one steals you while I’m away.”

I watched him go with reluctant curiosity.

* * *

By the time the plates were cleared, night had arrived. The barn doors stood open to the dark outside, moths circling the string lights, and someone announced the bouquet toss loud enough to carry over the band.

Being in the wedding party meant I didn’t get a vote. Cora’s cousin dragged me onto the floor with the rest of the girls, and I stood there with the group, reaching for a bundle of white flowers out of obligation more than anything else.

I didn’t catch it. One of Cora’s cousins did, shrieking, and the moment dissolved into hugging and photographs.

The band picked back up right after, a song with real energy behind it, and I let myself get pulled into the dancing along with everyone else. Spinning, laughing, sweating through the last of the champagne — my feet knew exactly what to do even when the rest of me didn’t. Half of me was fully there, in the noise and the lights. The other half kept drifting back to wherever Beau had disappeared to.

He didn’t come back. Not during that song, or the next one, or the one after that.

Eventually the dancing wore me down more than the heat had all day. I slipped off the floor between songs, found a side door propped open with a folding chair, and stepped out onto a covered porch running along the back of the barn.

The night air hit me — cooler, quieter, sweet with something floral I couldn’t place at first. Jasmine, maybe, or the last of the gardenias from the reception arrangements. Underneath it, a scent I hadn’t caught earlier in all that heat and noise. Moonflower, I realized: the kind that keeps its petals shut all day and only opens once the air finally cools and stills, like it had been waiting all along for exactly this.

I braced both hands on the railing and just breathed for a minute, glad for the dark and the distance from all that noise.

“There you are.”

I turned. Beau had traded his jacket for shirtsleeves at some point, cuffs rolled to his forearms, tie loosened another notch.

“Here I am,” I said. “Where were you?”

“Structural emergency.” He leaned against the railing beside me, close enough that his arm brushed mine. “One of the porch steps by the gift table gave out under Wes’s grandmother. She’s okay, but we couldn’t just close off those steps for the rest of the night, and apparently I’m the only groomsman anyone trusts with a hammer.”

“You fixed a staircase. In a tuxedo.”

“A mini staircase. And I took the jacket off first. I’m not an animal.”

We laughed, more than the joke probably deserved.

For a moment neither of us said anything else. The band was a distant thump through the barn wall, muffled and rhythmic. Below the porch, the dark spread out into what I assumed were gardens — the shapes of hedges, the pale smear of a gravel path, string lights strung low enough to trace a walkway before it disappeared around a corner.

“Up for a walk?” he said.

“God, yes. Anywhere that isn’t directly under a speaker.”

The gardens turned out to be more extensive than the string lights had let on — boxwood hedges shoulder-high, gravel paths branching off into darkness in three directions, the reception glowing gold and distant behind us within a few dozen steps.

Beau picked a direction without hesitation, like the specific path didn’t much matter to him.

“You have no idea where you’re going,” I said.

“None whatsoever.”

“And that doesn’t worry you at all.”

“Worst case, we end up somewhere neither of us has been.” He glanced down at me. “Which is starting to sound like the best case, if you ask me.”

The night air was softer than the daytime heat, carrying moonflower and crushed boxwood. Underneath both was the marsh — a low, mineral, pluff-mud smell drifting up from the river, the thing Savannah never quite lets you forget it’s built on. Crickets kept up a steady static. Behind us, the band had faded to a bass line vibrating faintly through the ground.

“Tell me about Rose,” Beau said. “I’d really enjoy knowing more.”

I thought for a second while gravel crunched under our shoes.

“I’m good at growing things other people give up on,” I said. “But that’s not super interesting.”

“It’s interesting to me.”

He said it simply, without the fake interest that people sometimes put on, and I found myself telling him about the greenhouse’s back corner, the plants nobody else could keep alive that somehow thrived once they were mine — while he listened like it was the only conversation happening anywhere in Georgia.

I have no idea how long we walked. Long enough that my feet had gone from aching to numb to something almost pleasant. Long enough that the band was barely a memory of a sound.

When the trees opened up in front of us, I stopped.

“Oh,” I said.

We’d come out into a garden room that Cora hadn’t mentioned — boxwood hedges on all four sides, taller than either of us, trimmed into a near-perfect square, like someone had built a hedge into architecture instead of scenery. In the center of it stood an oak, older and wider than the one Cora had gotten married under, its canopy spreading low enough to brush the hedge walls on every side. Moonlight caught in drapes of Spanish moss overhead. Whatever this space had been built for — a reading nook, a photographer’s secret backdrop, something nobody used anymore — it had been sitting here the whole time, three turns and two hundred yards from three hundred people who had no idea it existed.

The path ran through two narrow breaks in opposite hedge walls. From inside, we could see only the last stretch of either approach.

Beau turned in a slow circle, looking almost as surprised as I felt.

“This isn’t the ceremony tree,” he said. “It’s bigger. Older.”

“Why would Cora choose the other tree when this one is so much more majestic?” I tipped my head back to take in the size of it. “I guess it would have been hard to fit that many chairs in here.”

A low wrought-iron bench sat at the edge of the clearing, half-swallowed by shadow where the last of the string lights didn’t reach.

“Speaking of chairs, I need to sit,” I said. “These shoes have been plotting against me since the ceremony.”

I sat down first, working one heel loose before I’d even fully settled, and immediately felt ten years younger. Beau sat beside me a moment later, close enough that our arms touched. I found myself wishing he’d sat closer.

For a while neither of us said anything. Crickets filled in the silence, and somewhere behind us the band cycled into a song slow enough to reach us as a soft thump instead of a melody.

“Better?” Beau asked.

“Getting there.” I flexed my bare foot against the grass, working the last of the ache out of it.

Neither of us said anything for a while after that. It didn’t feel like it needed filling.

His hand found mine on the bench between us — just resting there, a question I answered by turning my palm up against his.

The crickets kept going, indifferent. Somewhere behind us, the band was working through its last few songs before the night wound down entirely.

Beau’s thumb moved once more over my knuckles, then stilled.

“Rose.”

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to kiss you. I wanted to say it first, in case you’d rather I didn’t.”

Nobody had ever asked so plainly. Most men just leaned in and let you decide whether to stop them. I liked that he’d made it a sentence instead of a maneuver.

“I’d rather you did.”

He kissed me like he’d been thinking about exactly how for a while — no rush at the start, just his hand coming up to my jaw, tilting my face the half inch he needed. Then it deepened, and I forgot to keep track of anything else: the bench underneath us, the wedding somewhere behind the hedges, my own name.

When we broke apart, his forehead stayed against mine.

“Well,” he said, a little rough. “That settles that.”

“Settles what?”

“Whatever argument I was having with myself for the last four hours.”

I laughed against his mouth, and he kissed me again before I’d finished.

Voices carried across the clearing — not close, but not far enough away either, a knot of guests wandering the gardens with the particular volume of people a few drinks past caring who heard them.

Beau went still against me, his head lifting just enough to track the sound.

“Company,” he murmured.

I should have felt caught. Instead my heart just picked up its pace, every inch of me suddenly aware of how little separated us from three hundred wedding guests.

“They’re not coming this way,” I said, though I had no way of knowing that.

“No.” He didn’t sound entirely sure either. “But we should probably be quieter.”

“Or we could stop.”

“We could.” He didn’t stop. Neither did I.

The voices drifted, faded toward the barn, and were gone. Whatever had been decided in that pause between us held anyway.

“If we’re doing this,” I said, low, “it needs to be fast. And quiet. Nobody finds out.”

“Fast and quiet.” He said it back like he was filing away the terms of a contract. “Understood.”

“I’m serious. I have to walk back in there afterward and stand next to every one of these people.”

“So do I.” His mouth found the corner of my jaw. “Fast and quiet. You have my word, for whatever that’s worth to you.”

“This iron bench isn’t going to work for what I’m thinking,” he said, mouth against my ear instead of my mouth.

“Oh yeah? And just what are you thinking? If I may ask.”

“I’d rather show you than describe it.”

He stood, drawing me up with him by both hands, and for a second we just stood there in the dark, still kissing, walking backward without really watching where we were going. I got as far as pulling his tie loose before he shrugged out of his jacket entirely and let it drop over the arm of the bench.

Between kisses and breaths we walked backward until my shoulder blades met the trunk of the giant oak.

His hands slid up my sides, found the zipper at the back of my dress, and paused.

“Yes,” I said, before he could ask.

He drew it down slowly enough that I felt every inch of it, and I shrugged the bodice free myself, baring my chest to the night air and to him. He made a low sound against my throat that had nothing polished about it.

I reached for his belt without being asked, working it open, then the button of his pants, until I had him in my hand — hard, heavy, and past any pretense of patience.

He groaned, forehead dropping to my shoulder for a second, then straightened, hooked both hands beneath my thighs, and lifted me against the trunk of the tree like I weighed nothing at all.

He held me there a moment before doing anything else, my back against bark still warm from the day’s heat, his forearms braced on either side of me. Moonlight came through the branches in broken pieces, catching on his jaw and the line of his throat, gone before I could look at anything longer than a second. Up close he smelled like clean sweat and the last of his cologne, cedar gone soft with the hours. Behind the hedge, the band had shrunk to a heartbeat of bass through the ground.

He kissed me again, slower this time, like he was savoring the calm before a storm. My legs found their way around his hips on their own, and I felt his cock rub against my clit.

He adjusted his grip beneath my thighs, found the right angle, and pushed inside slowly.

He was thicker than I’d braced for. My body had to give way around him a fraction at a time, no way to hurry it and no way to prepare for it either, and he didn’t stop until he was seated all the way, hips flush against me, so deep it pulled a sound out of my throat that I only just managed to swallow.

“Okay?” he asked, pausing, forehead against mine.

I answered by kissing him instead of speaking, and he took it for the yes it was.

“Don’t you dare stop,” I said, the second he let me breathe.

He didn’t.

He built a rhythm that started careful and didn’t stay that way — long, deliberate thrusts that dragged nearly all the way out before driving back to the hilt, my back scraping bark with every one, my fingers twisting in his hair. I was wet enough that I could hear us, a slick, obscene rhythm running underneath the crickets that I would have been mortified by if I’d had any capacity left for mortification. Between thrusts he kept kissing me, like he couldn’t decide which he wanted more, my mouth or the rest of it, and settled on both. He said my name once against my lips, rough, like it had escaped without permission. I said his back the same way, into his mouth.

The bark bit into my shoulder blades. I didn’t care. Everything narrowed down to his hands under my thighs, his mouth on mine and then at my throat and then back again, the exact spot where he was hitting inside me that made my whole body clench around him.

He never once looked away from me. I had spent the entire day as scenery at somebody else’s wedding, and here was a man holding me clean off the ground who couldn’t seem to look at anything but my face.

“There,” I managed against his lips. “Right there.”

“Here?” he asked, kissing the words half out of my mouth before I could answer properly.

“Don’t stop.”

Laughter rang out again, closer this time — a knot of guests cutting through the far break in the hedge wall, close enough that I could almost make out words.

Beau stopped moving. His eyes found mine in the dark, and the question was there without him having to ask it.

I dug my nails into his shoulders and held his gaze and didn’t let go.

His jaw set. He started moving again, slower now, so slow it was almost worse than before, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek and refused to be the one who ended it. Twenty feet of boxwood and an entire wedding on the other side of it, and neither of us looked away from the other for a second.

The voices passed without turning. Didn’t slow, didn’t notice. Just passed.

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

“You said fast and quiet,” he reminded me, mouth rough against my ear.

“I did say that.”

“Doesn’t look like either of us is managing it.”

“Then stop trying,” I said, “and make it worth getting caught.”

Whatever was left of his restraint went out of him at that. He picked the rhythm back up like it had never broken, harder now, driving up into me until the orgasm built fast and low and there was no holding it anywhere.

I broke all at once.

My hand flew up to clamp over my own mouth on pure instinct, muffling a sound that would have carried clean across the garden. I clenched around him so hard he swore into my throat, and then something in me let go completely — a hot, slick rush of it that soaked his crotch and ran down my thighs between us, more than I’d known I was capable of. He groaned at the feel of it, hips stuttering, his grip going tight enough on my legs to leave marks I’d find in the morning.

He kept moving through the last of the aftershocks, slower now, drawing every bit of it out of me until my grip on his shoulders finally eased and my hand slid down from my own mouth.

His rhythm had gone ragged by the time I came back to myself, his mouth finding mine again, more breath than kiss at that point.

I felt it before he said anything — instinct taking over — and slid my hand down between us, easing him out of me and closing my fist around him in one motion. I angled him up between us and stroked him fast, my hand slick with both of us, short hard pulls that took the last of him apart. He broke the kiss just long enough to groan against my throat, a sound that wasn’t quite a word, before finding my mouth again.

“Go ahead. I’ve got you,” I whispered.

He came so hard the first pulse struck my cheek. The second caught the corner of my mouth before the rest spilled hot over my hand and between us, his whole body locking against mine while I kept stroking him fast through every thick, helpless throb.

For one startled second we just stared at each other. I licked the corner of my mouth without looking away, and whatever composure he had left went with it. Then he kissed me again, messy and open, his forehead finally dropping to my shoulder when neither of us had any breath left. My legs stayed locked around him, more out of not trusting them to hold me than anything else.

He eased me down from around his waist and guided us both to the grass beneath the tree, lowering me onto my back like I might break if he wasn’t careful. The ground was cooler than I expected, faintly damp, blades of grass catching against bare skin. It felt good after being so hot. He stretched out beside me, one arm sliding beneath my shoulders, and for a while neither of us said anything at all.

Above us, the oak’s branches broke the sky into pieces — moonlight, Spanish moss, and somewhere far off, an actual star or two managing to compete with the string lights.

“Well,” Beau said eventually, voice still rough. “That was not on the reception itinerary.”

“Well, it should’ve been.”

He laughed, and I felt it more than heard it, his chest moving under my head.

“For the record,” he said, “that was pretty fast and quiet.”

“We didn’t do too bad,” I said, and smiled up at him.

We stayed like that longer than we probably should have, catching our breath, before the practical part of the evening caught up with us. Beau found his undershirt where it had landed on the ground and used it, without being asked, to clean me up first — quick, careful passes that were somehow more intimate than anything that had come before it, pausing every so often to press a small kiss to my shoulder, my collarbone, wherever his hands happened to be.

I took the shirt from him to return the favor, and for a while we were just two people on the ground methodically putting each other back together — his belt, my dress, his tie, the general business of turning back into wedding guests, trading soft, unhurried kisses in between like neither of us could quite stop.

He zipped my dress without needing to be asked, fingers steady despite everything. I straightened his collar and retied his tie into something presentable, badly enough that he had to redo it himself.

“Well, you can’t wear the undershirt,” I said.

“Everyone’s either busy or drunk by now. No one will notice. At least the photos are over with,” he said reassuringly.

By the time we’d both remembered how to look respectable, my hair had escaped its pins entirely, and there was grass caught in it that Beau spent a few seconds picking out.

“Evidence,” he said, holding up a blade of grass.

He found another piece near my temple, then left his hand there.

“I hate to ask, because I think I know the answer. How long are you in town?”

“My flight’s at eleven.”

He looked at me like he was doing math, like he was calculating a morning meetup, then stopped.

“All right,” he said.

I nodded, and he went back to picking grass from my hair.

* * *

By the time we found our way back to the barn, the reception had thinned into its last hour — half the guests already gone, the caterers stripping tablecloths with practiced efficiency, the band packing up one instrument case at a time. Someone had strung a line of sparklers along the gravel drive for the send-off, and a knot of people had gathered near the doors, waiting for Cora and Wes to make their exit.

Beau found us a spot near the back of the crowd. His hand found the small of my back again, not quite an arm around me, just close enough to mean something without announcing it to the whole wedding party.

Cora and Wes burst through the doors a few minutes later, laughing, ducking sparks, and I cried — a quick, involuntary thing, gone as fast as it arrived — as they ran the length of the drive toward the waiting car.

Halfway down, Cora slowed.

She found me in the crowd the way she always could. Took in my disheveled hair and the man standing next to me who might have arrived with one more shirt than he was currently wearing.

Then she winked at me. Once, mid-stride, holding her skirt up out of the sparks, grinning like she’d won something.

She was in the car and gone before I could return the look.

Beau didn’t say anything about it. He just stood there next to me until my ears stopped burning.

* * *

The next morning, I packed my things — the dusty-rose dress folded as flat as it would go, my shoes wrapped in a hotel laundry bag, the travel steamer I’d packed with such confidence and never had to use twice. My rideshare smelled like coconut air freshener. The driver talked the whole way to the airport about a storm that might roll through by afternoon.

Savannah was already hot again by the time I reached the gate, all bright pavement and white sky through the terminal glass. I thought I might feel hollow once the wedding was fully behind me. Instead I felt tired, a little sore in ways I wasn’t going to examine too closely in an airport, and entirely myself.

On the plane, I took the window seat. The city fell away beneath us — green, then water, then cloud.

Somewhere over Tennessee, my phone buzzed.

Cora had sent the photographer’s preview gallery, subject line in all capitals and an abundance of exclamation marks.

I opened it with the shade half down.

The oak, sunlit, chairs still in rows. The vows. Wes’s face when the officiant pronounced them married. Cora laughing at something just off-camera. A whole gallery of a day I’d just lived through, already looking like something that had happened a long time ago.

Near the end was a photograph the photographer had probably kept by accident.

The send-off, shot wide and too fast — the drive lit up with sparklers, Cora and Wes blurred halfway down it, every arm in the crowd raised. At the far edge of the frame, well back from everyone else, a tall man and a much shorter blonde woman stood close together in the dark.

Everyone else in the picture was watching the bride and groom. The tall man and the small blonde woman were looking at each other.

I grinned, saved the photo, then put my phone facedown on the tray table and watched the clouds carry me home to Blackthorn.