CHAPTER 131: The Wedding

POV: Maya Castellano

She woke up at six and lay in the dark for exactly three minutes.

Then she got up.

Selene arrived at eight with coffee and said nothing, her being there was everything necessary.

They didn’t talk much.

Maya sat in the chair as someone did her hair while she watched herself in the mirror and thought about a coffee shop in the Mission and a man who sat down without asking and didn’t leave.

“You’re smiling,” Selene said.

“I know,” Maya said.

The dress was exactly right.

She’d known it would be, but knowing and seeing were different things.

Selene zipped it up and stepped back and said: “Oh.”

Just that.

Maya looked at herself.

“Yeah,” she said.

The venue was a garden in the Presidio, smalland intimate, exactly what they wanted.

Kofi had chosen it.

He’d said he wanted somewhere that felt like it had always existed rather than been constructed for the occasion and she said yes immediately.

She walked out into the garden at two o’clock and saw him standing at the end of the aisle. She immediately forgot every single thing she’d planned to think about in that moment.

He was looking at her like she was the only existing living being.

Like she was the realest thing he’d ever seen.

She walked toward him.

The ceremony was short.

They’d written their own vows, both of them, independently, without comparing notes beforehand, which turned out to be the right call because they said almost the same things in entirely different words.

Kofi said: “I sat down at your table because someone asked me to. I stayed because I forgot why I was there in the first place.”

Maya said: “You asked me once if I ever got tired. Nobody had ever asked me that before. I knew then that you were mine.”

The officiant said something.

They said yes.

Afterward, photographs.

Auntie Grace stood at the edge of the garden watching, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

Maya crossed to her after the formal photos were done.

“Well,” Maya said.

Auntie Grace looked at her for a long moment.

“He chose correctly,” she said.

Maya hugged her and promised to always prove her right.

The reception was exactly what they’d wanted.

Tables outside, lights strung between trees, food that required no introduction, music started quietly and got louder as the evening went on.

Selene found Maya between courses.

“How do you feel,” she said.

“Like myself,” Maya said. “Exactly like myself.”

Selene squeezed her hand.

Avalon gave a toast.

Short. Two minutes.

He said: “I didn’t know Maya well when she became my sister-in-law. I know her well now. She is the most consistently honest person in any room she enters, which she disguises as humor so effectively that most people don’t notice .” He paused. “Kofi notices and that's how I know he’s exactly right for her.”

Maya pointed at him across the room.

At nine, the music changed.

Kofi found her immediately.

They danced, his hand at her back, her face against his shoulder, the garden dark and warm around them.

“Auntie Grace approved,” she said against his collar.

“I know,” he said. “She told me.”

“What did she say.”

“She said you answered the hard question without flinching.”

Maya smiled into his shoulder.

“Your mother cried during the vows,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “Mine too.”

“You cried.”

“I did not cry.”

“Kofi.”

“I was emotional,” he said. “That’s different.”

She laughed really hard and he just held on tighter.

Late into the evening, the garden began to quieting and guests started leaving in twos and threes.

Maya stood at the edge of the lights looking at what remained of the evening.

Selene appeared beside her.

“Elena would have been here,” Selene said quietly. “If things had been different.”

Maya took her hand.

“She was,” Maya said simply.

Selene said nothing and just held on to her sister who is now a Mrs.