Page 50 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

She’s not wrong…

It’s only ten weeks.

I’m strong enough to handle interacting with them for ten weeks for the sake of a celebrity wedding that will catapult mine and the lives of all those I care about.

"So." Juniper claps once, bakery-decisive, already digging in her tote for the notebook she carries for menu ideas. "We write the terms. Right now, the three of us, and we make them sospecific that a lawyer cries reading it like a prenup! Fog removal, table one. Where's your good pen?"

I have to smile at that even as my heart gallops in anxiety and anticipation.

What follows is two hours I will keep for the rest of my life; my shop-table war council drafting the strangest document Golden Hour Vows has ever produced.

Juniper transcribing, Marlowe wordsmithing, me pacing the fabric wall dictating clauses between bites of galette. The rules come out of us comically, forensically specific, because specificity is the whole medicine.

Final authority on every wedding decision down to napkin folds rests with me, in writing, no committee. Personal conversation happens off the clock or not at all, and I define the clock.

No physical contact without direct spoken consent, and Juniper adds sub-clauses, no steadying, no guiding elbows, no coat-draping, until Marlowe observes we're building the world's saddest dance manual and we keep every word anyway.

The list of “No’s” goes on, making it seem like we’re writing the new Ten Commandments, but we’re on number twenty-five, which is becoming laughable at this rate, which is probably why we’re laughing our heads off.

The last clause, the load-bearing one, in the largest font because Juniper has opinions about emphasis:If I say the arrangement ends, it ends, that hour, without argument, appeal, or postage.

I photograph the notebook pages and send them to Priya at ten p.m. with the message ‘Make this real’. She replies in four minutes, which means she was waiting up:

This is the most enforceable romantic disaster I've ever formatted. Contracts by morning. Proud of you. Go to bed.

By Thursday morning, I send the contracts.

Three envelopes, three couriers, identical terms, one cover line each, drafted by Priya, approved by me:execution of the attached is a precondition to any meeting, personal or professional.

Then I do the healthy thing, per my new regime, which istowork a normal day and check the inbox only every eleven minutes.

Beckett signs first.

Ninety minutes, scanned, notarized, Lena's tidy cover note attached, every page initialed, including the banned-nickname appendix, no comment anywhere on the document, which is its own comment.

August's arrives at two with one question, routed properly through counsel like the contract requires, and the question undoes me a little in the middle of my office, because it isn't a negotiation, it's this: Clause 5 addresses scent-marking. Should the vendor additionally wear medical-grade suppressants during in-person meetings, or is held control sufficient? Please advise; either is acceptable, and the answer will not be discussed further.

He's asking whether I want him chemically erased for my comfort, offering to mute the pear-blossom-and-iris of himself down to nothing, no protest, no wounded flourish.

I sit with my pen over the reply for longer than I'll admit before writing, held control is sufficient, and then sit another minute wondering which of us I answered for.

Cade's contract comes back at four. Signed, initialed, complete. No note. No joke. Nothing in the margins, no personal appeal smuggled into the signature line.

I turn all nine pages twice, looking for the Cade of it, the wink, the flourish, and there's nothing, just his name in blue ink sitting quiet as a folded hand, and that's the one that unsettles me most.

I know exactly why, and I put the knowing in the internal cellar with the rest of the piles of anxiety wonders.

They're not pursuing.

Pursuit I armored for.

This is three men standing perfectly still with their hands visible, and there's no armor for stillness.

I close the office at nine. The lane's gone quiet, string lights on, fog coming up off the harbor soft as breath, and I'm turning my key in the gold-lettered door when the feeling arrives before the reason.

The little cold prickle up the back of the neck, older than language, and I turn around.

Across Bellflower Lane, under the streetlamp outside the darkened bookshop, stands a man with a suitcase.