Chapter 129 Before The Aisle
Harper's POV,
We found Rose's shoe in the car.
Not on her foot where it belonged but wedged between her car seat and the door, which meant at some point during the twelve minute drive from our apartment to the venue in Gastown she had removed it without anyone noticing, which was either impressive or deeply concerning depending on how you looked at it.
"Rose," I said, holding up the shoe.
She looked at it with the mild interest of someone encountering a vaguely familiar object.
"Shoe," she confirmed.
"Your shoe."
"Yes."
"Why is it not on your foot?"
She considered the question seriously. "It came off," she said finally, in the tone of someone describing a natural phenomenon entirely outside their control.
Crew took the shoe from me and crouched down and put it back on her foot with the patience of someone who had accepted that this was simply the texture of his life now and had made peace with it.
"Both shoes stay on," he told her. "All day."
"Okay," she said.
"That means no taking them off in the car, in the venue, during the ceremony, at the reception–"
"Okay, Dada."
"Or in the bathroom, or outside, or–"
"Dada."
"Yeah?"
"I said okay."
He looked at her for a moment. She looked back at him with the serene confidence of someone who had just made a promise with no particular intention of keeping it and both of them knew it.
He stood up.
"She's going to lose it again," he said to me quietly.
"Absolutely," I agreed.
We gathered ourselves — flower basket, my bag, Crew's jacket which he'd taken off in the car because Rose had immediately grabbed the lapel with both hands the moment he sat down — and headed toward the venue entrance.
……
The heritage building in Gastown looked different dressed for a wedding.
I'd seen it at the rehearsal; beautiful but empty, the ceremony space echoing and slightly raw in the way venues do before they're populated. Now it looked transformed. Flowers along every surface, soft warm lighting that made the exposed brick glow, white chairs arranged in precise rows on either side of the long aisle that Rose had sat down in the middle of during rehearsal.
The early arrivals were already finding their seats. Simone's family — a large warm group from Toronto who all had Simone's same calm energy and easy laugh — occupied the first several rows on the left. Maya's mother, who I'd met twice and found terrifying in the specific way of very loving very anxious women, was being gently redirected by Patricia the coordinator away from the floral arrangements she kept trying to adjust.
Ryan was there, which surprised me for a half second before I remembered that Ryan and Crew were still close, that distance hadn't changed the friendship, just the frequency of it.
He spotted Crew and crossed the room with the easy familiarity of someone walking toward a person they'd known through multiple versions of their life.
"You clean up okay," Ryan said, shaking Crew's hand and pulling him into the brief shoulder-grip that men used when they meant something more than a handshake.
"You came all the way from Seattle for this," Crew said.
"Maya threatened me personally." Ryan looked at me. "Harper. You look incredible."
"Thank you. You remember Rose?"
Ryan looked down at Rose who was examining his shoes with focused interest.
"Hey Rose," he said.
"Shiny," she said, pointing at his shoes.
"Yeah they are. I polished them."
She nodded with approval and moved on to inspect a nearby floral arrangement, flower basket swinging from her arm.
"She's gotten big," Ryan said.
"She's gotten opinionated," Crew said.
"Same thing at that age." Ryan glanced around the venue. "Where do you need me?"
"Front left," I said. "Crew's sitting with Rose during the ceremony. I'm up front with Maya."
"Where's Maya?"
"Getting ready in the back room." I checked my phone. "Which is where I need to be in–" I stopped myself from saying the number. "Soon. Right now actually."
I handed Crew my bag. He took it without comment, the automatic exchange of two people who'd been doing this long enough that it didn't require discussion.
"Don't let her lose the other shoe," I said.
"I'll do my best."
"Crew."
"I said I'll do my best, Harper. She's three."
Rose looked up from the floral arrangement. "I'm keeping my shoes," she announced to no one in particular.
"Great," I said. "Remember that."
I kissed Crew once — quick, certain — and headed toward the back of the venue where Maya was waiting.
…….
The bridal suite was a small room off the main corridor with good mirrors and better lighting, and when I pushed open the door Maya was standing in the middle of it in her wedding dress looking like herself but more so — the way people look on days when everything that's true about them is turned up slightly.
Her dress was simple and perfect. Ivory, clean lines, nothing fussy. Maya Park had never been fussy. She'd always known exactly what she was and dressed accordingly.
Simone's sister — the maid of honor on that side — was adjusting the back of the dress while Maya's mother stood in the corner with her hands clasped, vibrating with contained emotion.
Maya saw me in the mirror.
"Finally," she said.
"I'm not late."
"You're almost late."
"I'm exactly on time."
"In wedding terms almost late and exactly on time are the same thing." But she was smiling. "Come here."
I crossed the room and stood beside her, both of us looking at each other in the mirror.
She looked beautiful.
Not in the performed way — not the beauty of someone who'd worked to achieve a result. The beauty of someone completely at home in the moment they were standing in.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
"Like I've been waiting for this specific moment my whole life without knowing it." She looked at her reflection. "Does that sound dramatic?"
"It sounds exactly right."
Her mother made a sound from the corner that might have been agreement or might have been the beginning of tears — with Maya's mother it was genuinely hard to distinguish.
"Simone?" I asked.
"Ready. Has been ready since six AM." Maya shook her head affectionately. "She sent me a voice note at six fifteen telling me she loved me and was the luckiest person alive. I cried for twenty minutes."
"You should marry her immediately."
"That's the plan." She turned to face me properly. "Harper. Thank you for being here. Not just today. For all of it."
"Maya—"
"I mean it. For being the kind of friend who shows up. Who stayed. Who let me meddle in your life and then didn't hold it against me when the meddling got complicated."
"It got more than complicated."
"It got more than complicated," she agreed. "And you're still here. Standing in my bridal suite in a sage green dress looking like that." She gestured at me. "So clearly it worked out."
I laughed.
From outside the door Patricia's voice came through, calm and authoritative: "Five minutes, Ms. Park."
Maya took a breath.
Looked at herself in the mirror one more time.
"Okay," she said quietly. To herself as much as to me.
"Okay," I echoed.
Her mother crossed the room and took her hands briefly — something passed between them that I looked away from because it belonged to the two of them — and then stepped back.
I offered Maya my arm.
She took it.
We walked toward the door together, toward the music that had just begun filtering through from the ceremony space, toward Simone waiting at the end of the long aisle in the heritage building in Gastown on a grey Vancouver morning that was perfect in every way that mattered.
Behind us Maya's mother followed, already crying.
Ahead of us everything waited.