Chapter 19 #2
I raise my camera. Frame the shot. Delilah at the bow with the ocean behind her, the wind in her hair, the whole world open and blue. I take ten frames without thinking.
“That’s your bridal portrait right there,” I say.
Her eyes light up. “Here? On the bow?”
“Golden hour. You in the dress. Wind doing exactly what it’s doing right now. I’ll shoot from the side so I get you and the ocean and the sky all in one frame. It’ll look like you’re standing at the edge of the world.”
“I’m going to cry,” she says.
“Save it for the wedding. I need you dry for the portraits.”
Lottie appears from below deck, slightly flushed. "The bathroom has a rain shower and a soaking tub. I just stood in there for two minutes trying to figure out which buttons to press. A rain shower. On a boat.”
“Yacht,” Justin says from behind her, climbing up from the lower deck with grease on his hands and a wrench in his back pocket.
Lottie turns. “What?”
“It’s a yacht. Not a boat.”
“It floats on water. It’s a boat.”
“A fishing trawler is a boat. This is a floating hotel with Italian marble.”
“So it’s a fancy boat.”
Justin’s jaw does the thing. The Spencer jaw thing—the same micro-movement Paul makes when he’s processing something that irritates him. It runs in the family, apparently.
“It’s a yacht,” he says again, quieter, like he’s trying to end the conversation by lowering his volume instead of raising it.
“Agree to disagree,” Lottie says with a smile that is not agreeing to anything.
“There’s nothing to disagree about. It’s a classification.”
“And I’m classifying it as a boat.”
Olson and Mitch explode up the stairs from below deck, Aidan right behind them. They were supposed to be sitting in the salon. They were not sitting in the salon.
“Mom! There’s a hot tub!”
“Don’t touch it.”
“There’s a button that makes the jets go!”
“Did you press it?”
Silence.
“Boys.”
“It turned off by itself!” Mitch says, which is not the same as answering the question.
“They also found a room with a TV that comes out of the wall,” Aidan adds helpfully.
“How do you know that?”
“Because Olson pressed something.”
“Olson, enough with the buttons.”
“But they’re there,” Olson says, with the absolute conviction of a child who believes that the existence of a button is a moral obligation to press it.
Justin has the expression of a man watching his worst nightmare unfold in real time. Three boys, unsupervised, on a multi-million dollar yacht, pressing every button they can find.
“I’ll go check the damage,” he says.
“There’s no damage,” Lottie says. “They pressed some buttons. Everything’s fine.”
“On a yacht that costs more than —”
“More than what? Go ahead. Finish that sentence.”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He goes below deck with his wrench and his jaw and his carefully controlled disapproval, and Lottie watches him go with an expression I recognize. It’s the one where you’re irritated and intrigued in equal measure and you don’t want to examine why.
Delilah catches my eye and raises one eyebrow. I shake my head slightly. Not now. We’ll discuss it later.
Delilah and I sit on the sun deck after the tour, legs stretched out, the water glittering around us.
Levi has gone to talk to Paul about security logistics.
Lottie is below deck refereeing whatever the boys have gotten into.
Justin is somewhere in the engine room, probably communing with machinery the way Spencer men commune with anything that isn’t feelings.
“So,” Delilah says.
“So.”
“Bridal portraits. I’m thinking three looks. The ceremony dress on the bow—the shot you described. Then a more casual look on the dock. And maybe something with flowers in my studio at Petals and Promises. What do you think?”
“I think that’s perfect. The bow shot at golden hour, the dock at blue hour—that twenty minutes right after sunset when the sky goes purple. And the studio gives us controlled light for the close-ups.”
“You’re incredible at this.”
“I just see light.” I shrug. “Everybody thinks photography is about the camera. It’s about the light.”
She pulls her knees up. Wraps her arms around them. “Can I tell you something?”
“Always.”
“I’m scared. Not of the wedding. The wedding’s going to be beautiful.
I’m scared of...” She trails off and looks out at the water.
“My dad. He’s been gone a while now, but I keep thinking about walking down that aisle and not having him there.
Mom’s here, Levi’s here, everyone I love is here.
But there’s this space where he should be, and nothing fills it. ”
My chest aches for her. “Delilah.”
“I’m fine. It’s just—some days the missing hits different, you know? Like I can be totally okay and then I’ll think about who’s going to walk me down the aisle, and it just...” She blinks hard. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for that.”
“I just don’t want to be sad about it. This is supposed to be happy.”
“It can be both. That’s what makes it real.”
She looks at me. Her eyes are bright and a little glassy and she’s smiling through it, which is the bravest kind of smile there is.
“Will you photograph me getting into the dress?” she asks. “For the bridal portraits. Mom and I are going to do it at the house—in her bedroom with the big mirror. She’ll zip me up, probably cry before I even have the sleeves on. I want every second of it captured.”
“I would be honored.”
She reaches over and squeezes my hand. We sit there for a moment, two women on the sun deck of a yacht that neither of us could ever afford, holding hands and looking at the water.
“Okay,” she says, wiping her eyes and straightening up. “Now. About Paul.”
“We were having such a nice moment.”
“The moment was beautiful. The moment is over. Tell me about the shirt.”
“There’s nothing to tell about the shirt.”
“Grandma Hensley said you two stood on the dock for thirty seconds without moving. She timed it.”
“Grandma Hensley had binoculars.”
“I know. Harold keeps them for birdwatching. There was a pelican.” She pauses.
“Emma. I’ve known Paul for years. That man hasn’t let anyone close since Holly died.
He barely lets his own brother past his defenses.
And yesterday he jumped into the ocean for your kid’s stuffed elephant without stopping to take off his work boots. ”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re treating this like a complication instead of a gift.”
I look at my hands. At the sun deck. At the water sparkling around us.
“Matt’s coming next week,” I say.
“Lottie told me.”
“The kids are excited. Aidan’s made a list.”
“I heard.”
“And every time I start to feel something for Paul, I think about what happens if it doesn’t work.
If he decides my life is too complicated.
If he wakes up one day and realizes three kids and a leaky houseboat aren’t what he wants.
Because Matt did that. Matt woke up one day and decided his trains were more interesting than his family, and I can’t —” My voice cracks.
“I can’t put my kids through that again. ”
Delilah is quiet for a long moment. The yacht rocks gently. A seagull calls somewhere overhead.
“Paul isn’t Matt,” she says.
“So people keep telling me.”
“You say that, but I don’t think you believe it yet.”
I don’t. Not fully. Because believing it means trusting my own judgment, and my judgment picked Matt. My judgment said this man is safe, this man is steady, this man will stay. And he stayed—in the garage, with the trains, behind a closed door.
“Give yourself permission to want this,” Delilah says. “That’s all. You don’t have to have it figured out. Just let yourself want it.”
From below deck, a crash. Then Olson’s voice: “That was already broken!”
Justin’s voice: “Nothing on this yacht was broken until you three came aboard.”
Lottie’s voice: “Define ‘broken.’”
Delilah and I look at each other. She starts laughing. I start laughing. And for a second, sitting on the sun deck of a mega yacht with the ocean around us and chaos below us and the whole messy, beautiful future ahead of us, everything feels possible.