Chapter 27
PIPER
Months passed as Piper and Aspen began to work closer together.
The promotion was fabulous, and Piper loved dipping into the responsibility. As she'd taken on more, Aspen had taken less. She wanted to spend time with her kids, but she didn't want to give up her company. So, Piper was her right hand.
It worked for everyone.
Piper worked on a few more weddings and the D.I.C.K. conference was coming along brilliantly.
Today, it was almost quitting time and Piper stood by the break room table in her favorite pink pantsuit and patent-leather flats. Right next to a slightly wonky cupcake tower with a glitter-glued "Wedding Survival Kit" in her grip.
There was no red carpet or giant bouquet waiting. No fanfare or ceremonial jazz hands. But this moment was special—everyone knew it.
"Okay team," she announced to the group of junior planners gathered there, "before you say thank you for the bagel spread, or the gold love-themed pens, I have a gift to distribute to Abigail."
Piper waved her forward, remembering (against her will) her first wedding that wasn't for her parents. The missing cake that got delivered to the wrong place. The best man with food poisoning. The groom late because his mother locked the keys in her minivan.
Piper hadn't had any glitter bags or sparkly morale stickers. She only had a pair of broken kitten heels, and a lunchbox full of TUMS and used-up tissues.
Abigail stepped up with that same nervous tightness Piper once carried in every shoulder muscle. The newest addition to the team was twenty-two with bangs as sharp as her Type A tendencies.
Piper held out the mesh bag to her.
"A survival kit?" Abigail asked, eyeing the glitter bag like it might be rigged to explode with heart-shaped Post-its.
Piper smiled. "You're getting your very first wedding assignment from Aspen tomorrow?"
Abigail nodded slowly. "I really don't want to screw it up."
Piper glanced down at the ground, her hair sliding across one cheek, and said, "The funny thing about screwing up is that you can usually unscrew it if you're sincere." She paused. "You should write that down."
Abigail grinned. "Noted."
"Here's what I didn't have but definitely needed when I first started.
" Piper handed her the pink mesh sack with ceremonial gravity.
"Inside you'll find stress pucks, tissues, a sewing kit, an emergency chocolate bunny, peppermint tea, a list I made for you of 'reasons today probably isn't ruined,' fake magnetic lashes, and one extremely sparkly sticker that reads, It's not magic. It's me."
"I love it." Abigail beamed, holding the kit up high while everyone else clapped and cheered.
"But be warned," Piper said, as ominously as she could. "If you cry before the ceremony, Babushka says you might cry after, too."
No one questioned it. Babushka rules were sacred canon in the office even when they made absolutely no sense at all.
Chuckles started in the back of the group and moved all the way through.
Abigail squeezed the mesh bag like it was filled with gemstones instead of a bunch of fun stuff that didn't really matter… and at the same time mattered too much. "Thanks, Piper."
The room cleared and Piper stepped back, nibbling on a bagel.
"That was cute," Zach said, leaning against the doorframe, his hair doing its usual tousled thing.
She jumped. Caught in the act of spoiling her dinner.
"How long were you standing there?" she asked.
Zach tipped his forehead toward her. "Long enough to get emotionally invested in the survival kit's sticker choices."
She loved his voice. Loved hearing him talk. Because he always spoke like things were fine, even when they weren't. That settled her, because even if they were falling apart, they would figure it out together.
She smirked. "It was either It's not magic. It's me. or Dream Day Enforcer. Seemed on brand."
Zach crossed the room and set down his coffee. "You said pick you up at five. I'm here at five-oh-two."
"You're saying that you're late?" She tilted her head to the side.
"How's it going with Aspen gone so much?" he asked, seriously.
"Like I'm wearing high heels on an escalator. Empowering but vaguely dangerous."
He tilted her chin up with a finger. "You rocking them anyway?"
"Oh yeah," Piper murmured. "Strategic toe cramps and all."
Someone in the hallway called for Piper. Something about a linen mix-up for the Chamber of Commerce gala.
"Give me five?" she asked. "Then meet me in my office and we can go?"
"You can have ten," he teased.
She gave Zach a brief smile, excused herself, and disappeared around the corner like a woman who had actual power in her heels now.
When she made it back to her office, Zach was in her chair, feet kicked onto the edge of her desk, paging through her D.I.C.K. symposium prep files.
"You snooping or professionally vetting my funeral keynote notes?" Piper teased.
"Professionally snooping," he said agreeably.
She circled behind the desk. "Anything particularly incriminating?"
He held up a scribbled page titled: Hot Priest Options.
"Some questions," he said dryly. "No real answers."
Piper set down a wedding binder for one of the upcoming events she'd agreed to take on. While weddings still weren't her favorite, she had learned to enjoy them. In moderation. With lots of outsourcing.
"Do you ever think about planning your own wedding?" Zach asked, eyeing the binder.
Piper blinked hard. "Are you proposing?"
"I mean, I'm not not proposing." He laid his finger on the front of the binder and made small circles.
He wasn't serious. Of course, he wasn't serious.
"This is a horrible proposal. I think you can do better. Call your grandmother, she'll help." Piper popped a mint in her mouth.
"Noted." Zach shoved his hands in his pockets. "But seriously, you ever think about what you want for a wedding?"
Nope. Because she would rather just show up and have it done for her. "I'd rather show up to a well-lit party with matching napkins, walk out married, and call it a day."
Thinking about it, even casually, sent her stomach into a weird kind of somersault.
Planning events for strangers was control. Planning for herself? That was vulnerability. Suddenly it mattered if people showed up. Suddenly it mattered if she cried in the vows.
Would she walk herself down the aisle, or would she let her dad do it barefoot in flamingo trunks because he was already in Aruba?
Ew, no, thank you. Somebody else could handle all of that for her.
Zach held her gaze tight with his. Piper didn't flinch.
It wasn't that she didn't want to get married. It was that logistics felt exhausting when she spent her days turning unfiltered Pinterest moods into memories.
She grabbed her jacket and a stack of work she'd take home with her and probably not get done. "Look, if one day I show up and there's an arch already set up and champagne already chilled and Prince Charming at the end of the aisle? Well, I wouldn't be sad."
Zach shoved his hands in his pockets. "Fine. I'll rehearse it. I'll stagger in with daisies. That's how you know. Daisies are a very serious flower. Or orchids. Are those romantic or vaguely funereal?"
"You're planning my wedding with a funeral aesthetic?"
"Dual-purpose. I call it budget efficiency."
Piper giggled. "Daisies are fine. They're not tulips, but you're new at this. We'll work up to that."
"Tulips it is," he said.
She arched an eyebrow. "I get veto power on the color palette."
"Deal. If the cake is chocolate. That's non-negotiable."
"With buttercream, not fondant. I hate fondant."
"I thought you didn't care," he asked, pointedly.
"I only care about that part."
Zach leaned in, brushing his nose against hers. "I thought this was a soft proposal anyway."
"A soft proposal?"
"Yeah. Warm-up lap. Final dress rehearsal. No pressure but maybe clear your calendar in eighteen months just in case."
They were ridiculous. But some part of her? Some very traitorous, grinning part, was already picturing the whole spread.
Pausing at the Montgomery Events placard outside the door, she buffed it with her sleeve. Just for luck.
The sun slanted low over Cherry Creek, shining through the window at the end of the hall and Zach's knuckles brushed against hers like a habit. Their pinkies hooked, loosely, without thinking.
Neither of them said anything.
They didn't have to.
"I talked to my mom today," Piper said when they reached the bank of elevators.
"That's worrying," Zach replied, pushing the down button.
She pushed it again, for good measure. "She and Dad are going to Aruba."
"Together?" Zach's eyebrow seemed to crawl right up to his hairline.
That'd been her reaction, too.
Piper nodded. The elevator opened and Zach held his arm against the door while she stepped through first.
"And I am not involved. I don't care what they do. I don't care what happens." She brushed her hands together like she was done with it. "I am not planning or attending any future weddings they have."
Tender, and only for her, Zach said, "You were never the problem. You really know that now, right?"
"I know," Piper said. "I know that now."
She'd grown up believing tension was normal, peace was temporary, and anyone who didn't yell probably didn't care.
But with Zach, there had never been yelling.
Only gentle arguments and a surprising respect for color-coding.
Also, turned out that her Montgomery Events health insurance covered a whole lot of therapy. So, between that and the Dvornakov brand of therapy, she was in an excellent headspace.
Then she said, almost to herself, "I think I used to believe I had to earn everything. Even love."
Zach's hand found hers again. "Not anymore."
He slipped his fingers through hers and pulled her close while the elevator chugged to the bottom floor.
Somewhere, somehow, he slipped a diamond ring on her finger right there in the elevator between the second and first floor.
Piper held up her blinged out finger, then slowly glanced to him with all the questions to ever question in her eyes.
She twisted her wrist, admiring the diamond again.
It wasn't the kind of ring she would've picked. A little too sparkly. A little too much.
But maybe that was the point.
Zach didn't do muted colors. He did ease and effort in the same breath. Maybe she didn't need subtle? She needed sparkle wrapped in steady.
"I guess I only had to find my own kind of chaos," she said.
"You found it," he said, pressing a kiss against her hair, "and it's already planning a chocolate cake tasting so you don't have to do anything."
Piper rolled her eyes and held up her hand. "I like the ring. I get to keep it, right?"
"Yup." He kissed her.
"You're still gonna actually ask me?"
"Yup." He kissed her again. "Tonight, in bed, when you're on your second orgasm. Maybe third."
Her cheeks heated. But seriously, she wasn't gonna argue with that.
"Are you gonna say yes?"
"Yup," she replied. "And we won't have any doves, right?" Because that would be a hard limit for her.
"Nope." He kept kissing her, hanging on tight. "No animals are allowed. Except Jase. Maybe Roman. They can come."
She giggled.
And she didn't let go.
Not now. Not ever.