3. Eloise
ELOISE
The longest day of the year started at dawn.
I was on the rooftop by seven, adjusting chair angles, confirming the florist’s delivery window, checking the ceremony timeline I’d already checked twice the night before. The pool glowed pale blue behind the palms, undisturbed.
By noon, the caterers had set up along the east wall.
By three, the DJ had sound-checked twice and the officiant had walked the alcove spacing with me.
By five, the peonies were perfect, the string lights were tested, and the Pixel Lofts rooftop looked like a place where two people could promise each other forever.
I stood at the back and let myself feel it for exactly three seconds. Then I put my earpiece in and went back to work.
The guests arrived in waves. Saylor came up the stairs first, adjusting Maddox’s collar while he stood still and let her, his hand resting on her hip.
Margeaux and Sebastian followed, her fingers threaded through his, her dark hair catching the light.
Lark drifted to the rooftop edge in bare feet, and Kit watched her from three steps behind like a man who’d stopped looking at anything else.
Tatum and Sayer arrived together, his arm around her waist, her head angled toward him to say something that made the corner of his mouth move.
Eliza and August stood near the fireplace alcove, her shoulder pressed to his arm, golden light falling across both of them.
Joss and Sutton were quieter. Standing close, his hand barely touching her lower back. New. Careful. Something still finding its footing.
I checked each couple off my mental list without meaning to. Accounted for. Paired. Present.
Then Tristan came up the stairs.
He’d traded last night’s linen for a dark suit, but the jacket was already open, his sleeves pushed to the forearm.
The coordinates tattoo on the inside of his left wrist caught the late sun.
He scanned the rooftop the same way he had last night—unhurried, taking it in—and when his eyes found mine, he held there.
My stomach dropped.
I looked away first. Adjusted my earpiece. Checked the timeline in my binder.
The ceremony was everything I’d planned for.
The solstice light flooded the rooftop in gold, warm and low, turning the peonies amber and catching the stone of the fireplace alcove.
No overhead lights. No rented fixtures. Just the sun on the longest day of the year, doing exactly what I’d asked it to do.
Beckett stood at the alcove with Tristan at his left. When Hadley appeared at the top of the stairs in her dress, Beckett’s whole body changed. His shoulders dropped, his jaw went soft, and his eyes didn’t move. Not once. Not for the entire walk.
I cried behind my binder. I always cried. It was the part of this job that I couldn’t train out of myself and didn’t want to. The moment when the planning stopped mattering and the only thing left was two people looking at each other like the rest of the world had dissolved.
The reception opened with Tristan’s toast.
He stood at the front, glass in hand, and the rooftop went quiet. He didn’t start with a joke. Didn’t open with the frat house or the founding of Myrror or any of the stories I’d expected.
“I’ve known Beckett Welch for seventeen years,” he said.
“And the thing about knowing someone that long is that you stop being surprised by them. You know how they think, how they move, what they’ll do before they do it.
” He paused. “Beckett surprised me exactly once. He called me at midnight and told me he’d met a woman three days ago and he was going to marry her. ”
Low laughter from the guests. Beckett shook his head, grinning. Hadley pressed her face against his shoulder.
“I told him he was out of his mind. I told him it sounded exactly like the time he bought a building because he walked past it and got a feeling.” Tristan looked at Beckett. “And he said, ‘This isn’t like that. This is the thing the building was for.’”
The rooftop was silent.
“Seventeen years,” Tristan said. “And I have never seen him certain about something that wasn’t a risk. Until Hadley.” He raised his glass. “It was never a risk. It was meant to be.”
I couldn’t breathe. I was standing at the back of the rooftop with my binder pressed against my chest and my throat so tight, I couldn’t swallow.
The guests raised their glasses. Hadley was crying. Beckett pulled Tristan into a hug that lasted longer than either of them probably meant for it to, and I saw Tristan’s hand grip the back of Beckett’s jacket, tight and fierce, before he let go.
The DJ started the first dance. I should have been checking the timeline, cueing the caterer for the dinner service, confirming the cake delivery. Instead I stood at the back of the rooftop and watched Tristan walk through the crowd toward me.
“Dance with me,” he said.
“I’m working.”
“You’ve been working since seven this morning.”
“The caterer needs?—”
“The caterer is already serving. The cake is on the table. The DJ has the playlist.” He tilted his head, watching me. “What’s left?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Looked down at my binder—at the timeline I’d color-coded with four different highlighters—and I couldn’t find a single task that needed me right now.
“One dance,” he said.
I set the binder on the ledge by the drink station. Pulled the earpiece out and laid it on top. My hands felt strange without them. Empty in a way that made me aware of every finger.
He took my hand and led me to the dance floor, and when he turned me toward him, his other hand settled on my waist. Not low, not possessive. Just there. Warm and steady through the fabric of my dress.
We moved, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. The solstice light was shifting from gold to amber around us, the sky going deeper, and his hand was on my waist, and I was close enough to see the pulse in his throat.
“You’re tense,” he said.
“I don’t do this.”
“Dance?”
“Stop.” I let out a breath. “I don’t stop. I’m always the one making sure everyone else’s night goes right. I don’t…take a night for myself.”
“Ever?”
I looked up at him. “Not really.”
Recognition flickered behind his eyes. “That sounds familiar.”
“You too?”
“Seventeen years of being the one who shows up,” he said. “You get comfortable with it.”
“You get good at it.”
“That too.” His thumb shifted against my waist, the smallest movement, and I felt it everywhere. “The problem is, being good at it means nobody thinks to ask if you want something different.”
The flush started at my ears and moved down my neck. He was watching me, and I knew he could see it. The light was too warm, too golden, too close for me to hide anything.
“Can I tell you something?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve never done this.” I swallowed. “Any of it. I’ve planned a hundred events, and I’ve never been the person at one. I’ve coordinated thirty weddings, and I’ve never been asked to dance at a single one.”
His hand tightened on my waist slightly. Just enough that I felt the shift in pressure and something hot moved through my chest.
“Thirty weddings,” he said.
“Thirty-one, counting today’s.” I tried to laugh. It came out uneven. “I’m always the one in the earpiece. I’m never the one on the dance floor.”
He pulled me closer—an inch, maybe two. It changed the distance between us from polite to personal, and I could feel the warmth radiating off his chest through his shirt.
“You’re on the dance floor now,” he said.
The music slowed. The light kept shifting, amber to rose, the sky going soft and deep at the edges.
Around us, the rooftop was thinning out.
Couples were drifting toward the stairwell, toward home, toward each other.
The DJ had switched to something low and warm, and the string lights had taken over from the sun.
I didn’t step back. Didn’t check the time, didn’t look for my binder, didn’t mentally run through the breakdown schedule. I just stayed where I was, my hand on his shoulder, his hand on my waist, the last of the midsummer light turning everything the color of honey.
“Midsummer,” he said, almost to himself.
“What?”
“The light.” He looked up at the sky, then back at me. “My grandmother used to call it that. The night the light doesn’t want to leave.”
I felt my throat tighten. “That’s why I picked this date.”
“I know.” His voice was low. “You gave them the longest day. The most light. The one where the sun stays for as long as it possibly can.”
The music changed again. Softer. The rooftop was nearly empty now. Just us and the string lights and the last warm edges of a sky that was taking its time going dark.
“Stay,” he said.
My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my wrists. “I should go check the?—”
“Eloise.” He said my name like he’d been practicing it. Like he’d said it to himself in his room last night and again this morning and now he was finally saying it to me. “Stay.”
I looked at the stairwell. At the empty ledge where my binder was. At the sky that was still holding, still gold at the edges, still refusing to go dark.
I stayed.