49. Elena
ELENA
The tent over the dance floor smelled like candle wax and crushed grass.
Somewhere overhead, in the string lights Tank had personally climbed a ladder to hang, a jazz trio was working through something with too many horns for the space, and I stood at the edge of it all with a glass of champagne I kept forgetting to drink.
"You're doing the thing," Sergei said against my ear, his hand at the small of my back. "Where you catalog a room instead of enjoying it."
"I'm not cataloging. I'm admiring." I tipped my head toward the lights strung in loose loops overhead, warm gold against the dark. "Tank did those himself. On a ladder. Against everyone's advice."
"He told me if it fell on someone at my wedding, he would never forgive himself." Sergei's mouth curved, faint and private, the kind of smile he only used on me now. "So he tested his own weight on the ladder four times before he let anyone near it."
"That tracks."
He kissed my temple, quick, and then Odette appeared at his elbow with the particular stillness of a woman who did not knock before entering a room, ever, in her life.
"The toasts are next," she said, not a suggestion.
"Then the cake. Then you two disappear for ten minutes so people stop watching you like you're the entertainment. "
"Yes, ma'am," I said, and meant it.
She looked at me for one more second, taking in the dress, the flowers wilting slightly at my wrist, the whole exhausted glow of me, and something in her face softened without ever quite becoming soft. "You look like a bride who ate something today," she said. "Good. Go sit down."
We sat. Jaz and Ash took the small stage together, which should have been my first warning, since the two of them agreeing to stand in the same six feet of space for a coordinated activity was itself a minor miracle.
Jaz had a note card. Ash did not, which meant he'd written something and lost it, which meant this was going to be a disaster in the best way.
"So," Jaz started, tapping the microphone once, "Elena asked me to be maid of honor, and I said yes, because I love her, and because I assumed it would mostly involve holding her bouquet and glaring at anyone who looked at her funny."
"Accurate," I called out, and the room laughed.
"And Sergei asked this one to be best man," Jaz went on, tilting her head at Ash, "for reasons that remain unclear to literally everyone, including, I think, Sergei."
"I organized the bachelor party," Ash said, wounded. "I got the man laser tag."
"You got a man who counts primes when he's stressed shot forty times in one evening."
"He said it was cathartic."
"He was being polite."
The room was already loving it, the kind of easy laughter that comes from watching two people who clearly like each other pretend they don't. Jaz turned back to her card, cleared her throat, tried to look composed.
"Anyway. I've known Elena a long time, long enough to watch her be careful with herself for years, guard everything, hold back, and I've watched her stop doing that this year, watched her let somebody all the way in for the first time, and it turns out the somebody was worth it.
" She glanced at Sergei, something almost grudging in her approval.
"You're terrifying and I still don't fully trust you, but she's happier than I've ever seen her, so. Fine. You pass."
"High praise," Sergei said, and I felt his hand find mine under the table.
Ash took the microphone next, and immediately lost the thread of whatever he'd planned to say.
"Okay, so, I wrote a whole thing, and I can't find it, so you're getting the real version.
Sergei is the most controlled person I have ever met in my life.
The man alphabetizes his own stress. And then Elena shows up and starts breaking into systems she's not supposed to be in, and instead of firing her, he falls in love with her, which honestly should tell you everything about how far gone he already was. "
He paused, grinning out at the tables. "And Jaz will pretend she didn't cry at the ceremony today, but I was standing right next to her, and I saw it, and I have photographic evidence on my phone that I will absolutely use as leverage."
"Ash."
"I'm just saying, if we're doing honesty up here, we might as well be honest about everything.
" He turned to her, and something in his voice dropped out of the joke for a second, unguarded in a way I hadn't heard from him before.
"Like how you've been standing next to me at every single one of these events for two years, and I keep thinking, any minute now, she's going to tell me to get lost, and you never do, and I don't know what that means, but I know I like it. "
The room went very quiet in that specific way a room goes quiet when it senses it has stumbled into something real.
Jaz stared at him, the note card forgotten in her hand, her jaw working like she was deciding whether to laugh this off or not. "That was not," she said slowly, "part of the toast."
"No," Ash agreed. "It wasn't. I'm aware."
"You couldn't have said that to me privately? At any point in two years?"
"I tried, once, in the break room, and you threw a stapler at me."
"That was a warning shot."
"Well, I'm not moving," he said, "so you're going to have to actually deal with this now, in front of everyone, because apparently that's the only way either of us ever says anything true."
Someone at Mateo's table let out a whoop. Jaz's face had gone a shade of red I'd never seen on her, somewhere between fury and something much softer. She set the microphone down on the little stand with great care, like she needed her hands free, grabbed the front of Ash's shirt, and kissed him.
The tent erupted. Actual applause broke out, someone banging a spoon against a glass, Mateo standing up and shouting something in Spanish that made my mother laugh into her napkin.
Ash looked, when Jaz finally let him go, like a man who had just won something he hadn't fully believed he was allowed to enter.
"Well," Jaz said into the microphone, breathless, deeply unbothered by the fact that two hundred people had just watched that happen, "guess we're doing this now. Congratulations, Elena and Sergei. Sorry for the show."
"Don't apologize," I called out, laughing so hard my eyes stung. "That was the best gift you could have given us."
Sergei, beside me, was quietly, thoroughly delighted, the kind of delight he rarely let show all at once. "I give it four months before Ash proposes," he murmured.
"I give it two."
The toasts wound down after that, the trio picked the music back up, and the party loosened into its next phase, plates being cleared, people drifting between tables.
That was when Andrés made his way over, moving slow but steady with his cane.
In the careful, deliberate way he'd relearned to ask things, he asked if he could have a dance with his daughter before the real dancing started and the floor got too crowded for him to manage it.
"Of course," I said, and my throat was already tight before we'd even reached the floor.
The trio shifted into something slow and unhurried.
My father took my hand in his good one and set the other, the one that still didn't quite obey him the way it used to, carefully against my waist. We swayed rather than danced, small and simple, because that was what his balance could do, and it was more than enough.
"Casa Marin would have been proud tonight," he said, working the words out with the patience he'd built over fourteen years. "Your mother and I built that restaurant with our own hands, and every cook in that kitchen would have loved him."
A small pause, his mouth pulling slightly at the corner that didn't move as freely anymore. "Your mother has already told him he needs to eat more."
"He'd let her feed him for an hour," I said, laughing through it. "He likes being told what to do by women who know what they're doing."
"Good," he said. "That is the only kind of man worth marrying."
He looked at me then, really looked, the way he used to look at me across the pass window at the restaurant when I was small, checking that everything on the plate was right before it went out. "I got the line right today. At the ceremony."
"You did. Perfectly."
"I practiced for two months," he admitted. "Every morning. Your mother thought I didn't know she was listening."
"I knew," I said, and kissed his cheek, and over his shoulder I caught sight of Tank, standing near the edge of the tent with his arms crossed like a man on duty, watching us with an expression that had gone completely, openly undone.
Tears were running freely down his face, no attempt at all to stop them or explain them away.
I caught his eye. He didn't look away, didn't reach for an excuse, didn't mention pollen or allergies or anything else. He just lifted one hand in a small, rough wave, wiped his face with the back of his wrist, and kept watching.
"Tank's crying," I told my father quietly.
Andrés glanced over, unsurprised. "Big men cry the hardest," he said. "Nothing wrong with that."
When the song ended, Odette was already moving toward us with the kind of purpose that meant the schedule had reached its next fixed point. She had the cake knife in one hand and a look that dared anyone to get near the dessert table before she was ready for them to.
She cut the first slice herself, plated it with a precision that made the whole operation look less like serving food and more like completing a contract, and carried it over to set it down in front of Sergei and me with both hands, the way you'd present someone with something you'd decided they'd earned.
"Eat," she said. "Both of you. You barely touched dinner. I watched."
"Yes, ma'am," I said again, and meant it again, and took the first bite while she stood there a moment longer to confirm it had actually happened before she allowed the rest of the guests anywhere near the table.