Chapter 12 #2
Isabel blinked. Her rain and the glitter vanished. Then, “Y-yes, we shouldn’t waste the sandwiches.”
“Great.”
He wiped his damp hands—water or sweat?—a second time, then extracted a fresh memory card from his duffel.
He popped the chip into his Nikon and their sandwiches into a nylon backpack.
He snagged a beach towel and a mobile tripod for the camera, verified that the octopus was still busy with her second sea snail (cracking it enthusiastically against her rockscape), and walked out to a wedge of sandy shoreline with Isabel.
Past the dark, wave-sculpted dunes and the deepening shadows stretching fingers of night and fog across the ocean, the sky was a riot of flame above banks of moisture, scorching in its brief beauty, the daylight blazing even while it dissolved into mist. He uncapped his lens to capture the sight.
Once she consented, he memorialized Isabel’s silhouette against the glow as well, sitting cross-legged on their towel with her back to him, her face tilted up in silent appreciation.
A nimbus glinting with the breeze in her hair was technical perfection.
“Can’t forgo a golden-hour opportunity like this. Or such a good shot.” He joined her on the towel to unwrap his stale chickpea sandwich.
“No, that’s true. We. . . we can’t waste our opportunities, whenever they come.
Because—” She’d picked up her own sandwich, but now she put it down again, untasted.
She shook her head. “Because it’s September third.
The octopuses at MORI will have reached sexual maturity and laid their eggs by the time my visa expires next August.”
“You said the spousal Green Card process takes ten months. So we have under a month to get our documentation together, sign the courthouse registry, and submit your permanent residency application?”
“Then we schedule an appointment with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. And sit the interview.”
“Not much time.”
Her fingers fiddled with the sandwich’s plastic wrap. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Buttercup.”
“But still—”
“Look.” He fished his phone from his pocket.
About eighty Monaghan messages scrolled over the screen.
Once he and Isabel broke the news of their wedding plans, however?
Multiply that by ten. Then again. For now, he dismissed the texts to pull up his dial pad.
“I’ll call the Monterey County courthouse tomorrow to get a date scheduled and request the license forms. Remember that you’ll probably have to manage those. ”
“I know what to do.”
She’d been planning for this situation long before she’d met him.
Chase fucking Meyer.
“What I mean is, I’m ready when you’re ready.”
A breath. Her fidgeting hands stilled. “What if there’s an officiant available tomorrow?”
“Then we’ll sign the paperwork tomorrow.
I promise. But,” he mustered up a laugh, hoping to melt the serious line of her mouth into one of her rare, precious smiles, “I’ll swear to a date, not a time.
Assuming the officiant’s free on Monday, we’d have to head to the courthouse after we finish at MORI.
Or take a long lunch? Either way, though, I’d make it work. ”
He would.
Plus, if they got a Monday appointment, Isabel could meet his family during this week’s video call.
She’d already have his legal protection before Erin or Adrian could probe their story and risk scaring her off, or before his mother could delay their timeline by insisting on a backyard ceremony with a cake for 300 people—and a relocation of his father’s hobby train tracks out of the garden.
“Will your family and friends want to attend?” Isabel cut across his own train of thought.
The answer for his family was an obvious yes.
What did she want?
Stalling for time, Wes bit into his sandwich.
He chewed. But eventually he had to swallow and admit, “If it’s possible with dates and times, they’ll want to be here.
But having both Erin and Adrian in California while I’m in Monterey isn’t normal.
Getting more than the three of us together, like parents and friends, is going to be a challenge. Your—our—timeline overrides theirs.”
How many of the seasonal acquaintances—friends?—he’d made across as many countries would even show up for a wedding? (Assuming whatever addresses and phone numbers he had for them were still viable.) He didn’t know.
“Thank you, but. . .” If Isabel’s shoulders squared toward him, her focus remained on the water.
“I appreciate your offer. Our arrangement. I do. Now that we’re preparing schedules and paperwork, however, now that other people will be involved—strangers, but also your family and friends—I.
. . I’d like you to be sure. I don’t want you to regret this, just because you felt sorry for me for a moment.
Or just because of a deposit on the Nauti Lass, when I can’t afford the whole boat.
I don’t want to be an anchor on you, if you—”
No.
“Isabel.” Somehow, unthinkingly, his thumb brushed her cheekbone. Somehow, though her words caught at his touch, she didn’t startle away. He breathed for them both. “Isabel, I’m sure.”
“. . . oh.” For an unblinking moment, did lightning shiver in her rainy gaze? Her lips parted, drawing in Wes’s own breath. But then her eyes fell. Her braced shoulders slumped. She looked away and nodded.
“All right?”
“All right.”
Right now, she believed him.
He cleared his throat. “Since we’ve got that clarified, can we take a few more pictures before we lose the light?”
After wedging his tripod into the pebbles a short way back from their blanket, setting his camera to run on a timer for the final dregs of the golden hour with a slow shutter speed (they could forget the lens was there—maybe—and finish their picnic), Wes crossed his legs on the terrycloth and pinned down their towel with a hand splayed behind her.
Then he started on the second half of his sandwich.
Isabel shivered; the sea air was chilly after sunset.
“Cold?”
She shrugged—straight into the cradle of his arm.
Accidentally.
He just laughed.
“Right, good idea. Great pose.” The warmth of his hold and his slantwise smile drew her a few centimeters closer. Her elbow banged his knee. Still laughing, he unfolded his legs and stretched them out over the blanket, opening space in his body for her. “For the camera.”
It was there in the background, watching. Just like the lone California gull that hopped through a glut of tidal detritus down by the water, before flapping into the air in discontent. It circled, honking.
(The gull. Not the camera.)
No, she couldn’t forget that sentinel Nikon.
But with Wes’s thumb idly tracing patterns on her arm through her sweatshirt fleece, maybe.
. . maybe she could ignore it, like she was ignoring Chase’s calls?
For a little while. For long enough. Isabel exhaled, willing herself to relax, to swallow a few bites of chickpeas, to nod when Wes pointed her attention to a sheen of bioluminescence welling up through the offshore breakers.
Maybe she could ignore the itch on her neck, the shards of memory lodged in her gut and her brain—thin hospital gown, cold metal chair, bright flash of lenses, what’s wrong with her?
—and could focus instead on the ocean’s chemical reaction between luciferin and luciferase, could—
Couldn’t ignore Wes’s yelp.
“Ah!” Dropping his sandwich mid-bite, both his hands darted out to shoo the seagull that swooped toward their picnic. “No—get out of here, you winged rodent!”
The bird flapped off, squawking. It only landed down by the high tide line again, however. Turning back toward their dinner, its beady eyes caught the last of the sunset’s red glow.
“Shit. Now I’ve got mustard on my face.” Wes glowered at the gull.
When he swiped his palm across his mouth, he caught a small yellow splatter, but missed the condiment slick on his chin.
He swiped again and smeared the mustard deeper into his stubble.
He snorted. “I can feel the mess, but I can’t see it. ”
She shouldn’t laugh.
Isabel hid the tickle in her lips by bending to retrieve a loose corner of their beach towel. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He overshot the mustard a third time.