Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
They were ten minutes north of San Clemente when Meg finally said it.
“That wasn’t it either.”
Luke adjusted the passenger seat back—he’d been sitting at polite-guest angle for two hours and his knees were protesting. “No.”
“The courtyard was beautiful.”
“It was.”
“The fountain was gorgeous. Margaret went all out for that tour.”
“She did.”
“Don’t tell Joey about the napkin cranes. He’d either be devastated or inspired and I don’t know which is worse.”
“Inspired,” Luke said. “Definitely inspired. He’d buy origami books.”
Meg merged onto PCH and let the ocean fill the passenger side of the windshield.
Three venues in two weeks. The Dana Point hotel with the ballroom that smelled like carpet cleaner and rum.
The garden estate in San Juan Capistrano where the event coordinator had used the word “bespoke” eleven times in forty minutes.
And now Margaret’s courtyard at the San Clemente resort—the most beautiful of the three, with the bougainvillea and the ocean view and the Chiavari chairs and a chef who’d been there eleven years and could do a tasting menu that would make Meg’s San Francisco colleagues weep.
All perfect. All wrong. And Meg couldn’t explain why.
“Is it me?” she asked. “Am I being impossible?”
“You’re being selective.”
“Luke.”
“You’re being you.” He said it the way he said most things—simply, without judgment, like the observation was enough. “You know what you don’t want. That’s useful.”
“I know what I don’t want. Carpet cleaner, the word ‘bespoke,’ and napkin cranes. That’s not a wedding plan. That’s a complaint list.”
“It’s a start.”
“It’s venue number four we need. And five. And an actual decision before the sunset window closes and we’re getting married in the dark.”
“I like the dark.”
“Luke.”
“Fish tacos,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m hungry. There’s that place in Dana Point—the one on the harbor.”
“We’re having a crisis and you want fish tacos.”
“We’re having a conversation and I want fish tacos. Those aren’t the same thing.”
The taco place was small and loud and smelled like grilled fish and lime.
They sat at a picnic table on the patio with paper baskets and two bottles of Mexican Coke—so much sweeter than regular Coke and perfect for fish tacos.
The harbor stretched out behind them—boats, seagulls, the kind of casual coastal beauty that never made it into a venue brochure because nobody charged for it.
Meg ate a taco and pulled out her phone and started scrolling through venue listings, because even in crisis she multitasked.
“Stop,” Luke said.
“I’m looking at options.”
“You’ve been looking at options for months. You have a spreadsheet with forty-seven venues and a scoring rubric.” He took a sip of his Coke. “Close the phone.”
Meg looked at him. He had hot sauce on his chin and his good button-down had rolled back to wrinkled. He looked nothing like a groom in a brochure. He looked like Luke.
She closed the phone.
“What do you actually want?” she asked. “Not ‘whatever makes you happy.’ Not ‘it’s your day.’ What do you want?”
Luke set his taco down. Wiped his chin with a napkin—a paper one, no crane, no fold, just a napkin—and looked at her.
“Sand,” he said. “Under my feet. The ocean behind us. You in front of me. Our family around us.” He picked up his taco again. “That’s it. That’s the whole list.”
“That’s not a venue.”
“It’s every beach in California.”
“You can’t have a wedding on just any beach. There are permits. And chairs—where do people sit? Margo can’t stand on sand for an hour. And food, and music, and— “
“Meg.”
“— and an officiant, and a sunset that cooperates, and what if it’s windy? Sand in everything. Sand in the cake. Sand in Margo’s—”
“Meg.”
She stopped. A seagull landed on the railing and eyed her fish taco.
“Beach,” Luke said. “You, me, the family. Chairs for Margo. Someone to say the words. The ocean being the ocean.” He reached across the picnic table and took the phone off the surface and put it in her bag. “That’s a wedding. Everything else is decoration.”
“Decoration matters.”
“Not as much as you think.”
Meg looked at the harbor. Boats rocking gently. Sun going lower. The kind of light that made everything look warmer than it was.
“A beach wedding,” she said.
“A beach wedding.”
“People will have sand in their shoes.”
“People will survive.”
“What about food?”
“We can find food. Lots of caterers.
“The seagull made a move for the taco basket. Luke waved it off without looking. Practiced. The man had spent twenty years near water. Seagulls were a solved problem.
Meg ate her last taco and thought about it. A beach. Chairs. Their family. The ocean. No courtyard, no fountain, no ballroom that smelled like carpet cleaner. Just sand and the people they loved and whatever food they could manage.
It was either the simplest idea in the world or the most terrifying.
“I don’t know how to plan simple,” she said.
“I know.”
“I plan complicated. Complicated is what I’m good at.
“You’ll find things to organize.” Luke smiled. “Trust me. You’ll have a spreadsheet for the sand.”
“You’re not funny.”
“I’m a little funny.”
He was a little funny. She pressed her fingers against her eyes and smiled at the same time, which was the thing Luke made her do.
“Okay,” she said. “Beach.”
“Beach.”
“I’m going to need chairs. Good ones. Ones that don’t sink.”
“See? You’re already organizing.”
“And a backup plan for wind.”
“Naturally.”
“And I need to figure out food. And an officiant. And a photographer—Stella, probably, if she’ll do it.”
“She’ll do it.”
Meg pulled her phone back out of her bag. Not venue listings this time. A new note. She typed BEACH WEDDING at the top and stared at it.
“This is going to be harder than the venues,” she said.
“Probably.”
“Simple is never actually simple.”
“Rarely.” Luke gathered their trash and stood. “But it’s usually better.”
They drove the rest of the way home with the windows down. Meg’s phone buzzed twice—work, probably, or Anna with a Shack update—and she let it buzz. The ocean kept pace beside them, steady and unhurried, the way it had since before there were weddings or venues or napkin cranes.
At home, Luke changed out of the button-down and back into a t-shirt and the flip-flops Meg pretended to hate and went to check the kelp samples in the fridge. Meg sat at the kitchen table with her laptop open and the new note on her phone and a fresh sticky note on her coffee cup that said CHAIRS.
By nine o’clock she had three pages. Chair rental companies. Beach permit requirements. Sunset times for October through January. Caterers who did outdoor events. Officiant recommendations from Natalie. A section labeled FOOD — FAMILY? with a question mark she kept looking at and not answering.
Luke came through on his way to bed. He looked at the laptop. At the three pages. At Meg, who had been sitting in his kitchen for two hours turning “beach, you, me, family” into a project plan.
“How many chair options?” he asked.
“Fourteen.”
“Only fourteen?”
“There are more. I’m being selective.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Goodnight, Meg.”
“Goodnight.” She was already typing. “Luke?”
“Mm.”
“Thank you. For today. For the fish tacos. For—” She gestured at the laptop, the lists, the sticky note. “For knowing what we needed before I did.”
“It’s sand,” he said. “It’s not complicated.”
He went to bed. Meg sat at the table with her lists and the quiet house and the ocean audible through the open window.
By ten o’clock she closed the laptop, put the sticky note on the monitor where she’d see it tomorrow, and went to bed.
Luke was already asleep. The kelp data was on the nightstand. His shoes—the good ones, the ones that had been “resting” since March—were back in the closet.
Meg lay in the dark and thought about sand.