Chapter 13
Josie
I read Sawyer's email four times before I did anything else that morning, coffee going cold at my elbow, the kitchen quiet except for the tick of the ancient stove clock Eleanor refused to replace because it had "character."
Wanted you to hear this from me directly.
I sat with that phrase longer than the rest of the message combined.
Two years ago, I'd learned exactly what it cost to find things out secondhand — a headline before an explanation, a business's reputation cratering before anyone thought to call and warn me it was coming.
This was the opposite of that, deliberately, and I suspected he knew exactly how much weight the gesture carried even if neither of us said it out loud.
I typed three different replies and deleted all of them before I settled on the truth, plain and short, the same register he'd written in.
Thank you for telling me. I mean that.
I didn't add anything else. Some things didn't need decorating.
The Nguyen wedding walkthrough was two weeks out, and by the time Sawyer showed up for it — punctual as always, two camera bodies and a coffee he'd clearly bought at the diner on his way through town, judging by the paper cup — something between us had settled into a rhythm I hadn't expected and wasn't entirely sure how to name.
"You brought me coffee," I said, when he held the second cup out toward me without preamble.
"I brought myself coffee and then felt guilty standing here drinking it in front of you empty-handed.
Different motivation entirely." But he was fighting a smile, and I took the cup anyway, because it was good coffee and because arguing about his motivations felt like a lot of effort for eight-thirty in the morning.
"The Nguyens want string lights through the whole orchard," I said, pulling out the site map, grateful for something practical to organize the conversation around. "Not just the ceremony arch — the full walking path from the barn to the reception tent. Two hundred feet of lights, minimum."
"That's ambitious."
"That's what I told them. They said, and I quote, we want it to look like something out of a movie.
" I rolled my eyes, though not without genuine affection, because the Nguyens were exactly the kind of couple this job was built for — giddy, specific, entirely unembarrassed about wanting something a little too much.
"Which means I need you to tell me honestly whether two hundred feet of string lights is actually going to photograph the way they're picturing, or if we're setting them up for disappointment when the reality doesn't match the Pintro board. "
"Depends on the bulb spacing and the ambient light you're fighting against." He crouched down at the site map, tracing the proposed path with one finger, entirely serious now, the same focus he brought to everything work-related.
"If you space them tight enough and kill the venue's exterior floods during the reception, it'll photograph beautifully.
If you go sparse to save money, it'll read as scattered instead of magical, and I will absolutely be able to tell in every single frame. "
"How tight is tight enough?"
"Show me the budget line for lighting and I'll tell you exactly how tight you can afford to go."
I laughed before I could stop myself — not the polite vendor laugh, the real one, startled out of me by the sheer practicality of a man negotiating string light density like it was a treaty. "You just want to see my budget."
"I want your wedding to look like the thing they're picturing, and I happen to know exactly how many bulbs per linear foot that requires.
Both things are true at once." He looked up at me, something warm and easy in his expression that hadn't been there three weeks ago, or had been there and I hadn't let myself notice it yet.
"I'm not trying to audit your books, Josie. I promise."
"I know." And I did, which was itself a small, strange thing to register — that somewhere in the last month, I know had become something I could say to him and mean without a caveat attached.
We walked the proposed path together after that, him counting paces out loud, me making notes on the site map, and somewhere around the two-hundred-foot mark, standing under the half-bloomed canopy with the morning light coming through green and gold, he stopped mid-sentence and looked up at the branches instead of finishing his thought about bulb spacing.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing. Just — this is a genuinely beautiful piece of land.
" He said it simply, without any of the performative flattery vendors sometimes trotted out, and something in the plainness of it landed differently than any compliment he'd given me all season.
"I've shot maybe two hundred weddings at this point.
Different venues, different states. This orchard's better than most of them, and I don't think I ever said that to you directly before today. "
"You wrote a very different assessment two years ago."
I said it lightly, testing, watching to see if it would land as an accusation or just as fact, and something in his face acknowledged it as exactly the second thing.
"I wrote about one bad afternoon," he said.
"I should've written about the other two hundred good ones I've watched happen here since, or at least given myself the chance to see them before I wrote anything at all.
" He held my gaze, steady, unflinching in the specific way he'd been since Ashworth, like a man who'd decided that flinching away from the hard parts of this conversation whenever they surfaced was its own kind of cowardice he wasn't willing to keep committing.
"I don't know how many more times I get to say that before it stops meaning anything. But I mean it every time I say it."
"It means something," I said quietly. "It's starting to, anyway."
He didn't push past that, didn't try to turn the moment into something bigger than it was ready to be, and I found myself grateful for the restraint — for a man who apparently understood, without needing it spelled out, that trust rebuilt in increments didn't respond well to being rushed.
"So," he said instead, mercifully practical again, "two hundred feet of lights. Tight spacing. I'll send you a supplier who does event rentals for half what the wedding-specific companies charge — same bulbs, no markup for the word bridal in the product name."
"That would save us almost four hundred dollars."
"Then you're welcome, and also I expect a cut of my consulting fee paid in whatever the caterer's doing for the tasting next week." He was fully smiling now, easy, unguarded, and I realized with some surprise that I'd been smiling back for a while without noticing when it started.
Del found us like that twenty minutes later, still mapping the light path, still bickering pleasantly about bulb temperature — warm white versus daylight, a debate that had somehow expanded to include the entire emotional register of the reception — and she stood at the edge of the row for a moment before either of us noticed her, wearing an expression I recognized immediately and chose, deliberately, not to acknowledge.
"You two want lunch," she said instead, mercifully, "or are you going to keep negotiating bulb spacing until the Nguyens' actual wedding day arrives?"
"Lunch," Sawyer said. "I've made my case. I'm confident in the outcome."
"He hasn't made his case," I said. "He's made an aesthetically compelling argument that happens to also save us money, which is a different and more effective strategy."
"That's the whole job," Sawyer said, entirely unbothered, and fell into step beside me as we headed back toward the barn, close enough that our shoulders nearly brushed twice on the walk, and I noticed both times and didn't step away either time, and told myself, the way I'd been telling myself for weeks now, that it didn't have to mean anything yet.
It was starting to feel less and less like a sentence I actually believed.