Any minute Lucas and Boyce would take their places, Randy or Mateo would lead my mother to the front, and the wedding march would begin. The little Vega boys had been appointed to toss flower petals ahead of the wedding party. I didn’t see Yvette, but she’d promised to personally send them down the aisle—on the other end of which their father would be stationed.

Shanice and Brit had gone downstairs to check that everything was in place.

“You do realize how bizarre it is that you’ve got Brittney Loper in your wedding party, right?” Mel said. “Even if she did plant the get married seed in both y’all’s heads, the crazy bitch.”

I smiled. “Yeah. It’s weird—but she’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. And she cried and squealed like a pageant winner when I showed her the ring Randy designed.” I’d worn that engagement ring for almost five months. My hand felt naked without it.

“Your boy does have decent taste in jewelry. There’s a shock.”

“C’mon, admit he’s grown on you.”

She sighed with her entire body. “A little. But mostly since he stopped calling me Dover.” When I pinned my lips together, she rolled her eyes. “To my face, at least.”

Shanice and Brit came in the room then. “They’re almost ready!” Brit said, joining us at the window. “Look, there’s Boyce and Landon—Lucas—whatever he goes by now. Rawr. They look hot as a couple jalapeños.”

Mel rolled her eyes and Shanice tried and failed to stifle a giggle, joining us.

“Wait! You aren’t supposed to see him yet!” Brit said, taking me by the shoulders and walking me backward, away from the window.

“Pretty sure that rule is for the groom?” Mel said.

“Huh—maybe you’re right, but I don’t believe in taking any chances. Plus, he might look up and see her! No bad luck is happening to these nuptials on my watch.” She reached to pull a few coils out of my updo, which Mel had spent an hour doing.

“Wh…what…what are you doing?” Mel sputtered.

Brit turned me toward the full-length mirror in the corner. A curl fell down the left side of my face and a few smaller strands fell down my back. “A man likes a girl to be a little bit disheveled. Kinda like a loose thread on a sweater. He just can’t help but wanna pull it.”

“This is her wedding day, not a hoedown!”

Brit was undeterred. “When a bride goes down the aisle toward her guy, she doesn’t want him thinking about being shackled to perfection the rest of his natural born days. No man can live up to that. If she’s smart”—she winked at me—“she wants him to ponder that little thread and how much he’s going to enjoy pullin’ it all the way loose later on.”

“She looks gorgeous, Melody,” Shanice said, giving my hand a covert squeeze. “You did a fabulous job on her hair and makeup. Brittney’s tweak just adds that touch of sexy to the elegance.”

A knock sounded on the door.

“Come in!” Brit called.

Thomas stuck his head in and smiled. I smoothed my hands over the embroidered bodice as Mel arranged my veil.

“Oh, Pearl, you look beautiful,” he said, crossing the room and taking my hands in his. “You ready, little girl?”

“Aww,” my bridesmaids said in unison—likely the first and last united opinion of the day for the three of them.

I nodded, suddenly nervous. Spotlights were not one of my favorite things.

“It’ll be over soon,” Thomas promised. “Grin and bear it.”

I grimaced and he smiled. He’d given me the same advice before my valedictorian speech five years ago.

The ceremony was a blur. Boyce and I repeated vows, exchanged rings, kissed in front of everyone—and all I retained at the end of it all was the dark green of his eyes, steady on mine with every step I took and every word I said. Once Thomas put my hand in Boyce’s, he never let go. His voice was calm and sure. It made all the buzzing anxiety go soft, like footfalls on a forest floor. Before I knew it, we were presented as Boyce and Pearl Wynn, and he leaned close.

“Now that’s a Wynn-win,” he said, and we laughed.

Boyce

I carried my new wife up the steps and into our house. She hadn’t been allowed to the top floor yet. A quarter of the footprint of the rest of the place, it was surrounded with a widow’s walk wide enough for a couple of chairs, accessed by french doors. In the distance, the gulf was just visible—a sliver of water below a sky that ranged pale gray to bright blue, depending on the weather’s mood. It wasn’t the bay view her parents had, but she swore she didn’t need that.

The bottom floor was a double carport—no more bedroom windows up against the side of the garage. The second-floor living quarters were brighter on cloudy days than that trailer had been in midsummer, and our bedroom had a bed like the one in that hotel in Houston. I was looking forward to performing my husbandly duties in that bed, but first I wanted to show her the top floor.

Instead of setting her down once we got inside, I walked straight to the winding staircase and put her over my shoulder because it was way too narrow to carry her up any other way. I probably didn’t have to steady her with my hand on her ass, but hell—there was no reason not to.

“Boyce!” She laughed, holding on to the back of my shirt.

There was no door—the staircase emerged into the center of a blue room, windowed on all four sides. I’d installed a big L-shaped desk into one corner—the one facing the gulf—and a sectional sofa in the opposite corner. Above the windows and the doors to the widow’s walk was a continuous shelf. On it were whelk shells I’d collected over the past few months—a couple hundred of them in just about every size. None were as big as that first one, which sat on her new desk.