34
ASH
Waiting
From the street, the Bellgrove library building is all stone and shadow, ivy climbing the corners like it’s been quietly winning a slow-motion war for a hundred years. Pasadena sun spills over the slate roof and catches the stained glass, and those windows throw fractured color across the steps—small, impossible rainbows.
Inside, it smells like old pages and lemon oil. Ceiling beams shoulder the weight of time. The main hall opens in a hush of dark wood and light—shelves along the back, ladders on rails, a mezzanine with ironwork that curls like vines. Celeste’s team has moved the long reading tables to the sides and lined up rows of chairs down a cream runner. The runner ends beneath an oak arch draped in blush and cream wildflowers and smilax, soft as breath. The morning sun pours through the arched windows, warm amber light smoothing the edges of everything. If a place could make you feel forgiven just for standing in it, this is that place.
I take my spot beneath the arch at 10:30 on the dot. The tux fits; it doesn’t matter. My collar is a noose; my palms are damp. My heartis a trapped bird. There’s a ring in my pocket—heavy in a way metal shouldn’t be. I keep touching it like it might evaporate if I don’t.
No sign of Olive. No sign of Liam. No sign of Nina.
I tell myself it’s early. Traffic. Hair. Zippers. Life.
Guests begin to trickle in. They arrive in clusters of quiet awe, voices dropping as they step inside, the library’s hush swallowing them. I spot my parents taking their seats. My mother—God—my mother is here in navy and pearls, hands folded around a clutch like a prayer. She shoots me a tentative smile and I nod because I can’t get sound past the knot in my throat.
Scott sits on the aisle in a suit that probably cost more than my first guitar, his jaw tight enough to crack. He doesn’t look at me; he doesn’t look away. A couple of colleagues from Olive slide into the middle rows with tentative smiles, like they’re worried they’ll get shushed for breathing too loud. Celeste moves like a metronome at the back, all cool competence and clipboard. She catches my eye and lifts a single brow:We’re on time.I try to give her something reassuring back. I don’t know what my face actually does.
The officiant—a woman with kind eyes and a stack of typed pages—steps up beside me. “We’ll give people a few minutes to settle,” she murmurs, low enough that only I can hear. I nod. My tongue is useless.
Every piece of this room is Olive. The programs—a cream stock with a pressed sprig of dried lavender, tied with thin silk ribbon. The aisle markers—assorted paperbacks wrapped in twine, topped with small arrangements of garden roses and ranunculus. The string quartet in the corner warming up with something that sounds suspiciously like the theme from a film adaptation she hates and can’t stop talking about. I asked them to do that. She was supposed to roll her eyes at me and then smile anyway.
I picture her in the guest room at Nina’s, blanket around her shoulders, hair not doing what she wants, eyes sleepy and stubborn. I picture Liam knocking, Nina fussing, everyone moving toward a day I can’t bend to my will. I keep seeing the moment she told me she loved me—the way the words were both a gift and a dare—and the moment I said nothing back. It feels like a lifetime ago and like two minutes. I feel time wrong now. Without her it buckles and doubles and eats itself.
A seat squeaks. Someone coughs. The quartet settles. Celeste checks her watch and whispers to a junior planner, who disappears through a side door. People adjust programs in their laps like the paper might have instructions printed somewhere I missed.
The minutes tick by and I slide the ring out and hold it in my palm. It’s a simple band, gold, warm from my body heat. I run my thumb along the edge until it bites. There’s a tiny nick in the metal you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it. I’m looking—because I don’t have anything else to do.
The whispering in the crowd grows legs, running from row to row. The ceremony should start any minute now. I catch fragments:Traffic? Maybe she’s changing? Do we wait? Is he okay?The library turns into an instrument; every shift of fabric, every breath plays it. I can hear the clock now, too—the big round one above the mezzanine, its second hand sweeping with a sound just soft enough to drive me insane.
The officiant leans in. “We can wait ten.” Her voice is a harbor. I nod like a man who knows what boats are.
I can’t stop looking at the double doors. There’s a wreath of smilax on each one. When they open, a triangle of morning blares in and fades. Strangers come in and find their place. Not her.
I try to breathe how my therapist told me—count in, hold, count out—but breath feels like a concept, not a thing that happens to me.
Everything narrows. The light concentrates. Dust floats in it like snow. A kid in the back whispersshhto his own mother and she actually quiets.
The minute hand kisses the twelve.
Eleven o’clock lands with a single clean chime from a reading room clock that was left ticking. It rings through the stacks, down the aisle, into me. The quartet goes still on instinct. Everyone looks at the door.
Nothing.
No footsteps. No rustle of dress. No air shift before the hinges move. The double doors stay closed, polite and unmoved.
My stomach hollows so completely I sway on my feet. The officiant’s hand finds my elbow, a steadying touch as brief as a blink. I lock my knees like I’m back under stage lights fighting not to pass out.
I reach—God help me—for hope. She’ll come. She has to.
A phone buzzes. Scott’s eyes flick to his screen and then to me; he doesn’t move. My mother rises half an inch and sits again, fingers white around her clutch. One of Olive’s coworkers whispers,Maybe she’s with her brother.The name hits like a thrown rock: Liam. If he’s not here either, he’s with her. If Nina’s not here either, she’s with her too. The calculus is simple and awful.
Celeste appears at the back, her posture immaculate, expression neutral in the way only a professional can manage. She doesn’t hurry. She doesn’t panic. She simply speaks to an usher, who nods and moves down the side aisle, offering water to anyone who looks like they might faint from the uncertainty. I love her for that competence and hate her for the way it makes this real.
The ring has left a crescent in my palm. I press it deeper until it hurts, until pain is a relief because it’s a sensation I understand.
The officiant shifts beside me. “Ash,” she says very softly, question wrapped in my name.
