And the fact that somehow, despite missing licenses and runner-up photographers, forgotten phones and carsick kids… we’re here.
Then the music shifts again—same guitar, but slower, sweeter. Everyone rises.
Luna appears at the end of the aisle.
With one arm tucked through Beckett’s and the other holding her bouquet of daisies and baby’s breath, she takes her first step. But it’s her face that holds me—her eyes drifting over the room, searching, until they finally find her groom.
And when they do, certainty settles there, as if the world has narrowed to the single man waiting at the end of the aisle.
My sister—the girl who once stole my clothes and hid my diary—looks… so very grown up. Happy.
Time does that strange thing it always does at weddings.
It freezes. And it speeds by.
One moment, she and Beckett are starting down the aisle, the next she’s at the front. He kisses her cheek, murmurs something I can’t hear, and then he’s gone—slipping into the front row beside my mom, with Max and Blakey flanking him like bookends.
I can feel him, even from here.
Not physically. Just… his presence. Anchoring.
The way he leans toward our boys when they fidget. The way his attention never strays as Rocky starts the ceremony, his jaw set, expression unreadable.
Luna and Noah say their vows under the arch, voices soft but steady, each promise more tender than the last.
And underneath their vows, I hear my own. The ones I made to Beckett. The ones I still mean.
I’m all in.
But the not-knowing hangs there. Just beyond the sunset and the string lights and the music.
What happens after the cruise?
That question presses at the edges of my thoughts like wind rattling against a door I don’t want to open.
Beckett hasn’t told me everything, but he wouldn’t hurt people. He’s not like that.
And every time that little thread starts tugging, I remind myself of who he is, and I focus on the ceremony.
Which, like all really good weddings, turns out perfectbecause of, not in spite of, a few hiccups.
The microphone gives one sharp squeal before Rocky smacks it back into submission, a breeze keeps tugging Luna’s veil sideways until Noah gently straightens it with a grin, and at one point Luna has to pause her vows because she’s laughing and crying at the same time.
Rocky’s smile goes wide as he looks between them. “By the power vested in me by the worldwide internet,” he says, earning a ripple of laughter, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. Noah, man, you can now kiss your bride.”
Noah doesn’t hesitate.
He cups Luna’s face oh, so tenderly, and when he kisses her, the courtyard erupts—cheers, whistles, applause.
Then, making the most of the moment, Noah deepens the kiss and smoothly dips her backward, one arm strong around her waist.
Luna laughs against his mouth, one leg kicking up in a perfect storybook moment. Her skirt flares, the ballet slipper flashing, and my veil—her veil now—slips right off the back of her head and drifts to the ground like a cloud.
I step forward automatically, like I’m there, but also not, and scoop it up before anyone can step on it.
The lace slides through my fingers, soft and familiar. And for half a second, it’s all I can focus on—the texture, the tiny stitches I’d sewn, the weightlessness of it.
And as I smooth the tulle through my fingers, a stray thought sneaks in—how easily things slip. How something can fall away without anyone even noticing.
