"How's it going with Aspen gone so much?" he asked, seriously.
"Like I'm wearing high heels on an escalator. Empowering but vaguely dangerous."
He tilted her chin up with a finger. "You rocking them anyway?"
"Oh yeah," Piper murmured. "Strategic toe cramps and all."
Someone in the hallway called for Piper. Something about a linen mix-up for the Chamber of Commerce gala.
"Give me five?" she asked. "Then meet me in my office and we can go?"
"You can have ten," he teased.
She gave Zach a brief smile, excused herself, and disappeared around the corner like a woman who had actual power in her heels now.
When she made it back to her office, Zach was in her chair, feet kicked onto the edge of her desk, paging through her D.I.C.K. symposium prep files.
"You snooping or professionally vetting my funeral keynote notes?" Piper teased.
"Professionally snooping," he said agreeably.
She circled behind the desk. "Anything particularly incriminating?"
He held up a scribbled page titled: Hot Priest Options.
"Some questions," he said dryly. "No real answers."
Piper set down a wedding binder for one of the upcoming events she'd agreed to take on. While weddings still weren't her favorite, she had learned to enjoy them. In moderation. With lots of outsourcing.
"Do you ever think about planning your own wedding?" Zach asked, eyeing the binder.
Piper blinked hard. "Are you proposing?"
"I mean, I'm not not proposing." He laid his finger on the front of the binder and made small circles.
He wasn't serious. Of course, he wasn't serious.
"This is a horrible proposal. I think you can do better. Call your grandmother, she'll help." Piper popped a mint in her mouth.
"Noted." Zach shoved his hands in his pockets. "But seriously, you ever think about what you want for a wedding?"
Nope. Because she would rather just show up and have it done for her. "I'd rather show up to a well-lit party with matching napkins, walk out married, and call it a day."
Thinking about it, even casually, sent her stomach into a weird kind of somersault.
Planning events for strangers was control. Planning for herself? That was vulnerability. Suddenly it mattered if people showed up. Suddenly it mattered if she cried in the vows.
Would she walk herself down the aisle, or would she let her dad do it barefoot in flamingo trunks because he was already in Aruba?
Ew, no, thank you. Somebody else could handle all of that for her.
Zach held her gaze tight with his. Piper didn't flinch.
It wasn't that she didn't want to get married. It was that logistics felt exhausting when she spent her days turning unfiltered Pinterest moods into memories.
She grabbed her jacket and a stack of work she'd take home with her and probably not get done. "Look, if one day I show up and there's an arch already set up and champagne already chilled and Prince Charming at the end of the aisle? Well, I wouldn't be sad."
Zach shoved his hands in his pockets. "Fine. I'll rehearse it. I'll stagger in with daisies. That's how you know. Daisies are a very serious flower. Or orchids. Are those romantic or vaguely funereal?"
