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And here is the thing. I’ve prepared for depositions for weeks at a stretch. I stood in that flattened grass in a pair of borrowed jeans with sea bass on my breath and had absolutely nothing prepared at all.

"Marry me," I said. "Please."

Gregory went completely white.

"Blaine—"

"Now. Today. In this meadow, with that arch, and nobody here but them." I gestured at everybody. "I know exactly how this looks. I want to say that out loud before anybody else does, because I have spent my entire life caring how things look, and I'm finished with it."

"Blaine—"

"You asked me to let you be near me," I said. "That's all you asked for, Gregory. You didn't ask for anything else, and you'd never in your life have asked for this. But I've worked out that if I wait until it looks sensible, I'll be waiting forever. And I'd rather spend forever married to you."

Nobody in that meadow moved.

"So." My hands were shaking. "There's no ring. There's no plan. I have nothing at all, and I'm asking anyway. Will you marry me?"

And I watched Gregory begin to produce it.

Everybody did. He got about a quarter of a breath in, his arms started to come up, and Lance said, "Gregory," in a voice like a door closing. My mother put her hand over her mouth.

And Gregory froze.

He stood in the middle of my parents' meadow with his hands halfway up, and he looked at them, and then he looked at me, and he lowered his arms.

"Yes," he said, and a tear slid down his cheek.

Then he started crying so hard he had to sit down in the grass, which meant I had to sit down and hold on to him, which meant my mother sat down next to us, and then Lance, and by the end of it there were three grown men, a woman in her sixties, and a movie star sitting in a meadow in the middle of the day, and one wedding planner standing over us saying "holy shit" over and over again.

"How long have I got?" Benny said, once he could form complete sentences.

"For what?"

"The truck, Blaine. How long before that truck arrives and takes the only structure you've got?"

"Half an hour. You said."

Benny looked at the arch. Then at all of us sitting in the grass. Then at the iPad in his hands.

"Right," he said. "I've got this."

"Benny—"

"I have never once in my career done a wedding without a schedule." He frowned. "And I don't care. Let's get you two married, and let's do it before that truck turns up, because that arch is going to look perfect in the pictures."

* * *

I got married in the same meadow that afternoon, in a white cotton shirt of my father's that was too short in the arms.

That's it. No jacket, no tie, no shoes. My mother pointed out that I'd taken them off at the last one anyway, so we might as well begin as we meant to go on.

Gregory wore the navy suit. The one he wore to my non-wedding. He told me he'd bought it in Honolulu because of something I once said to him about blue in a hotel room in Cannes. He said he hoped I'd noticed.

I had, obviously. I noticed in the first four-seconds.

My father walked me down into the meadow. He didn't say anything on the way, and neither did I, and about halfway he cleared his throat. I said, "Don't," and he said, "I'm not, Sol," and we kept going.

Anne-Marie stood under that bare wooden arch in her cardigan and her muddy sneakers with her blue scarf around her neck. She welcomed everybody and said something nice about the trees.