Chapter 4: The Anniversary Trip and the Wrong Train
The train was wrong.
Layla knew it was wrong before the doors even closed—the carriage smelled different, the seats faced the wrong direction, the destination board above the platform said something she didn't recognize in a font that looked like it belonged to a bus schedule, not a train that was supposed to be taking them to the coast for their anniversary weekend.
"Karim."
"Hm."
"Karim, this train is wrong."
He was already settling into the window seat, jacket off, sleeves rolled, looking entirely unbothered by the catastrophe unfolding around them. He had the tickets in his hand. He was squinting at them like they might spontaneously reveal new information.
"It says Platform 4," he said.
"It says Platform 4 for the 10:47 to Brighton. This is not the 10:47 to Brighton."
"It's 10:47."
"It's 10:47 and we're going the wrong way."
He looked up. The train lurched—that first, heavy pull out of the station—and Layla grabbed the back of the seat in front of her to keep from pitching forward. Outside, the platform slid away. A man in a hi-vis vest watched them go with the flat indifference of someone who had seen this exact thing happen before.
"It's fine," Karim said.
"It's not fine."
"It's fine."
"We're going to end up in—" She craned her neck toward the map above the doors, the one that listed all the stops in tiny, mocking letters. "Where the fuck is Wivenhoe?"
"Never heard of it."
"That's my point."
She sat down. Hard. The seat was scratchy and smelled like someone's grandfather. The carriage was half-empty—a woman with a sleeping baby, two teenagers sharing one pair of headphones, an old man with a newspaper folded into quarters. None of them looked like they were having an anniversary weekend.
"It's fine," Karim said again.
"Stop saying that."
"It's fine."
"Karim."
He reached into his bag.
She watched him pull out a paper sack—the kind with grease spots already blooming through the bottom, the kind that meant something fried and excellent was inside. He opened it, peered in, and selected a pastry with the care of a surgeon.
"Croissant?"
"I don't want a croissant."
"It's almond."
"Where did you even get that?"
"At the station. While you were in the bathroom." He held it out. "You're hungry. You get mean when you're hungry."
"I'm not mean."
"You're being mean right now."
She took the croissant. Bit into it. It was still warm, flaky and buttery and dusted with sugar that immediately went everywhere. She chewed. Glared at him. Chewed some more.
"Okay," she said, mouth full. "This is good."
"I know."
"But we're still going the wrong way."
"Probably."
"Karim."
He leaned back. The sun was coming through the window now—grimy, gold, catching the dust motes floating between them. He had a spot of sugar on his lip. He looked, she thought with a lurch that had nothing to do with the train, completely at home.
"Fifty minutes," he said. "Then we get off, figure out where we are, and get a train back. We lose maybe two hours. We still get to the coast by afternoon."
"That's not the point."
"What's the point?"
The point was that she'd spent the whole week planning this. Not the trip—he'd planned the trip, he'd booked the hotel, he'd bought the tickets and put them in a little envelope that he'd presented to her with a bow on it like he was twelve and asking her to a dance. But she'd spent the week planning the outfit and the conversation and the way she was going to say something real for once, something that had been sitting in her chest for months.
The point was that she wanted everything to go right.
"The point is you ruined it," she said.
She heard it as soon as it left her mouth. The brittleness. The sharpness. The way the words came out like they'd been waiting for a reason to exist.
Karim heard it too. She saw it in the way his face went still—not hurt, not angry. Just still. Calm water.
"Okay," he said.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Don't just—" She gestured at him with the half-eaten croissant. "Take it. Roll over. Be all reasonable about me being—"
"Being what?"
"Being a bitch about a train."
He took a bite of his own croissant. Chewed. Swallowed. Outside, the city was giving way to suburbs, houses packed tight against the tracks, laundry flapping in gardens, a flash of a dog running behind a fence.
"Four minutes," he said.
"What?"
"I'm giving you four minutes. To be a bitch about a train. Then we're moving on."
"That's not how—"
"Four minutes starts now."
She stared at him. He stared back, entirely serious, and took another bite of his pastry.
"You're impossible," she said.
"Three minutes fifty."
"I hate you."
"Three forty-five."
She laughed. She didn't want to, but it came out anyway, short and sharp and entirely against her will, and once it started she couldn't stop it. She put her head down on the seat-back in front of her and shook with it, the croissant still in her hand, sugar going everywhere, and she heard Karim laugh too—that low, almost-silent thing he did, more breath than sound—and then his hand was on the back of her neck.
"Two minutes thirty," he said.
"Shut up."
"This is the worst anniversary ever."
"Shut up."
"I can't believe I'm stranded on a train to Wivenhoe with someone who's mad at me about a train."
"Karim."
"I know a guy in Wivenhoe. We'll crash on his couch."
She lifted her head. He was grinning at her. She was never going to escape this man.
"You're not funny," she said.
"I'm a little funny."
"You're a little funny."
The train rattled on. Suburbs gave way to fields, and the fields gave way to a long stretch of brown and green, sheep scattering at the noise. The sun kept moving across the floor and the carriage kept its quiet hum, and Layla leaned into Karim's shoulder and let herself breathe.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"You don't have to—"
"I do. I ruined the first four minutes."
"You needed them. That's what they're for." He pulled out his phone, unwound the earbuds, handed her one. "Come on. I want to show you something."
"That's not how this works, Karim. I'm supposed to have the good songs."
"You have good songs. I have better songs."
"That's factually incorrect."
"It's not a fact."
"It's absolutely a fact. The data is in."
"Put the earbud in, Layla."
She put the earbud in. He scrolled for a minute, biting his lip, then pressed play.
The first chord wasn't familiar. The second made her frown. The voice was low and slightly broken, and the lyrics were about driving at night through a town you didn't remember and a chorus she couldn't hold onto, and it was not what she expected—fast, slow, loud, quiet, something that built and then didn't break, something that just sat there, unresolved.
"Who is this?"
"Nobody."
"That's not a name."
"Asghar."
"Is that a person?"
"He's dead. Nineteen ninety-four."
"Karim."
"He was my dad's favorite. I found him in a box of CDs."
She pulled the earbud out and looked at him. His eyes were on the window, watching the fields turn into salt marsh, green spilling into grey, the edge of a river glittering in the middle distance.
"You have a box of CDs?"
"He had a box. It came to me when he died."
"How old were you?"
"Eleven."
She didn't say she was sorry. It wasn't that kind of room. She put the earbud back in and leaned her head on his shoulder and listened to the dead man sing, and somewhere past Wivenhoe—which, it turned out, was not their stop after all—she felt him press his lips to the top of her head.
The train let them off in a town with one platform and a vending machine that sold cans of coffee and no sign that anyone had done anything here since the 1970s.
The sea was close. She could smell it. Salt and diesel and something old and damp, the smell of a harbor that had been here before she was born and would be here after she was gone.
Karim stood on the platform with the bag over his shoulder and turned in a slow circle.
"Well," he said. "It's not Brighton."
"It's not."
"There's an ice cream shop."
She followed his gaze. There was, in fact, an ice cream shop. It had a striped awning and one bench out front. It was open.
But it wasn't time to go to the ice cream shop yet. She could see him looking at the way the street dipped down toward the water, at the boats bobbing in the harbor just visible at the end of the road, and she knew he was doing the thing he always did—running calculations, weighing options, trying to figure out the exact right move to fix the day.
"Let's walk," she said.
"We should find the station office—"
"Karim. Let's walk."
He looked at her. Something shifted behind his eyes—relief, maybe, or surprise, or one of those other things he never showed.
"Okay," he said.
They walked.
The town was small and bright and flat—houses painted in pastel colors, a church with a crooked steeple, a pub that had a sign older than either of them. The street led down to the harbor and the harbor was full of fishing boats and the smell was so thick she could taste it, salt and diesel and the thing that was just water that had been places.
She held his hand. She wasn't sure when she'd started doing that—holding his hand like it was a thing that just happened—but somewhere along the way it had become normal, and now his thumb was on her wrist and his fingers were laced with hers and she wasn't going to let go.
"Look at that boat," she said."Which one."
"The one with the—" She pointed. "The green one. It's named after a woman."
"Susan."
"Susan! That's not a boat name."
"It's a boat name."
"Boats should be named things like—" She made a vague gesture. "Windswept. Sea Witch. Things with gravitas."
"Susan's a good name."
"The boat has no gravitas."
"The boat's called Susan and it's been out fishing all day and it doesn't care about your feelings."
She laughed. The sound surprised her—real and loose, no edges on it. She caught Karim looking at her and looked away before he could say anything.
They ate fried things off paper—scampi and chips and something called a doughnut that was really a ring of fried batter that she didn't want to know the calorie count of—and sat on a bench that faced the water. The tide was out. There were birds.
"Okay," she said. "Let's play the game."
"Which game?"
"You know which game."
"The one where we make up lives for strangers."
"That one."
He looked around. The harbor was full of options—an old man on a bench with a newspaper and a dog that was not on a leash; a woman with two kids, one of whom was crying quietly, the way kids did when they'd learned nobody was coming to help; a couple in matching raincoats even though there was no rain, standing very close together and looking at the water.
"Him," Karim said. The old man.
"Okay." She wiped her fingers on a napkin, considered. "He was a spy."
"That's the obvious one."
"It's my turn. He was a spy. He was very good. He worked in Moscow and Berlin and then one day his cover got blown and he had to come home."
"To Wivenhoe."
"To Wivenhoe. He met a woman here. She was a schoolteacher. He'd never told anyone what he did. They got married in that church with the crooked steeple."
"But he never stopped looking over his shoulder."
"Right. He's got a dog because the dog would bark if anyone came."
"What's the dog's name?"
"Susan."
"That's the boat."
"He named the dog after the boat."
"That's a good name."
"That's the point." She leaned into him. "Your turn."
He chewed his lip. Nodded at the woman with the crying child.
"Her husband's dead," he said.
"Karim."
"I'm serious. Wait." He held up a hand. "Her husband's dead. He died last year. She's bringing the kids here because it's where they came on their honeymoon, and she wanted to see if the place was still the same. It's not. The ice cream place changed hands. The pub's gone under. She's standing there thinking about how the only thing that hasn't changed is her."
"That's—" She stopped. "That's really sad, Karim."
"It's a story."
"It's a sad story."
"Yeah." He shrugged. "She'll be okay. She's got the kids. The kids'll grow up. She'll meet someone at a school fundraiser and she'll hate him at first, and then she won't."
"That's a worse story."
"Every story's a worse story if you don't see the ending."
She looked at him. He was looking at the woman. The woman was looking at the water. The child had stopped crying and was now throwing something at a seagull, and the seagull was not having it.
"There's no ending," she said. "That's the whole thing. You don't get to know."
"So you make one up."
"That's what you do?"
"That's what I do." He turned to look at her. "Why are we playing this game if not to make things up?"
She didn't have an answer for that. She finished her doughnut instead.
The room he'd booked—the one in Brighton, the one they never got to—had a sea view. The room they ended up with had a window that didn't close all the way and a bed that was just slightly too small for two people and a bathroom down the hall.
She stood in the middle of it with her bag still over her shoulder and looked at the window with its gap, at the sliver of sky visible through it, at the way the curtain moved in a breeze that shouldn't have been there.
"It smells like fish," she said.
"It smells like the sea."
"It smells like fish."
"Same thing."
She dropped her bag. He dropped his. The door clicked shut behind them.
And then neither of them moved.
"I'm sorry about the train," he said.
"I told you, it's—"
"I know what you told me. I'm still sorry." He stepped closer. He was close enough now that she could see the salt dried in his hair, the crease at the corner of his eye, the place where he'd bitten his lip. "I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted you to have a perfect first anniversary. And I fucked it up."
"You didn't fuck it up."
"I got the platform wrong."
"You got us here anyway."
"To Wivenhoe."
"To here."
He looked at her. She could see the question in his eyes—the same question he'd asked a year ago, sitting in his bed with sheets tangled around them and afternoon light bleeding through the curtains. Not the same words. The same question.
She didn't answer with words either.
She stepped forward. Put her hands on his face—both hands, her palms flat against his cheeks, her thumbs at the corner of his stubble—and kissed him. Not hard. Not fast. Just close. And he kissed her back, and his hands found her waist, and the two of them stood there in that small room with the broken window and the sea air moving around them and didn't say anything for a while.
They made love on the too-small bed with the window cracked and the curtain flapping, and it was nothing like the first time—nothing like the fights, the yanking, the punishment. It was slow. It was laughing. He kept having to stop because she was laughing, and then she kept having to stop because he was laughing, and somewhere in the middle of it she forgot what she'd been laughing at and just held onto him, her legs wrapped around his hips and her mouth on his shoulder and the world narrowing down to the sound of his breathing and the way he said her name.
Afterward, they lay side by side. Her head on his arm. His hand on her stomach. The curtain moving, moving, moving.
"Karim."
"Hm."
She watched the sky through the gap. It was going dark—deep blue going darker, the first stars just putting themselves out.
"I stopped counting," she said."Counting what?"
"The days." She turned her head. He was looking at the ceiling, but his hand on her stomach had stilled. "The days since my heart felt dead. I was counting them. For a while. Before you."
He didn't say anything.
"And now I'm not. I don't know when I stopped. Sometime in the last year." She let out a breath. "You did that."
"I didn't do anything."
"You did. You—" She stopped. Tried again. "You kept showing up. You kept asking questions. You never ran away. I kept waiting for you to run away and you never did."
"Where exactly would I run to?"
"You could have gone anywhere."
"I didn't want to go anywhere."
"I know." She put her hand over his. "That's the thing. I know."
He turned his head. Looked at her. His eyes in the dark were just shapes.
"Layla."
"What."
"You're not a project."
"I know."
"You're not a sick girl."I know."
"You're not anything except the person I want to be here with." He said it like it was simple. Like it was a fact. "That's all."
She felt her throat close.She swallowed. She didn't cry—not quite—but it was close, and she hated it, and she held his hand tighter.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay."Karim."
"What."
"You got a lot of things wrong this weekend."
"I know."
"You got the train wrong. You got the town wrong. You booked a hotel we never found. You made me cry at a bench." She turned on her side, put her face against his chest. "This is still the best mistake you've ever made."
She felt him laugh, low and quiet, somewhere down in his chest where her ear was pressed.
"The best," he agreed.
The window kept moving. The sky kept getting darker. And Layla lay there in the too-small bed with the fish-smell in the air and her heart beating, actually beating, not counting anything, and thought: I could stay here forever.
She didn't say it. She didn't need to.
Tomorrow there'd be a train back. Tomorrow the world would start again. But tonight there was this—just this—and she was going to hold onto it as long as she could.
She closed her eyes.
His hand moved up to her neck, settled there, warm.
"Layla."
"Hm."
"I don't miss the counting."
She smiled into his chest. "Neither do I."
The window kept its rattle.
Neither of them slept for a while. The sea moved somewhere beyond the glass, a sound so constant it stopped being sound and became the shape of the room. Layla lay on her back with his hand over her stomach and listened to him breathe and didn't count anything at all.
When she woke, the light was grey and the bed was empty.
She found him on the small balcony—if you could call it that, a slab of concrete with a rusted rail and two plastic chairs that had seen better decades. He was in yesterday's shirt with his back to the door, holding his phone, staring at the water.
"You're up early," she said.
He didn't turn around. "Couldn't sleep."
"Big day?"
He looked over his shoulder. Something moved behind his eyes—fast, gone before she could name it.
"Something like that."
She came out and leaned on the rail beside him. The harbor was waking up. A man was hosing down a fishing boat, the water arcing gold in the early sun. Gulls fought over something on the pier. It was the kind of morning that made you want to stay.
"Where's breakfast?" she asked."There's a place. Down the coast. Ten minutes by train."
"Down the coast?"
"Mm." He pocketed the phone. "I want to take you somewhere."
She looked at him. He was smiling—that easy, unreadable smile he did—but his shoulders were too straight, his hands too still.
"Karim."
"Hm."
"You're being weird."
"I'm always weird."
"You're being weird-weird."
He stepped close. Kissed her forehead. The gesture was so uncharacteristically soft that she forgot, for a second, to be suspicious.
"Get dressed," he said. "I'll grab coffee."
The station at the end of the line was tiny. One platform, two tracks, a bench with peeling paint. Layla stepped off and looked around and felt her confusion deepen.
"There's nothing here," she said.
"There's a beach."
"There's a beach and nothing else."
"That's enough for me." He took her hand. "Come on."
They walked. The road curved along the water, past a row of houses with gardens stuffed with flowers, past a pub that looked closed forever, past a gate with a wrought-iron sign so old she couldn't read it. Down a lane. Through a gap in a hedge. And then—
Then they were on the sand.
The beach was a wide crescent of brown sugar, the water sliding up it in slow, exhausted waves. The sky was huge. There were people on the sand—more people than could possibly live in the village they'd just walked through, and Layla's brain ground to a halt.
"Karim."
"Mm."
"What are they—"
She stopped.
Because one of the people on the sand had turned around, and she knew that face. She knew it from work, from lunches, from the year of Friday-night group chats she'd ignored and then slowly started replying to again. And behind her—two more women, both familiar, standing next to a man Layla had known since university.
"Samira?" Layla said.
Her best friend stood there in a sundress, holding a glass of something pink, grinning like she was at a school play.
"Hi, babe."
"What are you—" Layla turned to Karim. "What is this?"
He didn't answer. He was standing very still, both hands loose at his sides, watching her. And Layla realized then that everyone was watching her—all of them, all the faces she knew, arranged on the sand like they'd been waiting.
"Karim."
"Just—" He raised a hand. "Just give me a second."
"A second for what?"
"For you to catch up."
She looked past him. There was a white table on the sand, draped with cloth. There was a small arch made of driftwood and rope and pale roses. There was a photographer—actually, a photographer—kneeling in the dunes, adjusting a lens. There were fairy lights strung between poles, unlit in the daylight, waiting for dark.
"What—"
Karim took her hands.
"Layla."
"No."
"Layla, listen—"
"No, what is—" She pulled one hand free and pointed at the arch. "There's an arch. There's a—oh my God."Yes."
"Oh my God."
"You want to sit down?"
"I don't want to—" She turned in a circle. Samira was crying now. Another friend was holding the crying friend's glass. The photographer was taking pictures of her spinning around on the sand like a lunatic.
"You planned this," she said.
"I did."
"You told me it was our anniversary."
"It was." He was still holding one of her hands. "And I was going to do it in Brighton. That was the plan. The real plan. The hotel was there. The restaurant was there. And then—"
"Then you got the platform wrong."
"Then I got the platform wrong." He laughed. It was a shaky laugh. "And I was standing on that train panicking, because I had a photographer on hold and a table booked and everyone waiting, and I looked at you and you were so mad at me—"
"I was so mad at you."
"And I thought—right, well, she'll leave me now. She'll get off at the next stop and go home."
"I didn't."
"You didn't." He pulled something from his pocket. A small box, worn at the corners, like he'd been handling it for weeks. "And when we got off that train in Wivenhoe, and you said 'let's walk,' I thought, okay. Okay. This one, she's going to walk. So I stopped panicking. I called everyone. I told them to meet us here."
"Here."
"I picked it ages ago. This beach. I came by myself, weeks ago, to check it. I slept in my car." Another laugh. "I wanted to know the tide."
Layla looked at the box. Then at him. Then at the box.
"Karim."
"Yeah."
"Are you proposing to me?"
"Layla—"
"On a beach. With all my friends. Because you got the train wrong."
"Technically I got the train wrong in Wivenhoe and fixed it here."
"You're proposing to me."
"I'm—" He opened the box. The ring was small and old and gold, with a stone that wasn't a diamond. "I was going to do a speech. In Brighton. There was a speech."
"Karim."
"Do you want the speech?"
"No."
"Okay."
"Do you want to get on with it?"
He laughed again. It was a real laugh this time. The kind he did when something broke loose inside him and got out. He looked at the ring. Looked at her. The sea kept happening behind them, indifferent, and the friends were all silent in a way that meant they were holding their breath, and the photographer was definitely taking pictures of her face right now.
"Marry me," Karim said.
"That's your speech?"
"That's the whole speech. Marry me."
"You—" She stopped. Her hands were shaking. Her heart was doing something complicated. "You're supposed to say why."
"Why what?"
"Why you want to."
"Because when I got the platform wrong, and I was standing on that train with everything falling apart, the only thing I could think was thank God I'm on the train with her." He said it fast. Like he'd been waiting. "Because I spent an hour watching you eat fried doughnuts and make up lives for strangers. Because we made love on a bed that was too small with a window that didn't close and it was the best night of my life. Because I'm not a project to you and you're not a sick girl to me, and I've never been sure of anything in my whole life except this."
Layla's eyes were wet.
"You already said you wanted to stay," he said. "I'm asking you to make it official."
"I said that in your apartment."
"I know."
"That was a year ago."
"Best year of my life." He took her hand. "Layla. Yes or no."
Somewhere behind them, Samira made a noise like an injured animal. The sea kept moving. The gulls kept circling. Layla stood on the sand with her hand in his and her heart beating and felt the last wall inside her go down, stone by stone, without pain.
"Yes."
The word came out quiet.
"Yes?" He said it like he needed to hear it again.
"Yes, obviously, yes, what do you think I'm—" She was crying now, actually crying, and she hated crying, and she grabbed him by the collar and kissed him so he couldn't watch. "Yes, you idiot."
Around them, sound returned. Cheering, in the way friends do—too loud and half-ugly with relief. The photographer was shooting. Samira was running toward them with her dress hiked up. And Karim was kissing her back and pulling her close and doing something with his mouth that might have been laughing or might have been crying or might have been both.
She didn't care.
Someone handed her a glass of champagne. Someone else dabbed at her face with a napkin and mostly smeared the mascara. She was being pulled and hugged and passed around the group and she kept looking over her shoulder at the small, brown, salt-bleached beach and the driftwood arch and the photographer whose knees were soaked and the light that was doing the thing where it went gold before dinner.
"This is the prettiest thing I've ever seen," she said.
"You haven't seen the table yet," Samira said.
"There's a table?"
"There's dinner. There's dancing. There's a whole thing."
Samira grabbed her by the arm and steered her up the path toward the house—a big, sprawling, rambling place with more windows than walls, set back from the beach. Inside, it was chaos. Makeup bags everywhere. Dresses on the backs of chairs. The girls from work. The friends from university. Layla's cousin, who she hadn't spoken to in months, sitting on the floor with a curling wand in her hand.
"You knew," Layla said.
"Everyone knew."
"Everyone?"
"Everyone except you." Samira pushed her into a chair. "Now sit. We have two hours. You're not getting married in a t-shirt."
Layla sat.
It was the strangest two hours of her life. Someone straightened her hair. Someone else changed their mind and curled it. A third person started doing her makeup and got told off by a fourth person who wanted to do it differently. Layla drank a glass of champagne and then another, and someone put food in front of her that she didn't remember eating, and all the while her heart thudded, slow and steady, counting nothing.
They put her in white. Not a wedding dress—not the one she'd have chosen, not the one from the back of any bridal magazine. Just a dress. Simple, sleeveless, falling soft around her knees. Layla looked at herself in the mirror and didn't recognize the woman.
Samira stood behind her.
"You okay?"
"I think so."
"You love him."
"I do."
"Then it's fine." Samira squeezed her shoulder. "Whatever's in your head—it's fine."
Layla nodded. She didn't say anything.
Then Samira took her hand.
"Come on."
"Where?"
"You'll see."
Samira led her through the house. The corridor was garlanded with salt-crusted rope and white paper flowers and small, glowing candles in mason jars. Down the stairs. Past the kitchen, where a man Layla didn't recognize was pulling something out of an oven. Through a side door. And then—out into the evening air, onto a deck that overlooked the beach, and the water turned lavender under the last light.
"Samira—"
"Come on."
"No, I mean—" Layla stopped walking. The deck was empty. The beach below was full of chairs. And the arch was lit now, the fairy lights switched on, glowing against the darkening sky.
"Where's Karim?"
"Waiting."
"Where?"
"Down there."
"Samira, I—"
"Layla." Her friend turned around, still holding her hand, eyes bright. "This is it. This is the part where you go and he's there and everyone's there and it's happening. Okay?"
Layla's throat closed.
"Okay."
Samira took her hand and led her down the steps.
The path was lined with lanterns, staggered every few feet. They walked slowly because the ground was uneven and Layla was wearing shoes she hadn't broken in. The sea got louder with every step. The sky went from lavender to pink to grey, and the fairy lights glowed harder and harder against the falling dark.
At the bottom of the path, Samira stopped.
"Here," she said.
"Where?"
"Here's where I leave you."
"Samira—"
"You got this." Her friend squeezed her hand once, hard. "You got this."
She let go. She walked back up the path. And Layla was alone, at the edge of the beach, with her dress moving in the wind and the lights of the driftwood arch ahead and the ocean gray and endless and full of sound.
She looked around.
Friends were seated. The photographer was crouched. The aisle was marked with two lines of shells.
And at the end of the aisle, at the arch, Karim stood.
He was in a jacket now. A tie, slightly crooked. His hair was doing the thing it always did when he was nervous—sticking up at the back, cow-licked and wrong.
He was looking at her.
Layla started walking.