Chapter 5: Golden Hour, Salt and Vows
The shells cracked under her feet.
Small, white, spiraled things, scattered in two crooked lines that led from the edge of the beach to the driftwood arch. Layla walked slowly because the sand was soft and her shoes were thin, and because walking slowly meant she could look at him.
Karim stood under the arch with his hands clasped in front of him like a man waiting for a bus. His tie was crooked. His hair was doing the thing. The fairy lights above him flickered once, twice, and steadied, and the sea behind him was the color of old iron.
She walked.
The beach was smaller than she'd thought. Or maybe she was just moving slower. The faces on either side of the aisle blurred—Samira in the front row with mascara running down her face, a friend from work who she'd once told she didn't believe in marriage, her cousin who she hadn't spoken to in a year. The photographer was crouched low, lens aimed at her feet, then her hands, then her face. She didn't look at him.
She looked at Karim.
He wasn't smiling. That was the first thing she noticed. Not because he was unhappy—she could see it in his eyes, the way they tracked her like she was the only thing on the beach worth watching. But there was something else there too. Something serious. Something frightened.
She reached the arch.
The sand under the driftwood was packed firm, and the light from the fairy strings made the whole thing glow gold. Karim let out a breath.
"Hi," he said."Hi."
"You look—" He stopped. Tried again. "You look like you."
"That's a good thing?"
"That's the best thing."
The officiant—she hadn't noticed him until now, a friend of Karim's from university, in a shirt that was too blue for the setting—cleared his throat. But Karim held up a hand.
"Wait," he said. "I have something."
He reached into his jacket. Pulled out a piece of paper. It was folded into quarters, worn soft at the creases, like it had been in and out of pockets for a long time.
"I wrote this," he said. "Weeks ago. I kept writing it. Kept changing it. And then I got the train wrong and I thought—well, that's that. No speech. No paper. Just me, standing on a beach, hoping."
The paper shook in his hands. He looked at it. Then at her. Then at the paper again.
"I'm going to read it badly," he said.
"That's fine."
"It's going to be—I don't know. You'll see."
"Karim."
"Yeah?"Read it."
He nodded. Cleared his throat. The ocean pushed up the sand behind him, and the light kept flickering, and the paper rustled as he unfolded it.
"Layla." He stopped. Started again. "Layla. When I met you, you told me you wanted me because your heart was dead. Do you remember that?"
She remembered. Standing in the doorway of his apartment, shaking rain off her jacket, saying it like a dare. Waiting for him to flinch.
"I remember," she said.
"I didn't believe you." He looked up from the paper. "Not because I thought you were lying. But because I could see it beating. Right there. Under your skin. Every time you got mad at me. Every time you laughed at something you didn't want to laugh at. Every time you stayed, even when you said you should go."
The photographer's camera clicked. Samira made a wet noise.
"I spent the last year learning you," Karim said. "The way you take your coffee. The way you argue with the radio. The way you go quiet for three days and then show up at my door like nothing happened. I learned the things you hate and the things you pretend to hate but actually love. I learned that you say you don't count things, but you do. You count everything."
Layla's throat closed.
"I learned that you're not broken," he said. "You never were. You were just waiting. Waiting for someone to stop asking you to be different and start seeing you as you are."
His voice cracked. He stopped. Took a breath.
"And I see you," he said. "That's all. That's the whole speech. I see you, Layla. And I'm going to keep seeing you for the rest of my life."
He folded the paper. Shoved it back into his jacket. Stood there with his hands at his sides, looking like he'd just run a marathon.
"Well," he said. "That was—"
"Shut up."
"Okay."
She grabbed his face and kissed him. She didn't care that the officiant hadn't said the words. She didn't care that the photographer was shooting from three angles. She didn't care that her best friend was sobbing loudly enough to scare the gulls.
She kissed him, and he kissed her back, and the fairy lights flickered like they were clapping.
"Um," said the officiant. "We haven't—"
"Skip it," Layla said, against Karim's mouth.
"Skip what?"
"The vows. The rings. The whole thing. Just—" She pulled back. Looked at Karim. "We'll do it later."
"Are you sure?"
"Are you?"
He laughed. It was a real laugh, the one that came from low in his chest and got stuck in his throat. He pulled her close and held her, and the beach held its breath, and somewhere behind them the sun finally sank all the way down and the sky went dark and the fairy lights became the only light for miles.
The officiant—Karim's friend, whose name Layla couldn't remember even though she'd been introduced to him twice—cleared his throat again.
"So," he said. "Technically, I'm supposed to say some things."
"Say them fast."
"By the power vested in me by the internet—"
Karim laughed again, harder this time. Layla felt it through his chest.
"—I now pronounce you—"
"Don't."
"—husband and wife."
The camera clicked. Samira screamed. The friends on the sand all stood up at once like they'd been waiting for a signal.
And Karim kissed her again, longer this time, softer, with his hand at the back of her neck and his thumb on her jaw.
The reception was on the deck.
They'd set up long tables that sagged under the weight of too much food. Lobster rolls and cold beer and a bowl of punch that Samira had clearly made too strong. Fairy lights strung from the rafters. Someone had brought a speaker and someone else had made a playlist that kept jumping from nineties hip-hop to sad indie folk and back again.
Layla sat at the head of the table with Karim's jacket over her shoulders. She'd kicked off her shoes. She was on her third glass of champagne and she was pretty sure she'd never been this happy in her entire life.
"Hey."
She looked up. Samira was standing over her, mascara ruined, holding a napkin that had once been white and was now mostly grey.
"You okay?"
"I'm great."
"You're not just saying that?"
Layla put her glass down. Looked at her friend. Thought about the year—the bad months, the worse weeks, the nights she'd lain awake in Karim's bed and waited to feel something, anything, and felt only the flat grey nothing.
"No," she said. "I'm not just saying that."
Samira sat down next to her. "I was worried."I know."
"I was really worried." She wiped her face with the napkin. "For a long time. Before you met him. When you'd go weeks without texting back. When you'd cancel plans and then pretend you hadn't."
"I know."
"When you told me about the counting thing—"
"Samira."
"I'm just saying." She looked at Layla. Her eyes were still wet but they were steady. "You're different now. You look different. You laugh different."
"I do?"
"You do."
Layla looked across the deck. Karim was at the other end of the table, in conversation with his friend the officiant, waving his hands around like he was explaining something important. He was still in his jacket but he'd taken off his tie and unbuttoned his collar. He looked like himself.
"He got the train wrong," Layla said.
"What?"
"That's how this happened. He booked a hotel in Brighton and then got the platform wrong and we ended up on a train to Wivenhoe."
Samira blinked. "Wivenhoe?"
"There's a Wivenhoe."
"I've never heard of it."
"Neither had I." Layla took a sip of champagne. "We got off there and walked around and ate fried things and he told me it was the best mistake he'd ever made."
"And then he proposed."
"And then he proposed." She looked at Samira. "He'd been planning it the whole time. He just—pivoted."
"Pivoted."
"Pivoted."
Samira was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed. It was a short, wet laugh, the kind that happened when you'd been crying for an hour and your body didn't know what to do with itself.
"That's the most Karim thing I've ever heard."
"I know."
"I don't even know him that well and I know that's the most Karim thing."
"He's very—" Layla searched for the word. "Him."
"He's very him."
"He's very him."
They sat there for a while, watching the party happen around them. The photographer had stopped circling. The playlist had finally settled on something slow. Couples were dancing on the deck, and a few people had drifted down to the beach to walk along the water.
"You should go dance with your husband," Samira said.
"That word is weird."
"It's the right word."
"It's still weird."
"Go dance with your husband, Layla."
She went.
Karim saw her coming. He excused himself from whatever conversation he was in—something about football, something about work, she didn't care—and met her in the middle of the deck. The song playing was something slow and old, something she didn't recognize.
"Dance with me," she said.
"I don't know how."
"Neither do I."
They danced anyway. His hands on her waist. Her arms around his neck. The music going on without them, indifferent to whether they were keeping time.
"You read the speech badly," she said.
"I told you I would."
"You did."
"You still liked it?"
She pulled back. Looked at his face—the crooked tie, the cowlick, the eyes that had been watching her since the moment she got off the train in Wivenhoe.
"I loved it," she said.
He smiled. That slow, steady smile, the one that made her want to punch him and kiss him at the same time.
"Good."
They kept dancing. The night kept going. The fairy lights flickered and the ocean moved and somewhere behind them, the photographer caught one more frame—just one, not posed, not planned. Layla with her head on Karim's shoulder, both of them slightly out of time with the music, entirely unaware that anyone was watching.
It would hang in their hallway for the next forty years.
But they didn't know that yet. They just danced.
Later, after the guests had gone and the deck was empty and the moon was high and silver, Layla sat on the railing with her legs dangling over the side. The tide had come up. The water was close enough to touch if she'd reached down far enough.
Karim came out with two glasses of water. He handed her one.
"Everyone's gone?"
"Your cousin is passed out on the couch. Samira is in the spare room. Everyone else left."
"Good."
He leaned on the railing next to her. "You're not tired?"
"I should be."
"You're not?"
She looked at the water. The moon on it. The way it kept moving even when everything else stopped.
"I keep waiting for it to feel different," she said.
"The wedding?"
"All of it. The last year. The last twenty-four hours." She looked at him. "I keep waiting to feel married. Or to feel like I did before. And I don't. I just feel—"
"Like you?"
She thought about it.
"Yeah," she said. "Like me."
Karim nodded. He didn't say anything. He just stood there, next to her, on the edge of a deck on the edge of a beach on the edge of a country, and looked at the same water she was looking at.
"Karim."
"Hm."
"I'm glad you got the train wrong."
He laughed. Low and quiet, almost lost to the sound of the ocean.
"Me too."
She reached for his hand. He gave it. She didn't count anything.
Not the days. Not the months. Not the minutes.
She just sat there, with her husband, in the dark, and let the sea do what it had always done.