Once and for All(79)

“They’re supposed to be in the trees,” someone wailed just as I came up to the gate. “You don’t put lights on bushes!”

“Says who?” another voice, sounding equally frustrated, replied.

“Everyone! God, Roger, just stop. That looks awful. Give them to me.”

I leaned over the gate carefully, looking into the yard. Across the bright green grass, Maya and her groom were standing by a holly bush with a few lights flung across it, the rest in a tangle at their feet. Even though they were facing away from me, the tension was clear: her arms were crossed, his, on his hips.

“Hello?” I called out. “I was told to bring tables?”

Maya turned, seeing me. “Oh, Louna, hi! Honey, go help her. I’ll get some backup.”

As she ran, barefoot, across the grass and up the back porch steps to the house, Roger made his way over to me. He was about my height, skinny, with black curly hair, wearing a T-shirt that said I DIG FOSSILS. Pit stains were visible beneath both his arms.

“Do we need tables?” he said to me, in lieu of a hello. “I was thinking everyone could just sit on blankets.”

“Just doing as I was asked,” I said cheerfully, starting back to my car.

His response to this was an audible grumbling. Maybe Ambrose had called this right and he was a CG after all. “Up until last night, we were getting married at a coffee shop.”

“I heard that,” I said, surprised and yet not at how swiftly I’d shifted into my ever-pleasant-I’m-staying-out-of-this work mode. “I brought six. That’s all we had.”

“Six?” he said. “How many people are they inviting now?”

Instead of replying, I popped the back of my Suburban, sliding the top table out so he could grab one end of it. He didn’t, instead now focused on his phone. I looked back into the car, realizing I was probably going to have to ask him to help me, when suddenly I felt hands grab the other end.

“Got it,” Ambrose said, sliding it farther out. “Yo, Roger! You and Maya take this. We’ll get the next one.”

“Sure thing,” I heard Maya say cheerfully. Nothing from Roger. A moment later they were walking awkwardly, the table between them, up the path to the side gate.

I pulled the next table out, Ambrose took the end, and we put it between us, following them. “So how’s it going?” I asked. “I sensed some light tension.”

“Oh, no, there’s heavy tension,” he replied, shaking that curl out of his face. The door of the house opened and Bee and Lauren came out, making their way down the walk. “In the truck there, ladies! We’ve got four more to carry around!”

“I meant tension about the lights,” I corrected him, dodging a rosebush as it came up on my left.

“Oh, there’s that, too.” He glanced behind him, adjusting his trajectory toward the gate. “Turns out you really kind of need a ladder if you want them in the trees.”

“You don’t have a ladder?”

“My plan was to hurl them,” he explained.

A word I had never, in all my years, used while discussing wedding prep. “Somebody on this block has to have one. You just need to go and ask.”

“How can I do that, though,” he replied, shifting his grip on the table, “when every time we add any tiny wrinkle Roger sighs loudly and Maya starts crying?”

“Why are they even here?” I asked. “You know my mom never allows the bride or groom at the event pre-ceremony, even if they want to be. It’s asking for trouble.”

“I don’t have that many people!” he shot back. I raised my eyebrows. “Sorry. It’s just . . . this isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Like, it’s not easy. At all. Shoot, I just banged my leg on this fence. Watch it as you come through, okay?”

“Ambrose!” Maya yelled from behind him. “Where do we want these?”

“Arranged in an orderly and yet not rigid fashion!” he replied.

“What?”

In return, he grimaced. I’d honestly never seen him so stressed, and had to fight the urge to laugh, which was absolutely the wrong response, I knew. “Just put it down,” he said, his voice tight. “I’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t understand why we need tables,” Roger was saying as we put ours next to the one they’d dropped unceremoniously by a large tree. “What happened to my blanket idea?”

“You can’t expect people to sit on the ground and balance a plate in their lap at a wedding,” Ambrose told him.

“Why not? Not everyone needs a chair.”

I was facing Ambrose, so I saw his expression—one of sudden realization, then dread—as he heard this last word. I said carefully, “You do have chairs, right?”

He just looked at me as Lauren yelped. “Ouch, I just totally whacked my leg. You guys, hazard over here by the gate!”

“Ambrose, where do you want this table?” Bee asked.

“He said in an orderly but not rigid fashion,” Maya told her.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Before Ambrose could respond, a huge clump of lights fell from the tree above us, landing with a clank on the grass. So the hurling had worked. Sort of.

“Jesus,” Roger said. “That could have killed someone!”