All The Summers Between Us | TSITP

The Empty Aisle.

Daniel blinked, a slow acknowledgement, jaw working like he was chewing a stone. He nodded once. It cost him.

Adam turned back to the guests. "We're going to... call it," he said, awkwardly formal now, like officiating a game no one wanted to end this way.

"Please—help yourselves to water, to shade. We'll be in touch about... everything else." He exhaled. "Thank you for your patience and your hearts. Really."

He stepped aside, hand out in apology to the officiant, and started back down the aisle. As he passed the front row, Laurel reached up and caught his fingers for a second, squeezing gratitude and grief into his skin. He squeezed back, the kind of answer that says I know. I know.

The spell broke. The garden filled with the small chaos of endings; chairs scraping; the string trio quietly packing away their bows; whispers blooming into nervous conversations. On the groom's side, Daniel's mother reached him first, smoothing his sleeve with shaking hands as if fabric could anchor him. His father put a hand on his shoulder and stood there, the immovable architecture of fatherhood when words wouldn't help. A cousin asked, "What do we do?" to no one in particular, and his wife answered, "We go home," like she'd found the script on the ground.

On the bride's side, Belly clutched Jeremiah's sleeve with both hands, eyes bright and wild. "Should we—?"

"We'll go to the house," he said gently, already standing. "We'll figure it out there."

Taylor wiped under her eyes and sniffled hard. "I hate silk," she muttered, and Steven, forgetting himself, almost laughed because grief sometimes requires a mismatched sentence to survive its first five minutes. Steven stood and helped Laurel up; Denise gathered Laurel's wrap from the back of the chair without being asked.

Conrad rose last, as if he needed the extra second to remember how legs worked. He didn't look at Daniel. He didn't look at anyone. He looked at the gate, then at the strip of sky beyond it, then down at his hands, and only then did he move, falling into step beside the others.

Adam rejoined the row, nodded toward the path. John stood, took Laurel's elbow; the eight of them became a small procession heading for the exit, the inverse of what they'd been an hour ago. As they moved, they left behind a trail of apologies—quiet, sincere, ragged.

"I'm so sorry," Belly murmured to an elderly aunt as they passed.

"Thank you for coming," Taylor told a pair of college friends, voice wobbling on the last word.

"Appreciate you," Jeremiah said to the florist, because he was, somehow, that kind of person even now.

Adam paused beside Daniel and his parents. He didn't try to touch Daniel; he knew enough to understand that the first human hand might undo him. He just stood close enough that the intention could be felt.

"We're heading back to the house," he said softly. "You're welcome to come. Or not. Whatever you need."

Daniel stared at the grass. "I... need a minute," he said, the words like glass in his mouth.

"Of course," Adam said. He turned to Daniel's mother and father, his voice low. "If you need anything—"

"We'll take care of our son," Daniel's father said. There was no anger in it, only the brittle steadiness of a man who, for the first time in years, didn't know what to do next.

Adam nodded. "We'll be at the house," he repeated, because it mattered to say where home was.

He caught up to the others at the gate. The garden behind them had already begun to reshape itself into an after—guests drifting in twos and threes toward the parking lot; the coordinator on her phone, speaking in a tone reserved for small disasters; the lanterns glinting like nothing had happened.

The path to the beach house felt longer than usual. Shoes sank into the sandy edge where the lawn gave up. No one spoke until the driveway, where Laurel finally let out a breath that had been caged since the aisle.

"Alright," she said softly, voice the temperature of a warm hand on a fevered forehead. "Let's go home."

They went, the nine of them peeling away from the garden, leaving behind white chairs that still faced an altar with no bride, an arch that would smell like eucalyptus for hours, and a groom ringed by family learning how to stand in the first wide circle of shock.

The sky stayed gorgeous, indifferent as ever. The ocean kept its rhythm, the same as yesterday, the same as tomorrow, even as a house up the road waited to gather the people it loved and try, somehow, to begin again.