Overdue Forecast

Catalina placed her palm in Stuart’s. His watch pressed coolly against her wrist; his grip was careful, as if she were an invoice that might catch fire.

“We are early,” he said.

“Stop looking at your watch,” she told him. “You need to lose fairly.”

“That was not my watch.”

“You wear it like a moral principle. Same family.”

Then the camera light came on, and the crew counted down from five.

On one, Catalina and Stuart crossed beneath the citrus arbor with the rigid grace of two people being escorted into court. His hand rested at the small of her back, proper enough for the cameras and irritatingly steady. Her palm landed on his sleeve exactly where a production assistant had marked it with yellow tape.

“Look as if you’ve just remembered why you chose each other,” called the director.

Stuart glanced sideways. “Did we choose?”

“Try joy,” Catalina said. “It has fewer forms.”

The irrigation timer selected that moment to make a personal statement. Water poured from the herb wall in a fierce silver sheet, soaking the welcome cocktails, the director, and most of Catalina’s navy shirt. The wet fabric made her collarbones look even more determined.

Stuart moved her beneath the arbor, his watch cool against her wrist, while the camera operator yelled, “Wonderful! Fresh! Hold it!”

“We are being irrigated,” Catalina said.

“The shot is technically alive,” Stuart said.

“Do not defend the sprinkler.”

Apparently soaked romance was fashionable, because Kiki, the food stylist, declared them “authentically dewy” and handed over two tartlets glazed with violet microflower syrup.

“Take one bite each,” Kiki said. “Then look at one another as if dessert has changed your lives.”

“It has,” Catalina said after the first bite. “My mouth is purple.”

Stuart checked his reflection in a serving spoon. His teeth had become the color of a haunted plum.

The director peered at the monitor. “Adorable. Romantic vampires.”

“Please never say that again,” Stuart said.

By six, a driver with an apologetic clipboard had deposited twenty-three crates in the bridal lounge. They contained china, linen, brass candlesticks, floral foam, and one ceramic swan large enough to require its own legal counsel. The room became a maze no bride in a fitted dress could cross without a compass.

One crate bore a faded label: TELFORD RENOVATION RECORDS.

Stuart found a packing manifest tucked beneath a coil of ribbon. “Invoice 8847,” he said. “It was supposed to be in a blue binder.”

“The missing invoice?”

“Possibly.”

At 11:23, after the crew had left and Marlon had gone home to bargain with sleep, they returned with phone flashlights and the grim purpose usually reserved for bomb squads and bridesmaids hunting safety pins.

No story began well with a blue binder. This one merely had a conservatory.

Catalina crouched beside a crate of chargers. “You know you can ask why I color-code emergency exits.”

“I assumed the answer involved fear and excellent stationery.”

“It involved a wedding at the Halcyon six years ago.” She shifted a box of menu holders aside. “The hotel manager promised the ballroom next door would be empty. He promised three times. He did not put it in writing.”

Stuart paused near a stack of folded runners.

“A charity gala had it booked. Their band began playing during the ceremony. The hotel moved dinner into a service corridor with a vending machine and a broken ice machine.” Catalina’s laugh had no amusement in it. “The bride’s father asked why I had not protected them. I had no answer that mattered.”

“That wasn’t your failure.”

“It became mine the second it happened.” She set down a menu holder with unnecessary care. “Now I make backups for backups. If disaster arrives, I want to know where it parked.”

Stuart considered that. “My family had a hardware store. My father expanded after a cousin promised a major contract. The contract vanished. The bank changed the locks.” His hand settled over the protective cuff of his watch. “I was twenty-one. Since then, risk has sounded like someone saying, ‘Trust me, the numbers will work out.’”

“So you trust the numbers instead.”

“I trust them to disappoint me in an orderly fashion.”

Catalina looked at him. “We are both exhausting.”

“Yes,” he said. “But very employable.”

Serafina appeared at the crate maze’s entrance carrying two glasses of water and a cocktail napkin. Bartenders were not magical. People simply confessed near citrus peels and expected privacy.

She handed Catalina the napkin.

“Two aprons one invoice kiss before the canapé burns or marry your calculators”

“That is appallingly bad,” Stuart said.

“I am a bartender, not a poet,” Serafina replied. “Also, neither of you is convincing as a person who feels nothing. Find your paper. Then stop treating hand-holding like a fire-safety procedure.”

She left before either could object.

Catalina folded the napkin once and handed it to Stuart. “Blue binder.”

“Blue binder,” he agreed.

For a moment, neither moved. Then Catalina picked up her flashlight and stepped farther into the maze of crates, while Stuart followed close enough to be useful.

At the far end of the crate maze, Catalina found the blue binder wedged behind the ceramic swan’s porcelain neck.

Stuart took it from her with the reverence of a man receiving proof that the universe had, for once, labeled a box correctly. Invoice 8847 matched the transfer record, but its approval page carried a second vendor code.

“This isn’t the whole answer,” he said.

“Is it enough to stop looking at me as if I embezzled basil?”

“It is enough to show someone redirected the deposit after your authorization.” His gray eyes met hers. “I need the bank ledger tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is a terrible word.”

“It is also a date.”

“Do not weaponize grammar.”

By Friday afternoon, Cresswork had recovered its optimism through flowers and denial. The director gave them their fourth version of romance beneath the herb arch.

“Stuart, offer the ring. Catalina, put one hand over your heart, then laugh like he has just said the exact right thing.”

“Will I know the exact right thing?” Catalina asked.

“Professionally?” Stuart said. “No.”

The cameras rolled. Stuart took the prop ring box, walked Catalina beneath the arch, and lowered himself with the solemnity of a man approaching a tax tribunal.

A truffled mushroom canapé escaped a passing tray.

His shoe tried to stop it. The pastry skidded beneath his bent knee with criminal purpose. Stuart’s knee landed squarely on the runaway canapé.

Cream burst across his trouser leg. The ring box snapped open. Its cubic zirconia bounced once on the tile.

Stuart grabbed the nearby frosting cart for balance.

The cart chose freedom.

Catalina caught one handle. Stuart caught the other. A bowl of lemon frosting tipped forward and poured down his sleeve, through his hair, and onto the front of Catalina’s navy trousers.

For one startled second, they simply looked at each other.

Then Catalina laughed. It escaped her in a bright, helpless rush, and Stuart joined her, bent over the frosting cart with cream on his collarbone and outrage all over his face.

“This,” he said, “is not the proposal I rehearsed.”

“You rehearsed?”

“I had contingency phrasing.”

“The canapé defeated your contingency phrasing.”

The director shouted, “Keep rolling! This is fantastic!”

Serafina appeared beside them, thrusting a brass key at Catalina. “Upstairs office. Lock the door. Towels are in the cabinet. Make a decision that does not involve pastry.”

Catalina caught Stuart by his clean wrist and pulled him up the narrow iron stairs.

The office had old ledgers, a leather sofa, a desk large enough to intimidate municipal budgets, and a door that shut with a decisive click. Catalina turned the brass key.

Their laughter ran out gradually.

Frosting curved along Stuart’s cheek. Catalina lifted her hand toward it, then stopped.

“Is this another cue?” he asked.

“No.” Her answer came fast. “No cameras. No crew. No bet.”

His hands remained at his sides. “What do you want?”

Plainly asked. Plainly answered. It was terrifying, naturally.

“I want to kiss you,” she said. “I want to take off your shirt. I want you on that sofa with me. And I want either of us to stop the moment we want to stop.”

Stuart’s face changed, all caution becoming attention.

“I want that too,” he said. “I want to touch you until you tell me where to stay. I want to make you feel good. I want to keep asking.”

“Protection?”

“Wallet.”

“Condom, then.”

“Condom,” he agreed. “And if anything stops feeling right, we say it.”

Catalina stepped close enough to take his tie in her fist. “Good.”

She kissed him with neither angle nor cue in mind.

His mouth met hers, careful for one beat and then not careful at all. Catalina unknotted his tie, pushed his frosting-stiff shirt from his shoulders, and discovered a folded spreadsheet escaping his back pocket.

It slid down and attached itself to frosting on his lower back.

She stared.

“Is your spreadsheet seducing me?”