His mouth covered mine in a sweet kiss that ended with us giggling at each other, our lips still touching.
“I know what you mean,” he said gently. “Don’t worry. The feet don’t bother me at all.”
And then we had fallen asleep like that, in each other’s arms, and I’d woken up with him hard against me, and—
I snap back to the present, with Nathan—my Nathan—smiling down at me. I grin weakly, my stomach fluttering at the vivid memory of our first night together. Did he bring up the feet thing on purpose, to remind me of that night?
“This is probably the most important weekend of my career,” Nathan says. “The success of this wedding will basically make or break the hotel.”
I nod weakly. “I understand.”
“I really should be focused on work and making sure everything goes well, but Meddy—god, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss.” He leans close to me, and everything about him fills my senses. His scent floods me, that good, clean, fresh smell he has that has nothing to do with cologne. He’s always smelled of fresh, warm laundry. “I should be focusing on making sure everything goes well, but I keep coming back to you.”
Of course, now that he’s talking about it, it’s all I can think of too. He’s so deliciously close to me, I can see his ridiculously long, thick eyelashes, and the way the muscles in his jaw move as his lips part ever so slightly. He dips his head toward mine. His lips are only an inch away when my phone goes off. We jump apart, and I scramble to pick it up. It turns out to be my alarm, set to go off five minutes before the penjemputan.
“Alarm. It’s time for me to go in,” I say, waving the phone vaguely. My heart is screaming. Can hearts scream? Mine’s doing some weird shit, anyway.
Nathan gives a rueful smile. “Maybe later, when there’s a lull, we can talk about us?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” More than anything, I long for the chance to talk things out with Nathan, to close the years’ worth of gap between us, to know everything that’s gone on with him. But the dark worry of Ah Guan’s body in my hotel room resurfaces from the depths of my consciousness like a swamp monster, and I step away from Nathan. “We’ll talk,” I say, and it comes out more curt than I wanted. Nathan’s smile loses a wattage or two, but he nods before walking away, leaving me feeling like I’ve lost him for the second time in my life.
18
Chinese-Indonesian weddings are filled with small ceremonies. Before the penjemputan, there is a short veiling ceremony, where the parents of the bride kiss her on the cheek and then put the veil over her face, thus completing her transformation from woman to bride. It’s usually a tearful occasion; in most Chinese-Indo families, no matter how old you get, kids usually live with their parents until they get married and move out. So for most families, this is goodbye, and the veiling ceremony is a visual reminder of it.
Jacqueline and her parents are no exception. I move swiftly and quietly, capturing as many pictures as I can of the intense emotions on their faces without detracting from the moment. When Tante Yohana and Om Hendrik pull the veil over Jacqueline’s head, tears sting my eyes at the bittersweet smiles on their faces. These are my favorite moments of wedding photography. Capturing the in-betweens. The moments in between the big ones, when raw emotion is painted vividly and it feels as though I’m catching the tunes of their hearts with my camera.
Once that’s finished, we wait for the groom and groomsmen to arrive for the penjemputan.
And wait.
And wait.
I send a text to Seb to see what the hell is the holdup. I mean, really now, I’ve got a dead body in my room and somehow I’m not the biggest mess at this wedding.
Meddy [12:17PM]: Yooo, where’s everyone? They’re late for the penjemputan.
Seb [12:18PM]: You won’t believe these idiots. They’re all rushing around, getting dressed, messing with their hair. Some of them can’t find their shirts or pants or whatever shit.
I sigh and open up the chat group with my mom and aunts.
Meddy [12:19PM]: Everything okay?
Big Aunt sends a string of emojis that seem completely unrelated to each other instead of an actual response.
Whoever introduced my mom and aunts to emojis needs to be thrown off a tall building. Ever since they found out about emojis, my mom and her sisters think they’re a perfectly acceptable way of communicating. Except everyone has a slightly different interpretation of emojis, and it takes me about three times as long to figure out exactly what they’re trying to say. Like now, for example, the thumbs-up emoji means everything is okay, which is good, but then why is there an angry face emoji right next to it? And then the shirt emoji . . . does she mean to say that she managed to grab a shirt, but people are angry at her? But then why the thumbs-up emoji? Why?