More than twenty years ago, I’d been sent north by my parents to spend the summer with my dad’s sister. Aunt Frances had taken me to the city’s beach on Janay Lake on a sunny afternoon. Kristen had been there all by herself, something that the city-raised Minnie had found shocking.

My amused aunt had introduced us—though she wasn’t a local, her long-since-passed-away first husband had been, and my aunt knew virtually everyone in town—and Kristen and I became fast friends in the space of five minutes. Rafe had wandered down to the beach soon afterward, and we’d been a summer trio for years. Our friendship had waned when we’d graduated from high school and gone our separate ways, but Kristen moved back to Chilson about the same time I got the library job, and it soon seemed as if we’d never been apart.

Rafe and I were ten minutes into the show when I made the time-out signal. “Forgot to tell you,” I said after he’d paused the TV, freezing the characters in unflattering poses. “About our wedding date. Kristen wants us to wait until she’s recovered from the Mini Cooper.”

Rafe felt my forehead. “No fever. Yet you still made a car reference.” He glanced ceiling-ward. “Is the sky falling? The apocalypse upon us?”

I pushed his hand away. “Not as far as I know.”

After I explained the new nickname, he nodded. “Got it. So, wedding-wise, that means what?”

“She’s hoping we’ll wait until August, at least. I know, I know. It’s hot and it’s still in the summer season, parking will be horrible, and it’ll be next to impossible for anyone to find reasonably priced hotel rooms. So I’m thinking September. But only if that works for you.” Rafe was always busy the first month of school.

He squinted, thinking. “I can make late September work,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Third Saturday?”

“Sounds good.”

He looked at me and I looked at him. “That was easy,” I said. “Why did it take us so long to figure this out?”

“Sometimes things just fall into place,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “Once again, procrastination pays off.”

I looked at him curiously. “Is that what you tell your students?”

“No, I tell them to do what I say, not what I do.”

I snuggled in next to him. He probably did. And they probably thought he was hilarious when he said it.

“There’s only one thing about September,” he said. “And it’s going to be tough. But I want you to know I’ll be behind you every step of the way. And I do mean behind.”