A Wedding in the Sun

Chapter 19

Oxygen had only just returned to Adrián’s brain in sufficient quantities for coherent thought when Jo’s phone rang – of course. She dropped her head to his chest for a quick moment and he fluffed her hair, but then she hauled herself up to locate her phone in her backpack.

Taking a slightly wobbly breath, she pulled herself together to take the call. ‘Sweetie? What’s up?’

All he could think was: thank God the call hadn’t come five minutes earlier – or she hadn’t come five minutes later, since he’d valiantly – miraculously – held out until she got there. But his stomach still sank as he realised what she had to tell her kids – what he would have to tell Oscar too. She explained in stilted tones that she’d got sick from dehydration, rushing to reassure her daughter – he was fairly certain it was Liss – that she was okay, but that they wouldn’t be getting back into the car today, just to be safe.

‘I know this keeps happening. I can’t believe it myself. Are you… hanging in there? And Dec? How’s Oscar?’ She perched on the armchair to listen, then seemed to remember she was naked and leaped up again. Adrián forced his gaze away in case she was self-conscious.

‘We’ll do something on Wednesday, just the three of us,’ she promised. ‘Oh, Dad wants to do what?’ He wasn’t sure if Liss would hear the choking noise she tried to smother. ‘We’ll work it out, Liss. As soon as we can: you, me, Dec and three enormous ice cream sundaes.’

He thought she was trying to wrap up the phone call, but it wasn’t working.

‘I get it,’ she said gently. ‘They’re not your family and no one can force you to feel like they are. I’m proud of you for keeping it together. It’ll be easier when we get there tomorrow – not just me, Oscar’s dad. You won’t be stuck all together when Adrián and I arrive, okay?’

She paused, grimacing as she rubbed the back of her neck.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied to something he hadn’t heard in a measured tone. ‘We get used to people with time, right? Oscar isn’t punching you any more and Adrián and I… well, we’ve needed each other, with everything that’s gone wrong.’

Adrián tried not to wince at her lukewarm words, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t expected. He picked up his phone and started scrolling so he wasn’t so focused on her private conversation. After a few more reassurances, she ended the call. He didn’t look up, giving her space to react to the conversation without him watching. She sat heavily on the bed and stared out of the sliding doors at the deep, rippling blue of the Mediterranean, saying nothing.

‘There was a cycling event today,’ he commented blandly, still looking at his phone. ‘That’s why the roads were closed and the traffic was shit. There was some kind of road race.’

‘Oh,’ she murmured in reply. He glanced up to find her studying him. ‘Is this the modern equivalent of lighting up a cigarette after sex? Orgasm achieved, let’s talk about the news?’

‘I thought you’d rather hear that than the poem I just composed to your breasts.’

She lifted a hand to her chest unconsciously before dropping it again with a frown. ‘You idiot,’ she teased.

‘Do you think I’m joking?’ he asked, flashing her his phone screen with the Notes app open.

‘Show me!’ she demanded, holding out her hand, but he held his phone to his chest and shook his head.

‘It’s embarrassing how much I like your breasts.’

The flush rising up her neck to her earlobes made him wish he truly had written a poem – although perhaps not about just her breasts, as lovely as they were. She rummaged in the bedclothes for her shirt and shorts and tugged them on, making him stifle a sigh of disappointment.

‘If you ever want to see them again, show me your phone,’ she said boldly.

He couldn’t hand over the device quickly enough, enjoying the twitch of a smile on her lips as he did so.

‘Huh, it’s a shopping list,’ she said drily.

‘I’m sorry to disappoint. Next time it’ll be a poem. I promise.’

‘You’re naked in bed writing a shopping list,’ she repeated.

‘The contents of my suitcase is dispersed across the Pyrenees and I don’t have any clean underwear to put on. Do you want me to remind you what happened to my last pair of clean boxers?’ he asked.

‘No!’

He leaned over the bed to her, tilting his head up to capture her mouth in a brief, soft kiss. He grinned up at her when she blinked at him in a daze. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Such a romantic,’ she muttered.

By the time they made it back down to the beach bar – Jo mercilessly teasing him for going commando in his jeans – the place was already closing. After splitting the stale old toast from breakfast and Jo’s last five squashed muesli bars – the fifth carefully broken in equal halves by Adrián – they climbed back into the rather whiffy car and headed for Lloret de Mar with the windows down.

His shoulder ached, but it wasn’t the tight stab that told him something was wrong. It was only the pull of ligaments – healing, although in need of rest. Jo grabbed the sling from where he’d tossed it into the footwell earlier and strapped it on in the car park.

‘Thanks,’ he said, giving her a kiss that shouldn’t have felt so normal. ‘Come on – this way,’ he said, grasping her hand and heading for the beach. She looked longingly at the bar they passed with inviting white umbrellas shading tables looking out over the long stretch of sand, but he tugged her further along the headland.

‘Did I neglect to mention that I’m hungry too?’ she grumbled.

‘Shh,’ he responded. ‘There’s somewhere better just a little further.’

The paved footpath followed the rocks, the sea crashing below them in the afternoon breeze. Adrián felt faintly nervous and more than a little silly to be treating this like some kind of bizarre first date, after they’d spent five days straight in each other’s company and had just slept together. But when he’d seen the café on the map, he’d wanted to take her, like a lovesick chump.

As they followed the path up and down stairs along the very edge of the coast, a cluster of tables came into view, right by the rocks, under towering palm trees. The bar was set higher up, a white conservatory with umbrellas, playing mellow tropical music.

‘There!’ Adrián said, tapping a table. ‘Better, no?’

She glanced indulgently at him and then out to sea, taking a deep, cleansing breath. There were people swimming in the clear lagoon protected by the rocks. It was a shady, secluded paradise at this time of day – secluded except for the other patrons of the bar. But the place was so relaxed, Jo looked as though she could fall asleep when she collapsed into one of the wicker chairs.

‘Yes, this is lovely. Have you been here before?’

‘No. I found it on the map before and thought you… might like it. I mean, I wanted to come here too. It seemed—’ It seemed as though he couldn’t keep his mouth shut any more. ‘Obviously sex with you has come at the expense of quite a few of my brain cells,’ he mumbled.

She snorted a giggle, the sound so unexpected he stared. God, he liked her face. ‘Are you suggesting we bonked our brains out?’

Joining her with a spluttered laugh, he said, ‘It was worth the sacrifice – definitely worth it. You’ll just have to be patient with me while I recover from you.’

‘Now you’re making me sound like an illness!’

‘I did get heart palpitations and shortness of breath.’ He drew her to him and kissed her before she could splutter a withering response.

The bar served some of the best paella he’d ever tasted, the prawns tender and fresh, tinged with a kick of spice from the chorizo. They only had one beer each, both pouting that they had to get back to buy clothes before the shops shut. When Jo slipped her hand into his for the more leisurely, full-bellied stroll back around the headland to Lloret, Adrián couldn’t speak for a moment as his throat clogged, marvelling that he was the fortunate man who got to walk hand-in-hand with this phenomenal woman, even if it was only for today.

Arriving back at their hotel room an hour later, she wound her arms around his neck and leaned into him, tipping her face up.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, ‘for everything.’ She pressed a kiss to his lips – soft, but insistent.

‘I’m the luckiest man alive today.’ The words tumbled out of his mouth.

Her answering smile was pleased, but sceptical. ‘Then let’s hope you take some of your luck into tomorrow.’

His skin prickling with misgiving he needed to banish, he hauled her close and did everything he could to show her he’d meant those words, regardless of what happened tomorrow.

Jo awoke to Adrián’s lips skimming between her shoulder blades, his beard tickling her skin. That feeling from the day before persisted – she was still someone else, someone who had sex in the afternoon with a handsome man and then again in the evening.

‘Something will go wrong, won’t it? Fate has decreed that we don’t have to go to this stupid wedding at all,’ she asked quietly, before she’d thought it through. Behind her, she felt the air move as Adrián lifted his head to peer at her. She didn’t turn, keeping her gaze focused on the glimpse of the sea between the gauze curtains. She felt too guilty to look at him and own the words.

‘I didn’t think you believed in fate,’ he said smoothly, brushing a kiss over her shoulder.

‘A blessed rescue from Our Lady of Lourdes, then,’ she said, waiting for him to sigh or groan or tease her for her cynicism.

‘Jo, you don’t need fate or a rescue. You’re one of the strongest people I know.’

‘And I thought you knew me a little.’

To her surprise, his lips landed on her ear before he whispered, ‘I do know you. I know you’re going to show up at the wedding with rare grace.’

She sank into the sensations of his lips on her neck and his hand stroking the skin at her waist, thinking she would probably wish she didn’t know how good it felt, when they said goodbye. ‘I don’t really feel the grace,’ she insisted miserably. Rolling onto her back, she forced herself to look at him. ‘We can’t do this – touch, kiss, anything – at the wedding,’ she reminded him.

‘I know,’ he said in his raspy voice, full of gratifying regret. ‘That’s why I’m touching you now, even though it won’t stop me wanting to later.’

‘You’re impossible,’ she murmured, pressing her forehead into his collarbone.

‘You mean irresistible?’ he quipped, his voice high with hope. She hated how his words could make her stomach tumble all over itself as though she could be his dream woman. What a crock.

He tipped her face up and kissed her, an aching, fragile sort of kiss that made her think of her alternate reality shattering, but even these shards were beautiful. They made love one more time, slowly and gently, as though they both knew something could break.

When they climbed into the car after breakfast and a litre of water, Jo squared her shoulders and reminded herself of everything she’d faced alone over the past five years. She was Liss and Dec’s mum and if that came with a side-order of ex-husband’s awkward wedding, then it was still worth it.

If a little devil in her mind suggested it might be nice for the car to break down or a sudden storm to block roads or a plague of locusts to force them to turn around, it didn’t stop her putting the car into gear and heading for the penis place.