Chapter 32
Jo wondered how on earth she’d ended up standing at a balcony above the altar, removing Adrián’s tie in front of all the wedding guests. To make matters worse, he was staring at her with that vigorous intensity that made her hair stand on end and her knees wobble.
After she’d tried to give up on them last night – on this, the intimacy that had wrapped itself around them over the past ten days – she was now relieved to see that fire in his eyes burning again. She probably should have stamped it out, but she didn’t have the heart for that.
Instead, she focused on the bob of his Adam’s apple as she undid his tie, the line of his beard, where he occasionally shaved at the edge. She barely remembered a time when these little details of him weren’t familiar to her.
Was she just as familiar to him?
Slipping his tie from his collar with a twitch of a smile, she took one ring from his hand and knotted it firmly into the end, repeating the process for the heavy platinum ring. The symbolism in those rings made her giddy.
‘Here!’ She held the tie through the spindles and the priest grasped it to a collective sigh from all the guests.
Adrián sighed too. They stood at the balcony together, their shoulders touching, as the priest blessed the rings and Mónica and Ben faced each other for the vows.
Ben stuttered through his, clearing his throat several times and staring at Mónica. She repeated the same words, in both English and Spanish, shooting out a hand to clutch his sleeve as her voice quavered. They weren’t young lovers awaiting a future of wedded bliss. They were two people with a lot of life experience who knew there were no guarantees, but were going through with this madness anyway.
Then the priest raised his arms to declare them husband and wife and the church erupted in cheers – possibly of relief – before he’d even finished his sentence in Spanish, let alone in English. Liss was clapping and laughing. Dec sat in the opposite pew with Rita and Ford, glancing between his parents with a pained smile, as though the experience had been one of the most embarrassing moments of his life. Oscar had found a cosy fold in Mónica’s skirt and settled in.
The kids were okay. The exes were married. And Jo was stuck in the sacristy with the acerbic, passionate, tender grump she suspected she’d fallen in love with.
Adrián’s chin dropped to his chest and he sagged against the railing as though he’d used up the last of his strength to ensure the wedding took place. Or perhaps he was just expiring from hunger, but that sagging sensation was what Jo felt. She sank to the floor, leaning on the wall, and allowed the relief to flow through her.
The priest called up to them in Spanish and Adrián acknowledged his words with a nod and a clipped sentence in response. He collapsed next to her, his head falling back against the wall.
‘He’s going to get the church caretaker to open the door for us. Shouldn’t be long.’
He rolled his head to the side, catching her gaze. She pressed her shoulder to his and turned her head until her temple was at his chin.
‘They did it,’ she said. ‘They got married.’
‘How did it feel for you?’ he prompted gently.
A laugh rose up in her chest. ‘Like a door closing – a door to a stressful place that I finally found my way out of.’
‘The exit of a labyrinth?’ he asked, smiling against her forehead.
She nodded, enjoying the brush of his beard over her skin. ‘What about you?’
‘I feel strangely like the father of the bride,’ he said wryly. ‘She’s not my responsibility any more. I know I shouldn’t have felt any responsibility for her after the divorce, but now… it’s all gone.’
‘You don’t even have to play guitar for her,’ Jo realised suddenly, raising her head to peer at him.
‘Actually, I do have to play – if we get out of here before I die of starvation. I’ll borrow another guitar. But I’ve already worked through that. Alberto apologised for his motives in asking me and now I can—’ He paused to consider his words. ‘I’ll play for me – I mean obviously for the guests, but also for me, my pride.’ As he said ‘pride’, he gave a self-deprecating smile, but also straightened unconsciously.
Jo lifted a hand, hesitating a second before opening it on his chest. He stared at that hand, rising and falling with his breaths, and the movement became less regular. ‘I like your pride,’ she said softly. ‘Especially when it’s injured.’
‘Injuries seem to follow us when we’re together,’ he murmured. ‘We’ve seen each other at our worst.’
He spoke casually, but the words echoed in Jo’s thoughts. They’d sniped and bickered, taken out their own problems on each other, occasionally held back the truth and not held back on the raw emotions. They’d done everything wrong for the start of a new relationship. And yet…
‘I have been at my worst these past ten days,’ she admitted, ‘but somehow also my best.’ She took a deep breath and spoke the words that should have been impossible for her to say, but had become too difficult to ignore. ‘I can… go forward from here. I’ve realised that now. I don’t need to keep holding onto mistakes. But—’ She paused to gather strength from the pressure of his shoulder against hers. ‘I don’t know where to go, or how. I don’t want to say goodbye to you, to us. But I don’t know how things will look when we get back and that scares me. I don’t know what we do next. I can’t face starting all over again in London, fitting in a dinner here and a coffee there, wondering what we’ll talk about, whether there will be anything between us when we’re not sharing these experiences any more. We haven’t known each other long and I don’t know if I’m ready for… us… but nothing else makes sense.’
His brow furrowed and he looked almost comically earnest. ‘I’m sure we’ll think of something. We’ve got plenty of time.’
She snorted. ‘That’s your solution?’
‘Did you want a solution? Because I had some ideas,’ he admitted. ‘I hoped my flight would be cancelled and we’d have to come in the car with you three to Barcelona. Then I thought we’d just keep going. Explore the world.’
‘I suppose that is one solution,’ she said drily.
‘Oh, I have more. There’s the one where I convince Liss and Dec that they want to learn to play guitar and I turn up at your house as their teacher.’
‘Haha, my kids would probably be on board with that until they learn they have to practise and I’m the one who has to make them do it.’
‘Well, I expanded on it too, imagining I was such an amazing teacher that you decided you wanted lessons as well. There was a lot of sexual tension in that scenario. I also thought about writing that poem about your breasts, but it didn’t seem fair to the rest of you, so it became a whole pamphlet of poems.’
‘A pamphlet?’ she repeated in disbelief. ‘Are you even trying to be serious?’ she asked, genuinely curious.
His response was to press a kiss to the top of her head. ‘If I was serious, you’d run so fast we’d end up on different pages of our book.’
‘Adrián, we’re stuck in the sacristy. I’m not running anywhere.’
He grinned down at her. ‘This is a good point.’ Moving away from her side suddenly, he sat cross-legged in front of her and grasped one of her hands. ‘I don’t want to mess up what might be my only chance. I already made you cry and I don’t want to put you through that again.’
She shook her head, partly to refute what he’d said and partly because her eyes were stinging again. ‘It was good, the crying. Maybe I’d forgotten how to feel something and you made me feel…’
‘Incredibly frustrated with me,’ he completed for her with a solemn nod.
‘That too,’ she quipped, but her dry tone didn’t quite come out right because her voice was wobbly.
‘Jo,’ he said, his voice soft and rumbly, ‘no matter how things look in London, I want to be looking at them with you.’ Her eyes drifted closed as he spoke, his words reaching her in the place where she felt the same. ‘I want to stay in your life any way you’ll let me. You need a yoga buddy?’ He pointed to himself. ‘Someone to go join the local choir with? Again, me.’
He spoke clearly and earnestly and she marvelled at the way he could be serious and make her feelings bearable with levity at the same time. She had no doubt he would really come to yoga if she asked him. But that wasn’t necessarily his point. A future for them felt fraught and treacherous, but he was trying to tell her it could simply be yoga mats and vigorous gospel music, shared jokes and?—
She had a sudden idea. ‘You know I never heard you actually play that special guitar,’ she said thoughtfully.
It took him a moment to process her change of direction. ‘It had a unique sound,’ he told her. ‘But not the best sound. I prefer my concert guitar, actually.’
Nodding eagerly, she hopped up onto her knees and looked into his face. ‘That’s it, Adrián. That’s what we do next. I want you to play guitar – for me. In London, when we get back home.’
He stared at her for a moment, turning his head a little as though he thought he’d misheard. ‘Play for you?’ he repeated, a slow smile stretching over his face. ‘It’s a dream of mine,’ he purred. ‘I can do that. And after I’ve played for you, we can all watch Bluey together.’
‘That’s a good plan,’ she agreed, the words muffled by her thick throat. She could do that.
‘Then one time, when we’ve watched lots of Bluey, we might be able to move on to Ted Lasso and cuddling,’ Adrián said slowly. ‘Then you’ll put on a Korean historical drama and I’ll get invested, but I’ll wait until we can watch all the episodes together. One day, I’ll watch the Tour de France all weekend and you’ll get angry at me for it and then I’ll kiss you and miss a final sprint and it will all be okay.’
She peered at him, trying to process what he was saying when the word ‘kiss’ was the one in flashing neon in her mind. ‘What’s a Korean historical drama?’
‘Oh, have you got a treat ahead of you. What’s something you watch then?’
She considered for a moment. ‘Nineties romcoms?’
‘Replace “Korean historical drama” with “nineties romcom” then.’
She blinked, certain there was supposed to be meaning in all of this. ‘You’d get invested in a nineties romcom – for me?’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly, ‘if I’m watching it with you. Or if I really hate it, you can watch it with headphones in and I’ll fall asleep on your shoulder. I just thought we’d start with Ted Lasso because everyone likes that, then we gradually work up to watching stuff the other person hates.’
‘There is a lot of detail in your plan,’ she commented, slowly realising what he meant. He’d already seen her drunk and angry and emotional and he’d never been anything but accepting – and maybe a little amused.
‘I have thought a lot about this,’ he mumbled. ‘I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the Grotto of Apparitions, when I started to get to know you.’
That had been the magic of the past ten days: they’d got to know one another. He’d listened to her uncharitable thoughts about Ben. He’d put her gently to bed when she was drunk. He’d cleaned up her vomit.
That he was here with her now, coaxing her into plans for a future where she wasn’t aggrieved and regretful and lonely, was nothing short of a miracle.
She might not be ready, but she couldn’t refuse such a gift, especially when he’d packaged it up so carefully in tiny moments so she wouldn’t be afraid.
As soon as she allowed that future of tiny moments to come to life in her imagination, a host of other images flooded her mind: picking him up from work at an aged care facility she hadn’t seen yet; fighting over the last chocolate in the box; singing Oscar a lullaby in harmony or shouting for Adrián to go rehearse somewhere else because she was on a call for work.
She could picture it all. A way forward for her – for her family. It didn’t have to be so complicated.
‘When’s the Tour de France?’ she asked suddenly.
‘It starts in two weeks. Why?’ he asked warily.
‘I was just wondering if I have to wait until then for that kiss,’ she murmured.
‘Ah, I did have another idea about that,’ he said, peering at her from under his lashes. ‘I thought Oscar could get confused about the rings and hide them and then I’d accidentally get locked in the room with all the cups.’
‘Mmmhmm,’ Jo prompted coming closer.
‘When you came to save me, you’d accidentally get locked in too and just before we died of starvation, I’d tell you I love you and beg for a kiss.’
It didn’t feel as strange as she would have expected to hear those words, possibly because he’d thrown them in with his signature dry humour, giving her space to adjust to the idea. I love you. When she was younger, those words had felt a little desperate, like holding on, because she hadn’t understood.
This time, the words sounded like letting go. There was the same thrill of excitement, but a tempered foundation, like a soft landing on a gymnastics mat.
‘I think I like that idea,’ she said, her chest light.
‘You do?’ he said, his voice high. ‘The last bit… I was worried it was too soon.’
‘It’s definitely too soon to die of starvation,’ she said, biting her lip against a smile. ‘And the kiss is about eight hours overdue.’
‘And the other part?’ he asked lightly, his chest rising and falling in a stuttering rhythm. His brow was knit and he stared at her as though her answer was more important than food.
‘Will you have to wait until you’re almost dead from starvation before you say it?’
He gulped. ‘I wanted to say it last night, but I thought you wouldn’t believe me.’
Regret shivered through her, but she released it again. She’d been scared last night, but she wasn’t scared any more. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have believed you last night. But now we’re in a church. Mary’s down there listening to every word we say.’
There was a hint of a smile on his lips. ‘You shouldn’t lie in a church. Wait a minute.’ He set to work on the Velcro holding his sling in place, tearing it off, and then both of his hands rose to her face, smoothing her cheeks and bathing her in that tenderness she admired in him. ‘You don’t have to say it back. I’ll keep playing you the guitar. We’ll watch TV together, see what happens.’
‘Just say it, Adrián.’
Settling his forehead on hers, his thumb brushing the three studs in her ear, he grinned and whispered, ‘I love you, Jo.’
She’d thought she was ready, but apparently not. ‘Holy shit,’ she whispered and burst into tears.