Chapter 3 #2
“So, what time’s your ceremony?” Lee asked.
He opened the fridge, thus confirming her suspicion that it was packed with beers with a few food items tucked in around the cans and bottles like an afterthought.
Having dished them out, Lee lifted one of the seats to replace them with cans from their stash.
“Quarter to eleven,” Nash confirmed. “Figured it’d still be quiet-ish. Tonight’s headliners will still be on stage. People’s attention will be pointed in that direction, not at us.” He claimed Jodi’s hand and sat right by her. “It’s our moment. Not something we need to be sharing with the masses.”
“There’ll be other couples too though, right?” she asked.
He settled back more comfortably, legs falling apart.
Maybe because he wasn’t blessed in the height department, he always spread himself out.
Another reason sharing his bunk might not work.
“A few, maybe, I guess. But they’re going to be focused on what they’re doing, not that Curtis Nash is saying ‘I do’ to his fiancée. ”
“Is that what we say?”
Nash wriggled about so that he could fish something out of his back pocket.
It turned out to be a folded piece of paper with a loose order of the ceremony and some example oaths.
“We can amend them, make them personal to us. They don’t have to be exactly as written.
” He’d already jotted a few such amendments in the margins, reducing his vows to:
These are the hands of your future husband, strong and full of love for you, that are holding yours, as you promise to love, cherish and obey him today, tomorrow, and forever.
She smudged the pencil marks with her thumb, obliterating the obey part.
It gave her shivers, reminding her too much of her father’s dictatorial approach that had blighted her teenage years.
“You don’t like that part?”
“It’s a bit old-fashioned. We’re entering into a partnership, we should be making the same vows, not setting it up to be lopsided from the start.”
“Guess,” he muttered, before stuffing the paper back into his pocket. “We can figure it out.”
Balin announced he was going to chill in his bunk, and Lee muttered something about tracking down Jez, and left, taking his beer with him. Nash snuggled her closer. “Just us left.”
“Yeah.”
His lips pressed to the side of her neck, while his hand landed on her leg, then slid into the space between her thighs.
“Nash, is this really the place and time?” Lee hadn’t even closed the bus door after he’d left. Anyone could walk in. Balin was still only next door, and the mean security lady was in earshot.
“What other time is there? This is going to be our life for the next eight months. We’re going to be constantly on the road and surrounded by people.”
“You say that like I’m going to be with you.”
“Of course you’re going to be with me. Why wouldn’t you be?” He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Need you to keep me sorted.”
“Nash, you know I’m shy about…”
“About the fact you’re not as skinny as some women.
So! I don’t mind, and it’s not as if I’m asking to livestream you going all reverse cowgirl on me or anything.
” He curled a strand of her hair around one fingertip and used it as an anchor to draw her nearer, while his other followed the inner leg seam of her trousers upwards. Jodi shrugged him off.
“Is this because you had to wait around?”
“No.”
“It is, isn’t it? We were meeting Black Halo. Harry made sure we got a decent stretch of time with them. We’re hot right now, but we’re still small fry next to them. I don’t think you get how important it was that we put in the work sucking up to them.”
“It’s not about you meeting Black Halo or the fact I couldn’t get on your bus. It’s not about anything. It’s just… It’s… this is too exposed. The door’s open, anyone can fucking see in. It’s not sexy. It makes me anxious.”
“You know Balin got a girl off in a packed club the night before last. Put a hand up her skirt and frigged her in front of us and all her mates. And your bestie, Lee—”
She didn’t want to hear it. “It’s irrelevant, Nash.” She wasn’t some other girl, and she wasn’t engaged to either Balin or Lee, much as she loved them both. She stood. “I’m going to take a walk.”
“A walk?” He watched her from beneath his dark brows but didn’t get up from the seat. “I thought we were going to hang together.”
“You can come with me. I thought I might take a look at this stone circle. Make sure I know where I’ve got to be later while I stretch my legs.”
“It doesn’t seem like you’re all that committed to the idea. Don’t like the vows. Don’t like the timing. Not interested in anything intimate, which is saying something considering absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder.”
Everyone knew that was a myth.
“I said yes, we should do it. I’m literally about to go and suss out the place. How does that make me not committed? Don’t be an arse, Nash. Just because I said no to sex in a public location doesn’t mean...”
He muttered something that she didn’t quite catch and couldn’t be bothered to ask him to repeat. “Maybe Jez has the right idea,” he huffed.
Great, now he was having a full-on strop. She knew better than to argue with him when he got like this.
She left him to get over himself.
Give him an hour and he’d be all Jo-Jo, please can you do this for me? And have you seen my thingamabob, and my hoogeewotsit. And, argh, my lucky marble’s missing, and I’ve looked everywhere, and I need you to work your lady magic to find it.
And because she loved him, she probably would.