Chapter Sixteen
Two and a half years ago
Two years until Hattie’s engagement party
Mel tipped her head back on the patio overlooking the Tuscan vineyard and let out a contented sigh. “I want to stay here forever. Can we do that?” She glanced at Finn and Priya from behind her sunglasses. “Just stay on this patio, surrounded by wine and cheese, for the rest of our lives?”
Priya raised her glass of white wine in a toast. “I am totally with you.”
Mel smiled from behind her sunglasses, face tilted toward the sun as she leaned back in the chair. “Maybe we should become vineyard owners.”
It was late afternoon, the sun hanging low in the blue sky, the vines a vibrant green against the golden hues of the surrounding countryside.
The whole place had a contented glow about it—kind of how Finn was feeling after an indulgent meal, having had a wine paired with each of the four courses, and finishing with a cheese board.
They’d come away for a week, Mel declaring that a holiday with her two favorite people in the world was necessary.
Priya had brought along her very meh boyfriend—even though no one, including Priya, thought it would last. Finn could barely remember him now—he talked a lot about his family home in the Cotswolds and the fact that he knew how to play polo.
What was his name? Ross? Possibly Ross. Or Ron.
Not good enough for Priya, Finn and Mel had agreed on that.
Friends for a reason, friends for a season, friends for a lifetime, Priya had replied to that assessment, which hadn’t totally made sense, but they’d gone with it.
“Finn can do up the house,” Mel continued, waving to the villa that stood, majestic, behind them, its weathered stone walls the color of sunbaked earth, softened by age and covered in creeping ivy.
“Sure,” Finn agreed lazily.
“Priya can give the tours of the vineyard. You’ll be good at that,” she added directly to Priya, who nodded, like, of course she would be good at that. “And I can be the accountant.”
Finn scoffed. “You want to move to a Tuscan vineyard to be an accountant?”
“Can’t you just do the jewelry from here?” Priya asked, sweeping aside her long dark hair. “You can work from anywhere, right?”
Mel hesitated. “I suppose I can.” It was like she hadn’t quite accepted her own success yet—like she didn’t think it would last.
“You can make wine earrings,” Priya said, and Finn snorted a laugh at the idea.
“Grape necklaces?” he suggested.
“A nose piercing shaped as a bottle,” Priya declared—and everyone laughed. Priya frowned as she glanced around—most other people had left after the tour, only a few tables staying to eke out the last of the day, like them. “Where is Ross? Didn’t he go to the loo about an hour ago?”
Finn shrugged. “Maybe he’s fallen asleep somewhere.”
“Wouldn’t blame him if he had,” Mel said with a yawn.
“Okay, so Mel is the accountant and on-site jewelry maker,” Priya picked up, distinctly unconcerned about her boyfriend’s whereabouts.
“Oh, so I’ve got two jobs now, do I?”
“?’Course you do,” Finn said. “You’re a multitasker, Mel, that’s what I love about you.
” It had become easy, by then. To say the word “love” to her—to mean it.
After years of shying away from any kind of commitment, he’d suddenly found himself fully in it with Mel.
It still amazed him, that he’d gotten her, that she was happy to be with him.
He’d started to think that maybe other people were wrong—maybe he wasn’t so like his dad, after all.
“Oh yeah?” Mel asked slyly. “What else do you love about me?” It had become sort of a joke between them, but unlike the first time she’d asked, in the middle of the Alps, it didn’t send him cringing with awkwardness and fear.
“Everything,” he declared easily.
She lowered her sunglasses to look at him over the top of them. “It’s impossible to love everything about someone. What about the way I slice the bread unevenly or how I sing the wrong words to the songs in the car, hmm?”
He laughed. “Okay, I love almost everything about you, then.”
She nodded. “Almost everything, I’ll take that.”
“GUYS,” Priya groaned loudly. “Do you have to be so bloody adorable?” Mel grinned at Priya, as Priya pulled them both in toward her, one arm around each of them. “I do love you both, though.”
Finn snorted. “You’re just drunk.”
Priya made an offended sound. “I am not. Admittedly, I am a little bit tipsy, because it is the daytime and we are drinking wine and I think I am also sun drunk, but—”
“Sun drunk?” he asked.
“It’s a thing.”
“This the kind of thing you’re teaching in your school, huh? Remind me to tell Mark not to send Freya there when she’s old enough.”
She waved him away. “I DO love you both,” she insisted—and he knew she was more than a little tipsy, because Priya didn’t always hand out affection easily.
“Please don’t ever break up, okay? I want us to still be doing this when we’re in our eighties.
Hopefully by then I’ll be with someone other than Ross. ” She squinted. “Where is he?”
“Hopefully not near enough to hear you say that,” Mel said, her lips twitching.
Finn swung his arm around Priya, squeezed her gently. “And don’t worry,” he said. “We won’t break up.” He smiled at Mel and she looked right back, unflinching. He’d been so confident, so sure. In that moment, he never would have questioned that she would be his for life.
Shows how much he knew, doesn’t it?
Priya shoved his arm away. “Okay, I better go look for him. I invited him on this holiday; he’s my responsibility.” She got to her feet, a little unsteadily, and headed toward the villa.
Finn looked over at Mel. “Would you ever actually want to move abroad somewhere like this?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said lazily. “It’s not realistic, is it? I know in theory I can make jewelry from anywhere, but I need to sort the business—and London is the place for that.”
She lowered her sunglasses, watching him—and she knew he was wondering if, maybe, London could be the place for him too.
She wouldn’t ask, though—wouldn’t pressure him.
For now, they were making it work, a combination of staying at her flat with Priya, and her coming to visit him in whichever house he was working on.
The most recent house, near Oxford, they’d stayed at for a long weekend, living among the rubble, her helping him to smash down a wall and apparently loving every minute of it.
They’d had sex against what remained of the wall, dust in her hair, disarray all around them, so that they’d felt free to do whatever the fuck they wanted.
“What are you thinking about?” Mel asked.
“You,” he answered honestly.
She grinned. “Explains the drool.”
He laughed. “Just the house I’m doing up.”
“I can’t wait to see it when it’s finished.” No mention of what would happen afterward—where he’d go next.
No, Mel wouldn’t push him. And he’d always shied away from London, never thought that the nine-to-five office haul, the chaos of the capital city would be for him. But now, watching her here under the sun, he wondered if he had that wrong. He wondered if, maybe, for her, he could do it.