Chapter 25
LYRA
The Malpass Wedding
The next twelve days pass in a blur of beach walks and sea frolicking, snogging on a blanket with crashing waves making a soundtrack to our romance, rolling around in the sand like no one else is watching.
I feel a constant push and pull. The want to let go versus the fear of uncharted territory, not knowing when but certain that this whole dream will come crashing down at some point.
But every time I decide to take a step back, have us stay apart for an evening and try to keep a semblance of real life, Guy is the first of us to message or call.
He teaches me how to play guitar when we’re in his apartment, and when he comes to my parents’ house one night whilst Mum is at the hospital and Dad is sleeping, I teach him how to play the piano, until his hands stop roaming the keys and start caressing me.
And my secret hideaway becomes another place that Guy and I are bared to each other, exposed in the very best way.
At his place, we cook together, mostly chopping salads as the heatwave from the continent continues to affect the usually cold north of England.
He also gets me to show him my grandmother’s recipe for Yorkshire puddings and tells me that anything doused in my gravy has become his new favourite meal.
And I think to myself that my new favourite meal is anything I eat with Guy, laughing, touching, exploring each other, teaching each other new things, learning about each other’s favourite songs and quirks as we eat.
He asks me about the articles I write as a hobby and I tell him about the dark room at my bungalow.
We go out for fish and chips, eating them from their wrapper as we walk along the beach.
At the weekend, we take a trip to Finchale Abbey, sitting amongst old priory ruins, with a picnic, dipping in the River Wear to cool off.
Guy’s recent videos from weddings continue to gain viral popularity on TikTok. Old concert videos of The Hand Me Downs are making a splash, too.
It turns out that the royalties from the very first record he wrote, which he doesn’t give directly to Matty’s trust, are increasing enough that he can quit being a naked Butler.
I’m not sure how true the financial piece is.
But I choose to accept when he tells me that I’m the only woman whose hands he’s interested in having on him.
When we go out, Guy wears his cap and sunglasses. I pretend not to see people conspicuously taking his picture or making a video with their phones when we’re doing something as innocuous as throwing chips in the direction of seagulls to fend them off at the beach.
The fact is, I don’t care. I feel like I’m in a bubble that I don’t want to pop.
One night, I arrive at Guy’s apartment after work to find him sitting on a stool in his kitchen with a stack of a trashy weekly magazines in front of him.
Our image is splashed across the front page: kissing on the beach, me wearing the bikini I bought the day we barbecued with Kylie, Dave and their friends.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks me.
There’s a heaviness about him that I don’t like, especially when it comes from him worrying about me. So, hoping my family don’t happen to stumble across a copy of the gossip rag, I pick up the stack of glossy paper from the benchtop in front of him and toss every last copy into the bin.
‘I don’t read that one anyway,’ I tell him, my palms on his cheeks, forcing him to see the meaning in my words. All that matters is what we think.
I don’t know when this shift started to happen but it’s true. If we aren’t hurting anyone, then why can’t we be happy? If people are perturbed by us, maybe we need to question their right to dictate or opine on what we do.
I remember a part of me that’s been buried for too long, a part of me who truly believed that I had a right to be happy, and I think I’d like that piece of my puzzle back.
Today, we’re both working at Earl’s Castle for the Malpass wedding.
We’ve spent the morning apart, him going to Trev’s house for brunch with Dave on account of Trev being told by his girlfriend that he can’t be more than ten metres away from her, since she’s now overdue to give birth to their baby.
I laughed when Guy told me because I couldn’t help imagining the panicked calamity that would ensue if Tally were to go into labour with Trev, Guy and Dave as her doctors.
Guy called me ‘cheeky’ and spanked me on my backside as he kissed my temple, making me feel a heady mix of closeness and undeniable arousal.
Meanwhile, I spent the morning working on developing an old camera film that I found in one of my moving boxes. I’m unsure when it’s from, though since it’s amongst my Newcastle University sweaters and notebooks, I suspect it’s from then.
I stopped taking and developing pictures for a while after That Night. I think I wanted to forget what I’d done, what I’d caused by switching my courses, and what I’d decided to give up when I dropped out of university altogether.
But there was one film that made me pause because I think, I know, there’s more to the reason I didn’t develop that one. I know it has pictures from That Night.
The night that changed everything. But maybe now, there’s more to the memories than just everything going pear-shaped. Perhaps now, I could face that film.
It’s at the Malpass wedding that the film in my personal Pentax finally runs out, containing all the pictures I’ve taken through the wedding season so far.
The wedding is an elegant black-tie affair, with Dave’s string quartet playing through the ceremony outside.
In the day-to-evening interlude, though my camera lens is directed at the family and friend feuds taking place over Jenga and pétanque, I’m focused on the fire that ignites in my lower abdomen when Guy arrives to set up for the evening entertainment.
Mandy is officially on duty tonight, but since there’s nowhere else I need to be and no one else I’d rather be listening to, I stick around for Guy’s set.
He opens with ‘Show Me How’ by the Stereophonics, making me wonder if he’s chosen the song himself because it works so well with his voice, or if the bride and groom happen to have exceptionally great taste in music.
He sings the words looking my way and I’m cast back seven years, standing at his gig, as if there’s no one else in the room besides us.
It occurs to me that I’ve fallen for him in a way I’ve never fallen for anyone.
Deeper than my imagination could have possibly conceived, faster than any sane, rational woman would think reasonable, harder than a rock falling from a mountain top, with no end in sight, only an abyss.
It’s a beautiful, scary, freefalling sensation, and I’m fairly sure I’m starting to experience that little thing called love.
After the happy couple have cut the cake, Guy welcomes the new Mr and Mrs Malpass onto the dance floor.
He’s standing on stage, wearing grey trousers, a crisp white shirt I’d like to tear off him later, and the braces I’ve pinged against his nipples now more than once.
Backing music to Michael Bublé’s ‘Haven’t Met You Yet’ starts to play and I smirk in his direction because I know just how much he loves to sing Michael Bublé songs – not.
The problem for him is that he sings it remarkably well.
So well, there are more cameras in the room videoing Guy than there are videoing the newlyweds as they make choreographed shapes across the dance floor.
And tonight, Guy seems to sing this song better than every other time I’ve heard it from him in the wedding season so far.
I come to stand by Dave, who is similarly leaning back against his sound box, and tell him, ‘I genuinely think he might be enjoying himself.’
‘He looks like the frontman he swears he’ll never be,’ Dave replies, watching his friend, the fallen rock star. ‘I don’t think it’s just the music that’s turning him into a showman again, flower.’
I try not to react to his statement. He could mean anything. Guy’s job, reconnecting with his friends, spending time at the beach in the fresh air. But there’s a definite part of me that’s delighted by the thought that maybe, just maybe, I’m making Guy a little bit happier, too.
Then, something entirely unexpected happens. Something more unexpected even than the last few weeks. Something bizarre and implausible.
Guy is… dancing?… on the stage as he builds to the crescendo of Michael Bublé’s lyrics. The tempo at peak, the pitch at its highest, the joy in the room at fever pitch.
And Guy… twirls?… on the spot, then takes hold of his microphone and dips it, bending to catch it, looking up at me as he does with as wide a beam on his face as I’ve ever seen.
Laughter bellows out from the depths of me as he winks at me in that way he does, simultaneously kicking the bottom of the mic stand with his shiny shoe and standing upright for his grand finale.
‘Did he just dip his mic, Bublé style?’ Dave asks.
I can’t respond to him because of the ache in in my cheeks from smiling, the pain in my ribs from delirium, and because my current happiness seemingly knows no bounds.