Chapter 44
Forty-Four
JESSE
M y back and neck groaned in protest as I stretched out on the sofa. I knew it would be a bad idea, it was about two feet too small, but I tried to sleep in the bed, and it felt impossible.
My imagination decided to run rampant about all the ways my night could have gone if I hadn’t looked out the window. She probably would have come up and told me immediately, and then we could have laughed about it. Then I would have asked if I could make her shower dream come true, and she would have said no, so I would have found some other way to make her come before we fell asleep. I would have pressed kisses to her neck when we woke up, revelling in those quiet moments before she would have to go and be there for Becky. Before she walked out towards the altar, she would have found me in a hallway and pressed a red lip print to my cheek that I would have to hastily wipe off before I could go and join the guests.
My imagination didn’t exactly calm down when I moved from the bed to the sofa, but it did allow me to fall asleep for a short while.
Which my body was now going to pay for.
I checked my phone and saw that I had a message from Rachel, telling me breakfast was downstairs and that she overheard that Gavin was going to bring Drew food, so the coast was clear. There was nothing from Clara, which made me want to go and find her so we could get past this impasse I had created. But she was Becky’s this morning.
Deciding it was probably best to eat before the events of the day, I went down to the kitchen. It was mostly empty, except for Addie.
“Morning,” she said before eating a pancake.
“Morning,” I responded, picking up the sole chocolate chip pancake remaining.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“I managed a couple of hours in the end.”
“Nothing happened. I know she probably already told you that. But it didn’t. I was sitting on the outside dining table, not that they saw me. He was all up in her business, so she told him to do one and then got out. The only touching that happened was when she pushed him away from her,” Addie said, quickly. I was learning that rambling was a family trait and not just a Clara thing.
“I know nothing happened. I knew it last night, but it brought up old feelings, and I knew that I couldn’t talk to her without projecting.”
“Are you capable of it now?” she asked sternly.
“Yeah, I would go talk to her now if I didn’t know that she was one of Becky’s right-hand women and that should be her focus.”
Addie sighed. “Don’t make me hate you, Jesse,” she said as she stood up.
I laughed softly. “I’ll try,” I said to her retreating figure.
* * *
As I walked out into the gardens that had been transformed into the wedding venue, I realised that this was the adult equivalent of finding somewhere to sit when you’re the new kid at school. People were settling into the navy blue chairs and talking amongst themselves. I couldn’t see a single person I knew because they were all in the wedding party.
“Rachel came to our room last night and asked for the spare bridesmaid dress. You happen to know anything about that?”
I jumped at the sound of Darren’s voice. He crept up on me while I was trying to figure out the best place to sit without looking like a complete loner.
“I have no idea. I didn’t know they would need it. I thought all the dresses made it to France?”
Darren hummed. “They did. She needed it for Addie. She may have said something about making Andrew look like a chump. That jog your memory?”
“Did she use the word chump?”
It didn’t sound like a word in Rachel’s vocabulary.
“No, she used worse,” he said around a smile.
I finally turned to look at him and just about managed to stifle a laugh when I saw he was wearing a deep green jacket and matching trousers paired with a black shirt. My outfit coordinated with it perfectly.
“He’s walking down on his own?” I guessed.
“When you wrong one of them, you wrong them all. They terrify me sometimes. But they also rally. And so, while Andrew might have finally received his final strike, whatever is going on is as much about you as it is about him. Maybe more you than him.”
“How do you mean?”
“He has to walk down on his own, and you don’t have to see my daughter walk down an aisle arm in arm with him,” Darren clarified. I guess that did make sense. “I’ve seen my daughter through a lot of phases in her life, obviously, but I can say with complete confidence that I have never seen her the way I have this week. She seems freer. Happier. I’ll be honest, I think a lot of it was because she cut out the thing that was unknowingly wearing her down, and when it was gone, she was lighter. But some of it has to do with you. We all see it. I don’t know what happened between dinner last night and now, but don’t write her off yet. For the sake of both your happiness.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder, a firm yet reassuring touch.
“I haven’t. Written her off. It was just a blip, and I needed some space. We’re fine. We will be fine.”
And I was eternally grateful that I wasn’t going to have to watch her walk down the aisle with her ex-boyfriend.
He squeezed my shoulder. “I’m sure you will. Anyway, let’s go take our seats. We don’t want to be late.”
“Oh, I was just going to hang around in the?—”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Darren cut me off and used the hand he had on my shoulder to direct me to one of the front rows on the right side of the garden. Most of the seats were full now, but there were still three left.
“Where’s Vivi?” I asked.
“She’s the photographer, so she’s around,” he replied as his eyes scanned the area.
We spotted her at the same time. She was milling around the altar in a raspberry pink jumpsuit. She had a camera up to her face and kept changing positions and angles. She swept the lens around, and when she noticed her husband, I could see a smile break out underneath the camera. She twisted back around to the doors where everybody would be coming through.
Darren and I sat down just as Gavin appeared at the altar. Then the music started, and Vivi kicked into action as all the guests stood.
Drew was wearing a maroon jacket, but that was as ‘non-boring’ as his suit got. He stuck out as the sole lone walker amongst pairs. Behind him were Rachel and Lucy. Their dresses were yellow, as expected, but they were cut differently to the one that had been hanging on the wardrobe in our room all week.
They were halfway down the aisle when the final pair before the bride came out.
I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath until I caught sight of Clara and felt it physically leave me. Clara’s dress draped and clung exactly where it needed to and had a thigh slit that was almost indecent. She looked incredible. As she walked past me, our eyes locked, and my breath caught in my throat. It was a brief look, but it was enough. Everybody’s attention then turned to the bride.
Becky was flanked by both her parents. I didn’t know what I was expecting from her wedding dress, but it wasn’t midnight blue. As she slowly walked down the aisle, I could see why she had chosen it. The colour kept changing in the sunlight. It seemed to shimmer as she moved, and Becky herself was glowing in it.
I cast one more look at Clara before I focused on the bride and groom.
* * *
Confetti and flower petals cascaded over Becky and Gavin as they made their way back down the aisle as husband and wife. It was hard not to be in a good mood as everyone cheered for the new spouses.
Darren drifted away to find Vivi for a few moments alone before she went into the next phase of photography. Now that he was gone, I was alone again and free to do as I pleased.
As I left the garden, I made the now well-known walk to the heart of the house.
The kitchen.
When I got there, it was blissfully quiet. I got myself a glass of water and a spare croissant from breakfast. I ate it quickly, surprised by how hungry I was until I remembered that I had only eaten half a pancake earlier.
I knew the moment Clara walked in even though I had my back to the kitchen entrance. The atoms in my body seemed to sense her, and where I had been a bundle of nervous energy, I was now calm again.
“Hi.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it echoed in the quiet. I turned around just as she set her bouquet down on the island between us.
“Hi,” I replied.
“Can we talk? I have ten minutes.”
“What happens if you’re not back in ten minutes?”
“Becky will wield her saucepan again,” she said, the words trailing off into a soft laugh.
“What is it with her and saucepans?”
“Before this week, I wouldn’t have said she had a thing with saucepans, so I don’t know,” she answered as she pulled her phone out of a pocket in her dress.
“It has pockets?” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. It was more a reflex I’d picked up from her over the years.
“I know, right?” She smiled before she looked down at her phone, and a serious look passed over her face.
“I wrote this at like three a.m. because I am not good with spontaneously saying things out loud. I have always been better with words when I write them down. I think I will get my point across better this way if you just ignore that I am not looking at you directly. Although maybe that’s a good thing because you have a very expressive face and if this starts going downhill, I will know, and then I’m—see, this is what I mean…”
Clara took a deep breath and centred herself before she started reading.
“Contrary to what people think because I write love stories, I am actually very cynical when it comes to romance. I was banned from getting the lyric ‘love’s disgusting, love’s insane’ inked on my body because it was deemed too cynical, even though I think it is a perfectly reasonable sentiment. Joke’s on everybody else, though, because I still have a quote that is incredibly cynical. Everyone hears it’s from Romeo and Juliet and therefore assumes that it must be the most romantic thing in the world. And maybe to some people, it is interpreted that way, but not to me. You’ve seen it more than I ever will, ‘love is a smoke raised with the fume of a thousand sighs’.”
I did know where that was. It was on her back over her heart. It was also a particularly sensitive part of her body.
“I got it done the same week I realised I was falling in love. As I lay on the chair, I decided it was the only time I was going to do this love thing. Falling in love, being in love, staying in love requires a level of vulnerability that I frankly find quite horrifying, and I only wanted to go through that once. Opening yourself up to someone, allowing yourself to be seen and hoping they accept it, knowing that sometimes the person you love most is going to judge you a little bit, all of it is sickening. It’s waking up every day and choosing to share your life, thoughts and feelings with someone else and doing the same for them. I didn’t want to let a person in like that more than once. So, when I realised I had done it, this big scary thing called falling in love, I pinned everything on it. That would be my one great love. And I clung to it. Because I wasn’t going to get another one.
“And I know that is a terrible outlook to have on love, but I grew up with the one great love affair for parents. It was possible. I knew it was possible. Even when I felt things between us change, I just chalked it up to that being life. Nothing burns brightly forever. Sometimes things have to go down to a simmer before they can be brought back up. And I was going to marry that just so I could hold on to the idea that the love would burn brightly again. Maybe it was a good thing that my sense of obligation won, and I tried to bite the bullet and propose because that was the only way both parties were going to accept what our relationship was.
“Two people who cared for each other in some way, but didn’t love each other the way we both deserved to be loved. And that was it. My dalliance with love was going to be over, and it was fine. Romantic love is not the be-all and end-all, and it was no longer for me because how do you even fall in love with someone when you don’t need saving and distracting?” She laughed without humour and then flicked her eyes up at me.
“Then you happened, Jesse. I cried when I saw you were gone. Twice. Because for the first time, I got a glimpse of actual heartbreak. Turns out, it is shitty, and I do not recommend it. And I know that you needed space. I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of déjà vu you must have experienced over the whole thing, and I get that it would have been a lot. I’m not telling you about my tears to make you feel bad. I am telling you about them because I am in this.
“You, Jesse, are one of my best friends. And what I am learning is that the rest of my friends and my parents like you. You make me laugh, and you’re great when I cry. Or when I’m on a deadline. Or any time, actually. And considering how cynical I am, I can’t quite believe that one, this happened so quickly, and two, that I am going to say Romeo was right about something, but here is what else I know. ‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep’.”
Clara put her phone down and raised her head, her chest was moving rapidly up and down. She started twisting a curl in her fingers, and I noticed she was missing a ring on her hand.
“Love is a ‘madness most discreet’,” I said quietly because it was the only thing I could think to say in the moment. Whatever I thought she was going to say, it wasn’t that.
Clara’s head tipped back with laughter.
“See, you get it,” she said when her laughter died out.
“But he also calls it a ‘preserving sweet’.”
Her eyes narrowed as she leaned against the kitchen island. “It literally kills him in the end. There is nothing preserving about that.”
It was only now that we were debating about what the big bad was in Romeo and Juliet that I realised she didn’t doubt that I loved her too. She just wanted to make it abundantly clear that she was all in. With me.
“The family feud killed them if you want to get technical. Do you want to get technical?”
“I don’t have that kind of time. I have to go back to being a Maid of Honour in the immediate future, and Becky might kill me if she finds out I was delayed because I was arguing about what killed Romeo and Juliet,” she said, a bright smile on her face.
“You know you are my favourite person,” I started. “Before I met you, I thought love at first sight was a thing of fantasy. I’m a hopeless romantic somewhere deep down, and I still didn’t think it was possible. And then I met you. The moment I saw you, I knew that you were going to be someone important to me. Then I watched the way you lit up when you talked your way through your plotting issues, and I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life being a little bit in love with you. I only ever wanted you to be happy, so I got used to the fact that you were never going to feel the same way about me. At least you were happy.”
“I want the same for you too. I’m sorry I jeopardised that last night. But that chapter of my life is definitely over. I would much rather write the rest of the book with someone who won’t steal my sofa and wants to fight me on what killed Romeo and Juliet,” she said.
I walked around the island until I was standing next to her. She straightened up and locked eyes with me.
“Pride killed them, but again, we can get into that later. Back to you being my favourite person.” I wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her onto the island. Her legs opened and I settled between them, the movement made easier by the thigh slit cut into her dress. “It should be illegal to look this good in a dress, by the way.”
“Oh no, please punish me for this non-crime,” she joked, although her eyes did darken.
“I might later. Anyway, I would never dream of stealing the next sofa that you buy. And I will build you your own bookshelf, which we can dedicate exclusively to Macbeth . I’ll watch you get lost in any bookshop in the world, and I will actually kiss you in each and every one. I will make sure that you never have to suffer through a substandard blueberry muffin again. I’ll take the days where you never want to stop talking through what’s going on in your brain and the ones where you would rather exist in silence. I’m yours, Clo. For as long as you’ll have me. I love you.”
At some point, while I had been talking, Clara’s fingers had threaded through the hair at the nape of my neck. She used her hold on my hair to guide me closer to her mouth.
“Before you two start having sex on the kitchen island, could you please come and join us for photos? You’ve had longer than ten minutes.” I could hear the smile in Rachel’s voice even though I couldn’t see her. I did feel Clara smile against my neck as she dropped a kiss there instead of my mouth.
“We’ll be right there,” Clara replied without moving. If anything, she was increasing our chances of having sex on the kitchen island because her tongue was running along the length of the chain on my neck, making me shiver.
“You know damn well what you are doing means you will not be ‘right there’. Leave your hickey on him later. We need clean pictures,” Rachel said, and then I heard her shoes clicking away from us.
Clara lifted her head with one final kiss to my neck.
“Hold on,” I said.
Clara’s eyes darkened as her thighs squeezed around my waist, and I settled one of my hands on her back and the other on her leg. I carried her towards the garden. As we reached the door to go back outside, she slid down me slowly as she returned her feet to the floor.
“It should be illegal to look that good in a suit, by the way,” she said as she twined her fingers with mine and led us back to the wedding.