Page 50 of A Wedding in a Week

John snorts. “Well, there must be something in the water around here lately.” He clasps my shoulder. “You go ahead and keep drinking it, you hear?”

All I can do is try to smother another smile at what Marc’s doing out in the yard, because the last of my orphan lambs haven’t lost the springs in their feet yet. They bounce away from a pen he’s made out of straw bales, and for every lamb he catches and pops back, another two escape him. It’s a non-stop game of chase, of tag, of Marc laughing each time he retrieves a lamb only for the others to let him know they’ve no intention of posing for his photos.

John chuckles beside me. “I’ve seen it all now.”

I haven’t seen nearly enough. Not of Marc. I also can’t help laughing at something comedic, given that Marc has the perfect tool to get the job done waiting not so patiently beside him. Instead, he starts to dismantle his straw-bale pen as if giving up on getting the shot he’d set his heart on.

Jess wags her tail, still waiting for his order, so I go out and give it. “Come by.”

She launches like a black-and-white furry rocket, circling the lambs who are too full of beans to notice. They bounce further from the pen and Marc, not closer.

I murmur, “Away to me,” and even all the way across the yard, she hears me and switches direction. She circles closer, and the lambs pay more attention. They also startle, their bleating high and plaintive, and yes, they’re daft woolly beggars but they’re only little.

Jess is such a good girl, I don’t need to give the get-back command she learned when she was young and full of bounce herself, her bright eyes fixed on my dad. Now she drops to her belly without me needing to tell her, her eyes on me until the lambs stop bleating. Then I tell her to get up and walk on, only I tag on, “To Marc.”

She does exactly as asked, herding the lambs back to the straw-bale pen, which Marc closes behind them. He also grins but not at me. Or not at first, at least. He crouches, giving Jess some love before hitting me with his full-beam brightness. He also says, “Thanks.” And there’s a quality to his voice suggesting he sees competence and likes it—that I’m someone capable of solving his problems, while the whole time he’s actually helping me to solve mine.

Yet again we’re in tandem, in sync, aligned with a common purpose, which I guess must do something to my expression.

He raises his phone, snapping a quick shot of me. Then he gets busy with the lambs, and I can see why—they’re cute but they won’t stay put for long. He catches an escapee, almost dropping his phone in the process, so I help him again, and that’s how I end up on one of Marc’s presentation slides, pictured sitting on a bale with a lapful of lambs and laughing.

It seems a decent way for our penultimate day to wind down, or it would be if Marc didn’t make it even better with a last request which he throws over his shoulder while loading the Land Rover.

“Come to the headland with me?”

He has to know I’ll go wherever he asks, that I’d vault gates and sprint the whole way there if he needed. Even with an arm aching so much it groans a lament, I do the same as Jess, following an instinct that makes keeping him close feel vital.

The interview deadline clock still ticks. There’s only one more day to perfect his presentation. But somehow time slows like it did first thing this morning when he woke next to me with his smile slow and sleep-hazy. He breaks the same hazy spell now by sliding closer my way along the vehicle’s bench seat.

“Hi,” he murmurs as if it’s the first time he’s seen me all day. In reality, we’ve orbited each other like we used to, or at least I’ve circled him while he’s been busy the same way Jess circled those lambs. Now I’ve got his whole attention and I have no idea if he can tell I’ve overworked my elbow or if he reaches for my seat belt simply as an excuse to be close. Either way, now Marc fastens it for me, his lips a too-brief brush against mine, gone before I’m ready. Then he slides away and starts the engine. “Better hurry, or we’ll lose the light.”

He steers us from the yard, and for the first time I’ve noticed all day, he frowns.

Again, I’m more like a sheepdog than maybe any human should be, instantly alert. “What’s up?”

“It’s John.” Marc brakes, gaze fixed on the rear-view mirror. “What’s he doing?”

I turn, spotting what Marc saw but doesn’t know how to translate. I don’t have the same problem. It’s crystal clear that John mimes drinking from an invisible bottle, but I say, “It’s nothing. Keep driving,” to Marc, even though me drinking more of whatever is in the water around here lately is exactly what I plan on doing. Fuck drinking more of it. I’d dive in headfirst and do my best to stay immersed forever if that turns out to be an option.

As it is, I drink up the sight of the sun catching Marc full in the face. It’s low in the sky, leaving him spotlit and unshadowed. So is his smile, and compared to the start of the week, he’s so open.

I like that much better. I also like how I don’t panic for once at his eyes fixing on me instead of on what’s ahead. There’s no chance of crashing off the road here. Not with Marc at the wheel, driving cross-country instead of along the coast road. His eye contact only lasts a second, but I’m as dazzled by it as by the sun when we arrive at the headland and Marc takes charge. He bumps me out of the way at the rear of the vehicle. “Oh, no you don’t. Nope. I’ve got it.” He pulls out one of those straw bales and hefts it. “You bring the cool bag.”

Past-me might have argued—would have attempted to carry both the bale and the bag without his help. This evening, I don’t try to manage all on my own, and it’s more than the last month that’s changed me. More than an injury that, for all of today’s additional aches and strains, has to be close to healed now.

The difference is Marc.

He’s the reason I don’t try to hold my own this evening, or act like a one-man island.

The only islands visible are the faint smudge of Kara-Enys across the water, and the one Marc makes by dropping the bale once we’re on the headland, only it isn’t intended as a prop for a photo shoot like I expected, a table to showcase the wedding-menu samples of food Jude gave us.

It’s for me.

Marc taps the bale, saying, “Sit,” and again, I don’t argue. If I’m honest, following orders for once is a relief, even if it means sitting face-to-face with where my land stops and the sea starts.

For once, the thought of a steep drop doesn’t fill me with jitters, not when Marc sits shoulder-to-shoulder with me, talking me through his thinking like he’s done all week long.

“You found it hard to get up from the ground when we had our first picnic, didn’t you?” He looks behind us. If I turned to gaze upward like he does, I’d see that spot where the farm meets the moorland. Instead I focus on him and what else he tells me. “I should have thought about making that easier on you.”

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