Page 53 of A Wedding in a Week

Mum is one. I don’t know how he caught her looking sweet instead of evil, but there she is again, only now she has flour on her nose and a rolling pin in hand. That photo fades, replaced by another featuring a bouquet of flowers she must have picked from her cottage garden.

“Love-Land Weddings has contacts for every little detail,” Marc murmurs. I know he has leaflets from several professional florists, my mum is only playacting, but there’s nothing fake about his market research. He’s covered every detail. “Whether couples need bespoke bouquets or simple cottage-garden buttonholes, we can make that happen and so create income streams for more local professionals.”

I’m aware that for all the easy persuasiveness of his tone, he’s actually tight with tension. It’s right there under my palm along with a Jess-like quiver that means he’s primed for action.

Because this matters so much to him.

It must matter to Mum as well because I know she struggles with hay fever, but there she is winding twine around a buttonhole I notice now rests on top of Marc’s stack of leaflets. It looks a little worse for wear compared to the freshness of that photo. I reach past him to grab it. That brings our heads close together, and he turns at the same time, his lips brushing stubble I’m glad I didn’t shave off, not when he smiles before leaning in the extra inch so our mouths meet.

It’s a quick kiss, that’s all, fleeting, but my lips tingle as if he’s the unshaven one out of us both.

Maybe his lips tingle as well. He touches them before turning back to his presentation practice, still smiling, and I scoop up the rose and greenery that my mum tied together with twine for us. I cup it in my palm with no idea why its wilting petals get to me. It’s a prop, not the real deal—an illustration of what could be, not a promise.

I still want to preserve it.

I pop the rose in a teacup and fill it with water, and maybe I do clasp that teacup close for long enough that Marc notices.

“I told her we both liked roses.”

That’s all it takes for me to be back in a walled garden with him, drenched in a scent that’s so much fainter coming from this handmade offering, and it turns out I don’t need to talk to my brother to shake off a green-eyed emotion I don’t know how to handle. I don’t need his teasing or Mum rolling her eyes at me either. All I need is Marc talking as if we’re really partners.

That’s when I really stop worrying about Hayden’s arrival.

Instead, I hold the teacup, remembering other petals scattered in Marc’s hair, and I’m better at shovelling shit than writing love songs but everything that I want feels close enough to grab hold of.

For us.

I continue clutching the teacup instead, which is far from heavy, but after a couple of days of quietly taking more of the load, this is the moment my arm chooses to give out—to give up—to wave a white flag of surrender, only I’m not sure I could keep hold of a flag either, not when my hand prickles before numbing, my arm somehow boneless.

I can’t feel it or the teacup.

It falls, but Marc moves faster. I don’t know how he catches it before it shatters on the flagstones.

I just know that he’s got it, and me.

20

The buttonhole is safe in the teacup between us. I can’t say the same for the water—my shirt’s wet, but that’s okay, because we’re kissing again, and this time, we don’t stop. Or at least, we don’t until Marc wrenches away from me.

For one heart-sinking moment, I think that’s because Hayden’s arrived early.

Thankfully, I’m mistaken.

Marc heads for the door for a different reason, opening it and ordering, “Guard, Jess,” and I hadn’t known she was under the kitchen table until she follows his instruction, slinking past with her tail wagging. The moment the door shuts behind her, he comes back, only it isn’t to pick up where we left off.

“Listen, I did a thing this morning.” His eye contact is momentary. It drops to the rose between us, and I hear him swallow before he looks up. “I mean, Emma and I did.”

He did something with my mum? “That… that leaves a lot of possibilities?” I don’t know what my face must do while wondering. Whatever Marc sees triggers a rushed explanation.

“I talked to her about my interview.”

I’m not sure why that’s a problem. “Okay?”

“She got me to use her as a practice audience. I ran through it slide-by-slide with her.” He lets out a soft snort, a smile emerging. “She gave me a round of applause after each one.”

That sounds exactly like something she’d do. I’m torn between smiling too, or shaking my head at the mental image, until I notice Marc’s fading and he adds, “But there was one slide she didn’t clap after. The one about finance options.” He searches my face again, a tooth digging into his lip before saying, “Stef, you didn’t tell her the bank turned you down more than once already? She thought Love-Land Weddings was a brand-new idea, something we’d come up with together, not a plan you’d been working on for ages. That you’d been struggling—”

“I’m not struggling.” Shit. Is that what she thinks? That I can’t manage what she turned over to me for safekeeping? “The farm’s safe.”

---