Page 78 of The Wedding Forecast

‘Because we’ll watch movies and talk and fool around, and it’ll be lovely and then…I have to fly home in two days.’

Too much happiness is scary when it has a very clear end date. I’m in too deep. I’m drowning already. I need to be sure I can get over this and get on with my life. That might not happen if I put on his soft clothes and eat his made-from-scratch popcorn and have great sex with him again.

He looks at me and I’m not sure if he gets it.

‘I’m scared,’ I say.

‘Of what?’ he asks quietly.

‘Getting too attached.’

I watch his face.

He swallows, his expression softening. ‘Me too,’ he says, putting the saucepan down and leaning back against the bench.

‘So what do we do?’ I say. I’m hoping he has some magic answer that means my heart won’t get broken.

‘What if we do the Before Sunrise thing. We say, let’s have these perfect few days together and then we walk away from it and never speak again—’

‘They do speak again, that movie has two sequels,’ I say.

‘Okay, well I’m trying to be romantic and spontaneous here. We can have sequels too. But for now, let’s just have this. Don’t think about the future.’

‘Do you really never want to talk again?’ The finality of that suddenly hits me.

‘Maybe that’s too dramatic,’ he says. ‘We can email.’

‘Or write letters.’

‘Telegrams.’

‘Morse code.’

‘Or we don’t talk, or write, or communicate,’ he says. ‘But one day we run into each other again when we’re old and we say, “Wasn’t that so completely wonderful.”’

‘So kind of what we already did after the wedding but add thirty years.’

‘Exactly.’

He has no idea how much I secretly thought about him after the wedding. And this time will be so much worse.

‘You don’t think we could…’ I trail off. I want to ask if he thinks there’s any possibility of figuring out a future together, but I’m not quite brave enough.

He seems to know what I was going to say anyway.

‘I don’t think I’m right for you, geographically or…for everything you said you want in life.’

There’s a beat as I absorb the truth of this. Everything I want. Kids. A settled life. Commitment. I wonder which part of it he means. Probably all of it. I almost want to cry at the unfairness of it.

He walks over to me, pushes my hair back, softly kisses my neck.

‘But I still want you to stay tonight,’ he says. ‘Please stay.’

The neck kisses are very persuasive.

‘These pants are quite soft,’ I say, still holding the clothes he gave me and leaning into him. Maybe my heart can be a future-me problem, like my job. Maybe I can just try to exist in the moment.

‘So, you’ll stay?’ he says.