A Wedding in December

“You don’t even know you’re doing it. Also, you hug yourself and there’s no need because you have me to hug you now.” As if to prove it, Dan tightened his grip. “I haven’t seen you this stressed. Is this what your family does to you?”

“Being around them always makes me a little anxious.”

“I’d noticed. By the way, you might want to take off your earring.”

She turned her head to look at him. “You don’t like my earrings?”

“I love your earrings, but you’re only wearing one of them.” He gave her a wicked grin. “I suspect the other is back home somewhere in our bed.”

She gasped and lifted her hand to her ear. It was bare. “It must have fallen out when we—”

He covered her lips with his fingers. “Small children within earshot.”

“We were so late leaving, I didn’t even check.”

“We were a little distracted.” He kissed her jaw. “Don’t worry. At least you remembered pants.”

She gave him a shove with one hand, and removed her one earring with the other. “I’m relieved you noticed. I’d rather not greet my parents looking as if I just climbed out of bed, thank you.” She turned back to look at the throng of people. “Where are they?”

“Probably stuck in immigration. Or waiting for baggage. You need to chill.”

She didn’t know how to “chill.” That word didn’t appear in her vocabulary.

He should know that. He should know everything about her, surely? How else could he possibly be sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her?

A person should know what they were committing to. At what stage does what you know become enough?

Oh stop it, Rosie!

She was hearing the voices of her family even though they hadn’t even arrived yet.

She wished she’d never talked to Katie. What if they embarrassed her in front of Dan?

She wished she could inject herself with something and kill all the little doubts that were multiplying in her mind. Right now, her focus should be on her parents. Her mother would probably be a nervous wreck after the flight, and that was assuming her father had managed to get her on the flight in the first place. What if he hadn’t?

May

be they were still in Heathrow.

Her imagination took a long-haul flight of its own with no stopovers. She pictured her mother collapsing at the departure gate and having to be sedated. Or, worse, being midair and trying to claw her way out of the plane.

“Can you open the door of a plane when it’s in the air?”

“No, of course not.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“Because the cabin is pressurized, and the internal pressure is higher than the external pressure. The differential air pressure would mean you’re pulling over a thousand pounds—not possible. It’s physics.”

Rosie hated physics. “My area of expertise is folklore and mythology, so there is no reason why I should know that.”

He let go of her and turned her around to face him. “Why are you asking? Does your mom have a habit of trying to open plane doors midflight?”

“No.” But that was because her mother avoided flying whenever possible. “My mother hates flying.”

“If she hated it that much, she wouldn’t have come.”

“You don’t know my mother. There is nothing she wouldn’t do for my sister and me.” And Rosie was feeling increasingly guilty for dragging her mother away from home at Christmas. She loved Christmas and always made such a fuss of everyone. “She’s always been there for us, no matter what.”