Beautiful.
Like I was starting to think he always was.
“Glad this is funny for you,” I teased. “I was clean until I tried to help.”
“I dunno,” Harvey said, reaching out to swipe away a splatter of mud from my cheek.
With his mud-covered hand.
He pursed his lips when he realized what he’d done, guilt written all over his face as the sound of a goat bleating and a cage being closed reached us.
“Seth would want us to match,” he said solemnly.
Now it was my turn to laugh, joy welling up in my chest at being this close to Harvey again.
We’d only been apart for a couple of hours, but I’d missed him.
“You know they say goats discovered coffee?” I said, trying to ease some of my weight off Harvey’s chest.
“Why is everyone a source of fun goat facts today?” Harvey asked.
“Fun goat facts?” I frowned, confused.
“You’re telling me a goat invented coffee, Andre says they were the first domesticated animals,” Harvey explained. “Seth said they don’t know fear, which isn’t fun, but is definitely a fact.”
I laughed again, rolling off Harvey—into the mud—and heaving myself up so I could offer him a hand.
I’d never seen him this covered in mud in my whole life, not even when we were kids.
“A goat didn’t invent coffee,” I said. “Just… maybe facilitated the discovery by eating the berries.”
“Nowyou’re telling me coffee’s a berry,” Harvey complained. “I thought it was a bean. Why do they call it a coffee bean if it’s a berry?”
“The seeds are bean-shaped,” I explained. “And I guess probably it was an early translation issue that stuck. I dunno, I’m not an expert.”
“Youarean expert,” Harvey said. “If you’d told me a goat really did invent coffee, I would’ve believed you. I trust you.”
“That’s a lot of trust,” I teased.
Harvey shrugged. “You’ve earned it.”
I wanted to say something else, but the sound of the pickup roaring into life stopped me.
“Okay,” Seth announced, hands on his hips, covered in mud, and breathing heavily as we watched Wes and Andre drive the goats away. “Now I can get married.”
* * *
“If I sayyou clean up well, are you gonna break off our engagement?” I asked, grinning at Harvey as I passed him a glass of champagne. He was driving, but we wouldn’t be heading home for hours yet. Besides, after the day he’d had, he needed it.
The rain had cleared up hours ago and the reception was in full swing now, people laughing and talking, moving between patches of warmth and light on the still-soft ground outside of the barn, or sheltering inside in ever-changing groups.
There was food, and music, and enough champagne to sink a boat in. Despite the way things had begun this morning, they’d ended up okay.
The ceremony had gone ahead with everyone covered in mud, but Seth had called a break before the reception started so they all had a chance to clean up. After he’d been persuaded by the rest of the wedding party that several hours caked in dirt was more than they could take.
“I can’t hear you past all the mud in my ear,” Harvey said, taking the glass with a wry smile.
“I think you got it all out,” I said, double-checking to be sure. “Seth’s happy, at least.”
