Chapter Twenty-One
“You should get a dog. Dogs are great for meeting people.”
THE PHOTOGRAPHER,Dale Lau, was a stocky, genial man who drove off the ferry in a car packed with camera gear and an old surfboard strapped to the roof. He grinned at Nate from behind a pair of polarized sunglasses and said he was going to get some surfing in while he was there. He leaned out the arched window of the folly to check the waves below. His T-shirt crawled up his back to flash a glimpse of tanned skin and the sun-blurred lines of a black tribal tattoo.
“Do you surf?” he asked Nate over his shoulder. Then, as though the answer were obvious, “Where’s the best spot on the island?”
“I tried it once. Not really my thing,” Nate said. He added casually, “If you want, I could ask my boyfriend for recommendations. He’s with the Coastguard.”
“Huh, maybe.”
Nate left Dale to admire the scenery and turned around to adjust the hang of the sheer curtains while he thought about what he’d just said. It was the first time he’d really called Flynn that and meant it. He might have said he wanted a bad boyfriend, but even when he poked at Max about it, he stuck to “dating.” It didn’t sound quite right.
It could be that he was too old forboyfriends. He might need to upgrade topartner. Or the not-so-casual way he’d slottedCoastguardin there, as though he were a teenager with a boyfriend in a band.
Of course, Nate popped his own bubble firmly, it could be because he hadn’t actually had any sort of conversation with Flynn about it. One night of sex didn’t automatically upgrade to a relationship. Hell, it didn’t usually upgrade to another night of sex. Otherwise Nate’s occasional Facebook stalking of his exes would be all-nighters, not an hour to pass the time until someone died during anEmmerdaletwo-parter. And Max would be a bigamist.
“Anyhow, we’ll be shooting up here around this time of day?” Dale said as he dragged himself away from the window.
“The wedding starts at 11:00 a.m.,” Nate said. He checked his watch. “So right about now we’d be walking the bridge to the altar.”
Dale nodded and pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head. One eye was a slit in a puffy nest of yellow and green bruising, with blood-blisters scattered over the lower eyelid. Nate stared for a dismayed moment as “defaced photographer” was added to the list of things that had gone wrong. Before he had to think of how to ask, Dale caught him staring.
“Oh this?” He poked gingerly at the puffy underside of his eye. “Christening in Oxford got a bit rowdy. Don’t worry. I shoot with my other eye.” He held his hands up to demonstrate, his fingers crooked around an imaginary camera in front of his face.
“Just keep the sunglasses on as much as you can,” Nate said. “Even if you won’t be in the pictures, the bride doesn’t need to see that.”
Dale obediently popped the shades back down onto his nose. They headed down the steps to the car, through the dapples of sun and shade cast on the stone by the branches overhead. Nate made it halfway down, and gave three sidelong looks at what he could see of the bruising. “Okay, so who punched you?”
“Grandma.”
He waited expectantly, as though he expected Nate to call him a liar. But after so many years of organizing the annual Ceremony Harvest Festival, that sounded about right. Nate had seen a seventy-year-old widow batter her rival’s husband about the head and shoulders with the parish magazine because of a squashed cupcake. He wouldn’t put anything past an irate grandmother at a ruined christening.
“Well, it could have been worse.”
“How?”
“It could have been the baby.”
The broken-down Granshire car was still parked in the corner, waiting for someone to collect it. Nate folded himself into Dale’s Mini instead. The inside of the car smelled like salt and sugary sweets, and the floor under Nate’s feet was covered with discarded wrappers.
“Sorry for the mess,” Dale said. “I keep meaning to clean it up. Never do. So you want me at the rehearsal dinner tonight?”
Nate nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He filled Dale in on the wedding party and their quirks on the way back to the Granshire. The groom would have shirtsleeves rolled up the minute he got a chance after the ceremony, the maid of honor was quite short, he was to include the groom’s mother in every picture the bride’s parents were in….
“TO Along and happy marriage.” William McCreary raised his glass, and the gathered guests followed suit. Bright candlelight glowed through dozens of red wine filled flutes as they all took a dutiful sip. Then a grin cracked William’s broad pink face—a few too many hours on the golf course with Teddy—and he added an unscripted epilogue to the toast. “I figure about twenty years will get us our money’s worth.”
He got a laugh. It made him beam and open his mouth again. Before he could go on, his wife caught his sleeve and tugged at it.
“Sit down, Billy,” she ordered. “You’re embarrassing Katie.”
“Yeah, Bill,” Bradley said. He grinned at his future father-in-law. Then he winked and downed his wine. “Save something for the wedding.”
Katie rolled her eyes, and Nate leaned over the table to pour her a fresh glass of wine.
“Thanks,” she said. “I don’t suppose you can organize my dad’s speech?”
“I’m sorry,” Nate said. “I convinced the best man it wasn’t a roast. My persuasive powers are tapped out.”
