This time, I did snort. ‘You didn’t misread me. Not the whole time, anyway. I deserved a lot of the disdain you threw my way. Just like cooking and cleaning, I learnt how not to be an annoying arsehole embarrassingly late.’
Sadie smiled into my throat. ‘You’ve left me such an opening there,’ she said, ‘so I want you to read the fact that I’m not taking it as a sign of how much I love you.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m still an annoying arsehole.’ I kissed her temple. ‘No one is more restrained than you, wife.’
She chuckled.
I tightened my arm around her. ‘If you want an example of someone catastrophically misreading a situation, though,’ I said, ‘let me tell you about how you broke my heart when we were nineteen.’
To Sadie’s chagrin and my well-hidden relief, Chess had declined the offer to stay at our place while she was here, opting instead to stay in the hotel room she’d booked. She did, however – to Sadie’s delight and my well-hidden chagrin – extend her stay so she could spend some time working with Julia and the union on the firststeps of the anti-Renewniversity Phase Three campaign, and Sadie insisted we take her out to dinner.
‘The Jonah in Chess’s head is the tweed bro I spent a solid decade shit-talking to her,’ she said, standing in the kitchen as we took a quick tea break the following afternoon. ‘I want her to get to know the real Jonah. Cardigan Jonah. Teddy Bear Jonah.’
‘Just do me one favour,’ I said. ‘Please don’t refer to me as Teddy Bear Jonah anywhere she – or, indeed, anyone in the world – could overhear you.’
‘Fine, fine.’ She went up on her toes to kiss me. ‘I hear you. You’re a very manly man. You have your pride.’
Then she smiled against my lips. ‘Youarea teddy bear, though. My teddy bear. And I’m not going to let you go.’
‘Oh yeah?’ My fingers trailed down her sides and she yelped and then laughed as I hoisted her up against the fridge. ‘Prove it.’
Sadie wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. ‘You’re on, Fisher.’
She proved it. I still had the half-moon marks of her fingernails carved deep into my shoulder blades when we left the house for dinner a few hours later. She hadclungto me.
We met Chess in front of Tsundoku. ‘I’m so excited to show you this place, Chessie,’ Sadie said. ‘You’re going to love it.’
‘I’m sure I will. Hello, Jonah.’
I kissed both her cheeks European-style in greeting – air kisses, my beard only barely brushing her skin. ‘Hello, Chess.’
Unusually, Isamu, not Satoshi, was behind the bar. ‘Nice to see you, Sadie, Jonah,’ he said. ‘And—’
‘This is my sister.’
Sadie was always beautiful, but radiating joy like this, she was incandescent. I couldn’t resist pressing my lips to her hair. She smiled up at me.
‘Francesca Shaw,’ Isamu said. ‘An extremely valued customer.’
‘This is Isamu, our landlord,’ Sadie explained. ‘He’s the wine-maker. He’s usually down at the vineyard, but—’
‘I had some business to discuss with my brother,’ Isamu said, beckoning to Satoshi, who was emerging from the back. ‘He’ll get you seated and pour you something special. Welcome, Francesca.’
‘Thank you,’ Chess said simply, twining her fingers together in front of her.
Sadie had told me many times that Chess had a lot of opinions about wine, but she was relatively quiet as Satoshi talked us into a bottle of their new non-vintage sparkling. ‘I know, professionally, Jonah and my lives have gone to shit, but still – we need to celebrate!’ Sadie declared. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Chessie. So, so, so glad you’re here.’
‘I’m glad too, sweet—Sadie,’ Chess said, as we all clinked our glasses together. ‘Cheers.’
Unable to keep the smile off her face, Sadie carried the bulk of the conversation, telling Chess everything about everything, from what a cartoon villain Petrovski was, to our misadventures in babysitting, to all the new things she’d learnt about wine from our acquaintance with the Tsukamoto brothers. ‘You’d be so proud of me,’ she said, leaning over to top up our glasses. ‘I used the wordterroirin a conversation the other day – and I’m, like, ninety per cent sure I used it accurately.’
‘I’m always proud of you,’ Chess said, ‘but well done. Very impressive.’
‘We’ll have to go out to dinner with Fiona sometime – Jonah’s sister. I think you two will really get on. I’m only ever going to be an enthusiastic wine amateur, but she really knows what she’s talking about. You can fight over who loves Bibliophile more.’
Chess chuckled. I did too, keeping what I was actually thinking – that if she ever said anything even remotely combative to Fi, then we would have a capital-P Problem – off my face.
‘This is where I got all the books I sent to you,’ Sadie said, gesturing at the bookshelves around us. ‘I have no idea how Satoshi keeps the romance section so well-stocked – like, who keeps bringing in all these second-hand books and why aren’t they keeping them for themselves? – but he does such a good job.’
