Page 58 of A Wedding in Tuscany

Tuscany

Smudging an inherited engagement ring with citronella turned out to be just the panacea Cat needed. If only because by the time Alistair dropped off Josh and Jean-Luc, Cat and I were laughing so hard we were barely making any noise.

I blame Cat. All I did was light the candles. She was the one who came up with the incantation?a weird mishmash of childhood rhymes, a Lizzo song and I’m fairly certain she chucked in a line from Hamilton. We must have looked absurd, doing a sort-of funky liturgical dance around the balcony. Thank god the guys didn’t catch us like that; it might have been enough for Jean-Luc to call off the wedding.

Instead, they find us sitting side by side facing the view and giggling uncontrollably.

‘What’s gotten into you two?’ asks Josh an amused smile on his face. He leans down for a kiss and when he gets close, he smells like sweat and red wine.

‘Just, you know … girls’ stuff.’ He eyes me curiously.

‘Hello, chérie,’ says Jean-Luc. He plops a kiss on the top of Cat’s head and I notice he’s swaying a little and his eyes are unfocused.

‘You guys have a good time?’ I ask. Josh sits next to me at the end of the table and Jean-Luc sits across from Cat, reaching for her hand and clasping it in his.

‘A wonderful day. Our team won. Hooray!’

‘Hooray,’ I echo, even though I have no idea who they were cheering for.

‘And thank god we were wearing the right colour,’ says Josh pulling at the hem of his (ghastly) purple T-shirt. I’d been unconvinced when he’d brought it home and put it on the ‘pack for Italy’ pile, but he’d assured me it was an essential part of the Buck’s Day Out. He can burn it now.

‘What’s your team again, darling?’

‘Fiorentina.’ Cat nods as if the name means something to her.

‘What else did you do?’ I ask. Surely, they didn’t spend the last seven hours at a soccer match. I know they feel like they go on forever, but they’re only a couple of hours long, right?

‘Game, then bar, then steak dinner,’ says Josh.

‘You’re in Italy and you had a steak dinner?’ I ask.

‘Yeah. They eat steak here. There are, like, six steak houses right in the middle of Florence.’

‘Huh, I had no idea.’

‘And we had an excellent Barolo,’ adds Jean-Luc.

‘Two bottles of it, to be exact,’ says Josh. ‘I’m pretty sure Alistair was bummed that he put his hand up for designated driver.’

‘I’ll give you the steak but drinking Barolo when you’re in Chianti country?’ I ask.

Josh shrugs and Jean-Luc extends his hands. ‘I love all wine varietals equally.’ He waves his hands in a large circle. ‘Tous les vins.’ Yep, definitely drunk.

‘So, you guys hungry?’ I’m suddenly starving and when I look at my watch, it’s obvious why. We ate lunch more than six hours ago.

‘I could eat,’ says Josh. Not surprising. He has a hollow leg, that one?he’s constantly eating. I swear the grocery bill tripled when we moved in together.

‘Jean-Luc?’

‘Mmm, peut-être. What is there?’

‘Um, you know, a bit of this, a bit of that.’ I push my chair back from the table. ‘Cat, you want something?’ With ‘food is love’ as our unofficial family motto?thank you for that, Karen?and both Parsons sisters being expert emotional eaters, I’m anticipating a ‘yes’.

‘I’m ravenous.’ See?

‘Okay, be right back.’

‘Can I have a beer?’ Josh calls at my back as I cross the threshold into the kitchen.