Jamie appears behind him.
“And two cakes.”
“Why two?”
Jamie points solemnly towards Noah.
“He sat on one.”
Noah looks offended.
“It was an accident.”
I hold back a laugh and I lock eyes with Mark.
He is smiling.
Watching me with that warm, infuriatingly fond expression he has worn more and more over the last few months.
I love this man.
Eventually, I let Noah drag me into the kitchen.
The afternoon blurs in the way good afternoons do.
People move in and out of rooms.
Children in and out of arguments.
Someone is always asking where the ketchup is.
Sophie takes photographs nobody agreed to.
Luke spends twenty minutes trying to explain publishing advances to Mark’s father and failing on every level.
Mark’s mother keeps feeding me.
Every time I put down an empty plate, another one appears.
At one point I find myself standing barefoot by the patio doors with a paper plate in one hand, Mark beside me, three children running through the garden, and Heath asleep upstairs away from the noise, and I have the sudden strange sensation that this all feels… ordinary.
Not in the boring sense.
In the impossible sense.
As if this level of belonging should still surprise me more than it does.
Mark’s hand brushes the base of my spine as he passes behind me.
A tiny touch.
Automatic.
Thoughtless.
Mine.
I search his face.
