Jess is finally going! That New Zealand holiday is at its dawn, and all she can think of is landscapes, walks and adventures. But what she does not expect to find, is what is waiting around the corner - someone.
Someone who will turn her holiday up...
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Jess recalled the last time she had been on a picnic.
It had been idyllic, set amongst the meandering river and glorious sunshine, with the peace of sitting beneath the trees' boughs. But that was all but marred by the mist that had suspended itself in her mind that day. It was that which she found herself remembering far too well.
So she had not, to her dismay, really been able to lose herself in the experience of a picnic. The regret that filled her would have been complete, had she thought about it more. Recently, it would briefly cross her mind - as she lay in bed, tucked between the warm sheets, reflecting on all she would be jetting away from in a few days' time. But it was only ever brief.
Then again, though she might be able to let that one slide, and check it off her list... that had been a family picnic. A picnic for two was entirely uncharted territory.
"This," Jess's hands gestured around her, as they often did, but her eyes stared up at the sky. She spoke, it would seem, to no one in particular. "this is beautiful."
She was sprawled lazily on a blanket on the ground, the clear, now shallow stream rushing by behind her. The unpleasant dampness of the grass beneath the thin blanket was lost on Jess as she spoke.
"Thank you, James."
He grinned, a little shyly perhaps, holding his handful of chips out of reach of a persistently approaching Obi Wan.
"I'm glad you like it. I didn't think it would be that easy to impress the mistress of adventure."
Jess laughed. "Consider her very impressed."
In fact, James had done what would seem impossible - surprised the words out of Jess Kieran-Lee. What she had thought was going to be a walk, revealed itself to be a picnic, all laid out and ready when she reached the stream. She was wrapped up in sheer joy, and shock and awe of James, and the amount of thought he must have put into that moment, for her.
She had not told him much about the picnic she'd had with her family; it really had not been the best experience.
But he had noticed, better, indeed, than she did, that her thirst for adventure mingled peculiarly with a longing for the quaint and cosy. And this place, by the stream - and what he hoped to achieve with the classic picnic - was just that.
What did not occur to Jess, was that James knew he had ruined that family picnic - had guessed more than she could have imagined. He knew that in causing her all that pain and setting her mind in a state of turmoil, he had ruined something she had really been looking forward to - and he had to make it up to her.
Jess did not realise either, until James attempted to subtly mention it, that their picnic was laid out at the spot where they had first met on the path. Not the day she met Catherine - that was not the best memory - but the day after, when they had walked together, and talked of journeying and adventures, and the sentinel trees above them.
