Every Ocean

Chapter 4

"I can't believe this," Steve growled on the morning of the wedding, "I knew they should've gotten a sooner flight."

I heard my Mum's persistent, high-pitched voice. I'm slightly mad at Steve, judging from this conversation; Mum has already been stressing, and she doesn't need his worries. She whines, "oh, Steve, I'm sorry, but don't blame them."

"I don't blame them," he sighs, and the voice of a chair scraping the tiles, suggests he's sat down, "I blame the bloody airlines." I can just envision his face as he rakes his hands through his hair. I'm predicting him to be bald in, maybe, five years.

As I dragged my feet along the wooden floor, I rubbed my eyes, listening to this morning's chatter. Steve and Mum had been in the kitchen since seven in the morning, maybe earlier, and I wasn't up for being woken up by the sound of distressed voices. I didn't have a choice in coming down, my throat was too sore not to have orange juice.

Giving the best smile I could conjure, I enter the room but the tension I feel makes me so uncomfortable I literally contemplate sprinting back upstairs. However, before I can, Steve begins to walk towards me, attempting to force a smile, but the scowl he holds can't be hidden, not even by the happiest man I have ever met.

"Good morning, Grace," I'm surprised he mumbles this to me as he leaves the room; he must not want me to see any bad side to him. I may have no seen it yet, but I have heard it. He appears to be wearing his running clothes, so he must be happy enough to jog at 6am.

I try to shrug away the heaviness in the air, but I simply pour the orange juice into the glass feeling defeated. I don't bother asking Mum about what's happened, because I know she'll say, "oh, it's nothing, don't worry," before returning a minute later to let everything off her chest. Predicting that she's going to hug me, I take a huge gulp of juice before anything gets in my way.

"Oh, Grace, Steve's so upset," she starts, pulling me into a hug (I said she would), then mumbling into me she continues, "we've woken up to a text of Steve's friend, saying his flight was cancelled."

"Oh, no." I try sounding concerned but I'm not sure it played off too well. I think there are enough people at the wedding as it is, one person's not going to change anything.

"Him and his son," okay, well, two people missing won't affect much, "have been in Germany together for the past few months- as his friend is originally from there- and promised to be back in time for the wedding," she lets go of me, then swiftly leans against the breakfast bar as though it's the only thing holding her up, and I take this chance to gulp down my juice and pour myself a second glass, "their flight was meant to be at 5am, so they could make it to the wedding in time, but we're not sure they will now."

We sit and chat for another half an hour, before Mum realises she must go meet Susan at her office and so I hop up the stairs and head straight for the shower. William, Noah and Emma spent the night at Steve's parents house, saving anyone any stress of sorting them out. Honestly, I felt a bit bad just leaving them there, as Steve tends to fall back on his parents quite a lot. Hopefully after the wedding, everything can go back to normal and they can simply sleep in their own beds. Will had a choice, and he chose going because he knew he could either play with Noah or by himself. He chose what any child would. After Steve made pasta for dinner, and we all miraculously ate all together, I drove them to their destination for the night with Noah's (not so) helpful directions. Emma attempted to help, but being five, her memory for roads hasn't quite developed yet. Before going, I got enticed into letting Emma do my hair, and so (due to her insisting I keep it in, and me not wanting to disappoint her) I showed up to the house with ten bobbles gripping my hair in all sorts of ways. Knowing what Emma's like, Steve's parents laughed, and joked I looked like a character from a 1980's cartoon show.