Note: This is set in the same vague, apparently angst-ridden future as my fic "Flesh and Steel".
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2. Wine
Kat hates hills these days, but she doggedly trudges up this one, peace offering in hand.
"Here," she says, holding out the bottle of red wine to Josh, who's sitting on the ground in his tux, with his back to the low garden wall. "You looked like you needed reinforcements."
He takes the bottle and immediately uncorks it. "Yeah. How's the knee?"
She shrugs and begins the stiff, awkward process of sitting. "It's okay."
Her knee hurts like a sonovabitch, but she's not going to tell him that - not tonight, of all nights, when he already looks so defeated. She knows he still feels guilty about her knee.
As if it was his fault instead of hers that she jumped too slow and Psycho crunched it. Dork, she thinks, but fondly.
Josh puts the bottle to his lips and takes a pull. "It hasn't been as bad as I thought."
She gets settled into a position that won't make her leg cramp, and leans her titanium cane up against the wall. "Which is why you're way out here, alone, chugging wine."
"Trust me, if they had anything better, I wouldn't be." He grimaces and passes the bottle over. "No, really. It wasn't that bad, watching the ceremony and everything. I mean - I still care about her, but... We broke up six years ago, you know? It's not fresh."
Kat swigs some wine and makes a face of her own. "Yeah, okay. I still don't know if inviting your ex to your wedding is classy or trashy."
"Classy," Josh says. His eyes are on the wedding reception below - the swirl of pink and red and black, the glowing white bride at the center. Music and happy voices drift up. "Laura's definitely classy."
Kat takes another swig and passes the wine back. "Valentine's Day, too."
He gives a faint smile. "That was always her plan. Even before we were dating - when she was a little girl, she had it mapped out to the last detail."
Kat's always wanted to get married - if she gets married, and that's a pretty big freaking if - in a plane, so she can shout her vows while skydiving. But an enormous, frilly red-and-pink V-Day wedding is okay too, she supposes. "They even have Valentine's in China?"
He shrugs. Takes a drink. "Might explain why her grandparents looked so confused," he finally says, with another glimmer of a smile.
Kat snorts, and then they lapse into comfortable silence for a long time, trading the bottle back and forth, watching the reception go on merrily without them.
Josh picked a nice spot to angst, she thinks, looking up at the flowering trees and the star-filled night beyond. It's quiet and peaceful, and it smells nice, what with all the flowers.
"So what was your plan?" she asks after a while.
"For what?"
"Your wedding. And don't tell me Valentine's Day, 'cause I'm not buying it." She knows, because she's been his partner for nearly five years, that Josh mostly only remembers the holidays where you eat a lot and watch football.
He grins at her - and really grins this time, all the way to his eyes. "I wanted to jump out of a plane. You know, skydive? But Laura never liked that idea."
Kat grabs her cane and leans on it, hauling herself to her feet. "Guess it's a good thing you didn't marry her."
"Yeah." He gets up too, with less difficulty, and carefully places the half-empty bottle on top of the decorative stone wall. "I guess it is."
She holds out her free hand and he takes it, squeezing gently once before he lets go, and then they walk down the hill together.