Episode 826: If I Were Brave

Despite how sick Jesse plainly appeared and how stricken, everyone else looked over his sudden collapse, Sebastian said, “okay, he’s fine then, so let’s get back to the ceremony.” He knew it was the wrong thing to say, totally selfish and insensitive, he didn’t need the dirty looks from pretty much everyone else to tell him so.

“You may well be fine,” Sebastian’s mother Katherine conceded to Jesse as she continued to kneel beside him. “But I want to get you to my clinic right away for a thorough work up, just to be certain.

“I don’t need that,” Jesse insisted. “I’m just tired and I need to eat, there’s nothing really wrong with me, I’m fine.”

“He’s not a baby,” Sebastian piped up. “He should know how he’s feeling, let’s just finish up here and if he’s still not feeling great then take him to get checked out, it’s not like a wedding is all that taxing on a guest.” It was, however, taxing on the groom when there was a delay, when anything could happen next. He knew, he just knew, if his mother took Jesse to the clinic, he and Ava would go along to support Bowie and Lila and they wouldn’t get married today. So when would they?

He’d thought he’d done a pretty good job of keeping himself concealed behind the trees, but Tansy must have spotted him. She snuck away from the gathering and greeted him with a hug. She was quiet about it, and stayed behind the tree, apparently aware that he didn’t want to be noticed.

“What’s going on over there?” He’d arrived late, only catching glimpses of Ava in her dress among the others gathered in a crowd. “Ar-are they married yet?”

Tansy shook her head in the negative. “A boy collapsed, he seems okay, but my grandma wants to take him to her clinic. I don’t think the wedding will happen today.”

He nodded numbly.

“Were you going to try to break up the wedding?” she asked. “You still love her?”

He’d told the kid about his past, knowing he could trust her not to spread around his identity, he’d been honest with her hoping at some point she’d open up to him in turn. He hadn’t counted on having this difficult conversation instead. “I don’t know, Tans. I don’t know why I came here or what I was going to do.”

Episode 827: Poison