Love at the Little Wedding Shop by the Sea - Jane Linfoot Page 0,55
have one best man duty left today, and now you refuse to go anywhere near the dance floor.’
Which is something else entirely. The trouble with that is, however infuriating and spoken-for Nic might be in real life, and however rude he is, thanks to me having the old mojito goggles clamped firmly over my eyes, with every new cocktail I knock back Nic and his tux are becoming more and more delicious … to the point of being irresistible. Right now, all I’m getting are the hollows of his cheeks and the stubble shadows on his jaw. And the dent at the base of his throat that looks like it’s crying out for me to put my finger in it. And possibly my tongue too.
Whatever my intentions of skipping Happy Hour, there have been more than a few cocktails. Cally’s and my latest arrangement is simple, fool proof, and guaranteed to work. We sit together with our drinks between us. I sip from alternate glasses and Cally waves hers around but doesn’t drink from either, and both drinks gradually disappear. Sure, I’m drinking when I hadn’t intended to. But the night is almost over, so as long as I pace myself, it’s a considered risk I’m happy to take. And if I’m brutally honest, when I threw back the first cocktail, the ache in my chest for my own lost wedding eased so much I couldn’t wait to start on the next. The only unforeseen drawback is the horribly misdirected alcohol-induced urges I’m getting. And the floor in the loos that was swaying uncontrollably last time we went. But that’s way better now we’re back sitting down on our bar chairs again.
As for this irrational compulsion to hurl myself at a guy, I can’t say it’s anything I’ve ever felt before, even in my wildest partying years. Lots of couples talk about the time when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, but I always assumed Ben and I had sidestepped that because when we got together it wasn’t as if our eyes met across a crowded room and we were helpless to resist. It was more that we got inadvertently roped together and dragged along because of where Phoebe was going.
As a teenager she’d done that ridiculous thing where she decided she’d be married by the time she was twenty-six come hell or high water. As she’d just blown out twenty-five candles on her birthday cake and was still flying solo, she was ramping up the effort. Panicking even.
Phoebe, always on the lookout for available talent over the Costa counter, had offered Ben and Harry free coffee if they came back at the end of our shift. So it was nothing to do with instant attraction, but more that all four of us randomly ended up at a table and went on to hang out together.
To start with, we went everywhere as a foursome simply because Phoebe wasn’t confident that Harry would go out without Ben. And, strange as it seemed, our pairing off was as simple as the sides of the table we sat on that first Saturday afternoon when the guys got their large Americanos on the house.
At the time, Phoebe had her eyes set so firmly on an engagement and a wedding that she wasn’t taking that much notice of the guys themselves beyond them being tall enough and working in management. But, true to form, she made it happen – within six months she’d got her ring and a year after that she had her husband. And all before she turned twenty-seven. She was also right about Harry and Ben taking their leads from each other. The weekend after Phoebe and Harry’s wedding, Ben turned up with a ring for me too. And the rest, as they say, is history. Ben and I set off on the longest engagement known to man, and Phoebe and Harry settled into the marriage that Harry would walk away from five years later.
As I sit sipping – then slugging – from my alternate glasses and fighting the urge to jump on the best man, I can’t help questioning what the hell is going on. Champers is famous for making you buzzy. Or maybe it’s the tux. Although, that’s immediately rubbished, because the other guys in identical tuxes aren’t getting my vibrations going at all. If I Google ‘drinks that make you horny’ tomorrow and find tequila’s the top of the list, at least that will explain it. But