Matt felt a warm glow spread through him and smiled at her. And then frowned. He really shouldn’t care so much what she thought of his efforts.
‘Lily.’ A woman who Matt vaguely recognised was walking towards them with her arms outstretched in Lily’s direction. ‘Howareyou? Gorgeous dress.’ She did a circular pointing thing round her own face and said, ‘And gorgeous tan. You lookfab. Come and say hi to Johnny and Laura if you can take some time out of bridesmaiding?’
‘I’ll see you later,’ Lily told Matt.
And off she went. And off his mood went. Deflated, just like that, because she’d gone. Truly pathetic.
Yup. He really needed to find an opportunity to talk to her properly, get some closure once and for all on their relationship.
He spotted her talking to other people several times but didn’t find himself standing close to her again until a couple of hours later, when they were about to be seated for dinner.
‘I can’t believe how dry and hot it’s been since lunchtime,’ she said, fanning herself. She lowered her voice. ‘I think the gazebos are holding the heat in and making it too hot.’
‘I know. Worth it, though, in case it had rained again. And I think it’ll get cooler later on. I think there’s a breeze starting.’
‘Can I just say?’ A middle-aged woman leaned over to Lily. ‘You look sowellat the moment. That tan really suits you.’
Lily smiled. ‘Thank you.’ She waited until the woman had moved away and then said to Matt, ‘Literally about the twentieth person who’s said that to me today. And you know what the tan is? It’s the mud combined with foundation. Literally everyone thinks I look healthier and better because I have a layer of mud stuck into my face under my friend’s foundation.’
‘If it’s any consolation, I think you looked lovely before you bathed in the mud,’ Matt said, trying not to laugh. She’d definitely got a lot more mud on her face than he had.
‘Hmm,’ Lily said. ‘It’s like that time I had the allergic reaction to antibiotics.’ Not long after they’d started going out, she’d had a big reaction to some medication and had been covered in hives for a couple of days and after they’d gone down she’d stayed red for weeks and everyone had congratulated her on how lovely she looked having caught the sun. In the middle of December in London.
God, it felt like they hadsomuch history together. Like, when they’d been together, they’d shared so much. Until the end when Lily had withdrawn from him.
Of course, as it turned out, they hadn’t shared as much as he’d imagined. Now he thought about it, didn’t allergies often go hand in hand with asthma and eczema? When she’d had that allergic reaction would have been an obvious time, actually, to have mentioned her asthma, so she’d clearly made a decision not to. Which was of course entirely up to her, but it hurt that she hadn’t wanted to open up to him about important things.
Matt reallyneededto have just one proper conversation with her, or he was going to wonder about all of this forever. He was going to ask her right now. He opened his mouth to speak and had got about two words out before Meg popped up and said, ‘Hi, Matt, sorry, I need Lily,’ and pulled her away by the hand.
A really good thing, actually. If they were going to have a serious conversation, now wasn’t the time for it. Although he wasn’t going to see her again, was he? Maybe he should ask her if they could meet up in London just for one drink.
Matt’s table for dinner was great and included some of the men he’d met at the stag. He sat down and immediately started talking to Tom’s cousin Felix’s fiancé, Alfredo, who was fantastic companyandhad devised a way of getting the latest test match score without anyone even suspecting he was looking at his phone: the perfect dinner companion. Matt was going to enjoy this dinner and not spend the whole – or any – of it thinking about an ex from way in the past. Which was all that Lily was.
Alfredo was midway through a story about a half-marathon running disaster when Matt thought he heard Lily laugh and had to force himself not to turn round. Which made him realise that he’d been doing really well at not thinking about her. Although, actually, notthatwell because their starters hadn’t even arrived yet. Shewaslaughing. He loved it when she laughed. Her whole face lit up and her eyes danced. And then she’d often pull a very dry comment out of the bag which made you choke with laughter yourself at the shock of it.
‘Matt?’ Alfredo said. Oh God. He’d done it again. Been thinking too much about Lily and not enough about his companion. Ridiculous and not okay. Hehadto stop thinking about her and engage with the people on his table.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Little bit tired. Have you heard about the insane morning a few of us had?’ Obviously that story involved Lily a lot.God.
He told them the rain story as quickly as possible, and then moved the conversation on to holidays – who knew that between eight people over six months there’d be plans to visit eleven countries over five continents – and actually managed to keep his mind genuinely pretty much off Lily.
When his uncle, Tess’s dad, smashed a plate on the floor and roared with laughter at all the gasps and screams and told everyone that he was doing his speechà laGreek plate smashing, Matt was delighted to realise that this had to be the first time he’d looked round at or thought about Lily for at least… well, probably nearly ten minutes. Not bad, really.
Pretty pathetic, actually.
Anyway, now he kind ofhadto look at her since she was next to his uncle. He loved everything about the way she looked. The way she always began to smile – with her eyes dancing – slightly before the punchline when she sensed that a good one was coming up. Thewayshe smiled, the way the smile started small and finished big and made you want to smile and smile and smile yourself. The way she’d just caught the eye of someone on the table next to him and raised her eyebrows slightly and then smiled broadly.
It was a long time since they’d been together and there were a lot of other attractive women in the world.
It felt like yesterday and there was only one Lily.
‘When Tess and Tom first met,’ his uncle said, ‘they were a lot younger than they are now.’ Yeah. Same with Matt and Lily. Ten years ago, he’d been young and naïve. Growing up, he’d seen his parents’ straightforward, happy marriage and he’d thought that all you had to do was love someone and be loved and that was kind of that. Nope. Apparently not.
Lily looked away from his uncle and straight at Matt. She didn’t smile. Nor did he.
He really shouldn’t speak to her later. He really actually didn’t need to go there.
And his uncle had finished his father-of-the-bride speech and Matt had missed most of it. Annoying; he’d have liked to have heard it. Hopefully someone would have videoed it.
