Back at the flat, I’m fumbling with the keys in the outside door when I feel Joel’s hands around me, his smile on my neck. He mumbles something I don’t catch, so I pull back, ask him what he said, and he tells me I can do anything I want to do, never to think I can’t.
We fall into the hallway together then, and he presses me against the banister, our breath quickening through mouthfuls of kisses. We begin to tug at each other’s clothes, not even bothering to shed our jackets, just unbuttoning and unzipping enough to make it happen. Somehow we find our way down onto the carpet, eyes locked and lustful, bodies trembling with longing. And as we start to move, I feel the full atomic weight of my love for him, as though my heart has just exploded into a thousand shooting stars.
50.
Joel
I’ve agreed to be Callie’s plus-one at the wedding of Hugo, an old friend of the Cooper family.
It didn’t take long to work out why Callie’s parents had swerved it. It turns out moving to Switzerland after university and setting up in private equity hasn’t done too much for Hugo, personality-wise. Twice after we arrived at his Jacobean manor-house reception he called Callie by the wrong name, before asking if I was with catering. (I assumed he was referring to my slightly too-sharp suit. But since he appears to lack even a knock-knock sense of humor, no one could really be sure.)
Hugo’s new wife, Samantha, seems okay. (If a little clueless, since she’s willingly marrying the douchebag. Good luck to her, I guess.)
My dim view of Hugo dimmed even further when we were seated at a table alongside all of his most ancient relatives. Not one of them is compos mentis, so Callie and I have been left to amuse ourselves. Still, that’s no bad thing. Sorting out our vegetarian food, for example, is proving to be an interesting intellectual challenge.
“There must have been a mix-up. It’s meat.” Callie’s talking through her teeth, staring at the miniature beef Wellington on her plate. Her smile looks like it’s been programmed onto her face.
All day, I’ve not been able to stop looking at her. Wanting to kiss the contours of her collarbone, press my fingers against its smooth hollows.She’s wound her hair into a soft bun, and her dress is a sweeping creation in vivid green. The earrings she’s wearing are leaf-shaped and studded with emeralds, a gift from me once I’d seen her dress.
A couple of weeks ago I walked into the bedroom while she was trying on outfits. This particular one ended up on the floor, a silky shamrock pool, only moments later.
But I really can’t think about that while surrounded by octogenarians. They’re an unpredictable lot. One of them has just started swaying violently out of time to the string quartet, whose current number sounds alarmingly similar to Britney Spears’s “Toxic.”
Callie looks around for a waiter. “I did tell them we were vegetarian, in the questionnaire.”
“Questionnaire?”
“Oh, yes. We had to fill one in, like a job application. And their gift list was positively autocratic.”
I swig my wine. “How many stag dos did you say Hugo had?”
“Three.”
I lean closer. “How many wedding days?”
“Two. This one, and one in Zürich.”
“How many honeymoons?”
“Two. One maxi, one mini.”
I raise my glass. “Let neither of us ever become a Hugo.”
“Cheers to that.”
We chink and drink. “Have I told you yet how incredible you look in that dress, by the way?”
“Six times. Seven, if you include that night it ended up on the floor.”
“I mean it, though. I’m not just brazenly trying to seduce you.”
She slides a hand to my knee. “I don’t mind. Have I told you yet how dapper you look in that suit?”
I smile, thinking back to stumbling suited-up with her into the department-store fitting room last week. As we fumbled with zips andbuttons, I half wondered if we might get arrested. But then I very quickly realized I definitely didn’t care.
A waiter appears. “Can I help?”
Callie leans up, whispers to him that we’re vegetarian.
