I stare down at my belly, hard with inflammation. I think because I’m fat people are extra surprised when it manages to suddenly balloon out, like I’m pregnant on aSimstimeline of like three days. I’m just glad I got through the tiny dress and bikini sections before it hit.
Now I can just lie in bed and make phone calls about our wedding, eat chips and sleep it off. I may be plagued by a body that wants to grow tissue in all the wrong places just for kicks, but at least it’s semi-regular about it.
Thank God for sweatpants with elasticated waists, and fancy trousers that are secretly sweatpants.
‘I hope it’s passed before I meet your parents. When are we doing that? Day after tomorrow?’ I ask.
‘I think so. Then yours.’
‘Then fittings,’ I sigh. Thankfully, I have my usual measurements on hand because I suspected this was going to happen, which means I can have something slinky that hugs my curves and makes every woman with a visible belly line realise she too can look hot as fuck showing it off.
I switch on the television, breakfast programming as background noise, the sort of thing I’d have on while flickingthrough my phone. I could be doing that – it’s just in the other room, but I feel like if I touch it, Mum will know. She’ll know and wonder why I haven’t called.
I mean, maybe she won’t because we didn’t part on good terms. She thought this was a terrible idea, to put it mildly, and she’ll know that Warren and I are together now. She’ll have opinions. Shealwayshas opinions.
I mute the television. ‘Sorry, I meant to ask how your call went before we got distracted. How are your family?’
Warren’s love for his family is apparent on his face. ‘Really good. I think Connor needs a new battery as the old one is not holding charge, so I need to help sort that out later. But yeah, everyone’s good. Mum wants to know if you have a Jollof preference.’
‘However she makes it, surely?’
‘Correct answer. Keep that up, and you’ll be fine.’
‘I’m sure I can try harder than that.’ I make a note to ask him for her favourite sweets or biscuits, so that we can take them and some flowers when we finally meet.
‘If you’re not going to call your mum today, I have one request,’ he says.
‘Go on.’
‘I think let’s lock the phones in the cases overnight. Or hand them over to production.’
I sit up a little too quickly. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Dolly, your mum won’t thank us for calling her late at night when we’ve had a few drinks and think it’s suddenly a great idea to finally call her. You want to do it with a clear head. You know I’m right.’
‘And Idislikethat you’re right, just so you know.’
‘Noted.’
‘But yes, fine. Can we lock them in the fridge or something? Freeze them into a block of ice?’
He laughs, and I realise how much I’ve grown to love that rumble. ‘Do you struggle that much with impulse control?’
I snort. ‘I try not to.’
Not that I’ve tried particularly hard over the last few weeks. In the same way my heart can recognise Warren’s laugh anywhere, I feel like my body just always knows where Carys is. I swear I can sense her in the building, and I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before we silently bump into each other. Will she ignore me then? What about when there’s no one else there? Will we ever talk about what happened between us, or is that it forever?
I wish television could drown that feeling out too.
I open my show notebook that I’ve taken to using as a kind of bullet journal for keeping on track with our wedding plans. ‘We should call up the florists. Thanks to the shaggers we’re going to have to cut back on some of the grandiosity.’
‘Do we even need flowers? We’re getting married in a greenhouse.’
‘Buttonholes,’ I say, listing off on my fingers. ‘My bouquet. Something for our mums. I don’t want to scrimp on those if we can avoid it. We’ll just go… lowkey.’
It turns out the shaggers cost us, collectively,ten thousand poundsfrom our wedding budget. That’s two grand each, on top of the six hundred from Zack’s wank fest. It’s probably a good thing Carys fainted, or a huge fight would have broken out.
Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to be annoyed with Malachi and Whit when they’re so in love. Probably because it would make me a hypocrite.
