She laughs.
‘Try to get some rest. We’ll get you through it,’ she says.
‘Will do. Night night.’
‘Sweet dreams, Whit,’ she replies.
We hang up.
I appreciate her support, really, I do, but I’m not sure how she’s going to get me through this one unscathed.
Best man, at my best friend’s wedding, when I’m secretly in love with him. Oh, and not a man.
What a joke.
12
‘You look tired,’ JJ tells me. ‘Is my spare bed not comfortable?’
‘The bed is comfortable,’ I reply. ‘It’s the screaming orgasms through the wall that are uncomfortable.’
I accidentally make eye contact with our taxi driver in his rear-view mirror. I try to apologise with my eyes.
‘Now, now, Whit, I know you’re not a prude,’ JJ ticks me off.
‘It’s not the fact it’s an orgasm that’s keeping me up, it’s the sheer volume of them,’ I point out. ‘Doesn’t your throat hurt?’
She purses her lips and raises her eyebrows.
‘Do not answer that,’ I practically beg.
‘I’ll try to keep the noise down,’ she says, being serious for a moment.
‘Don’t be daft, it’s your home,’ I tell her. ‘If you can’t have a screaming orgasm in your own home, where can you, eh?’
She opens her mouth to speak.
‘Again – do not answer that,’ I say with a laugh. ‘I really appreciate you letting me stay. With Cordelia staying in Andy’s room with him, I hate being home.’
‘I get that,’ JJ assures me. ‘Stay as long as you like. Have they said where they’re planning to live yet?’
I shake my head.
‘Nope – although to be honest with you, I’ve hardly spoken to them. Andy thinks we’re hard at work on my book, pulling all-nighters, getting it ready for a publisher to read.’
‘I suppose they’re too wrapped up in themselves,’ she replies. ‘The audacity of them, to have an engagement party, when they only got engaged a week ago, or whatever, and they’re getting married in a week or so… Talk about milking it.’
Yep, silly me, thinking ‘next month’ meant I had a month to mentally prepare, when really, given that it was the end of April when they told me, their May wedding is imminent.
‘I never thought Andy would be the kind of guy to marry someone called Cordelia at a country estate,’ JJ muses out the window. ‘Not that it isn’t lovely out here. If you’re into that sort of thing. I could imagine myself as a sort of lady of the manor…’
‘Sort of lady,’ I repeat back to her.
‘Well, not like that, but I probably would be whipping the stable boys with a rider’s crop in my spare time,’ she jokes.
Andy and Cordelia are getting married (and having their engagement party) at Rosewood Grange. As far as I can tell it’s a large estate with rooms to stay in, function rooms for events, large gardens and stables – I think I read something about them breeding or keeping horses for, I don’t know, fancy horse shit.
Finally here, we pass through tall iron gates and onto a long, tree-lined drive. The estate unfolds in front of us, all sandy-coloured stone and climbing ivy everywhere. There’s a grand house – that must be the hotel and wedding venue – with huge sash windows.
