‘Now I feel like you’re just using me.’
‘You’ll get over it,’ I beam, taking a quick look up and down the aisle before sneaking past the curtain and stepping into the foyer out front.
Half an hour later and I’m snorting with laughter, sides aching.
‘No, you didn’t?’ I say when I finally catch my breath.
‘I promise I did. Scout’s honour.’ Callum holds up a three-finger salute.
‘You’re telling me you swam across a lake in the middle of winter because your friend had capsized his kayak?’
‘He couldn’t swim. Someone had to!’
‘Weren’t there people working there? Like, whoever decided to rent out their kayaks to a stag do in the first place?’
‘Well, yes,’ Callum concedes. ‘The rest of our group was way too drunk and I might have had quite a few drinks myself by this point, so I only realized that there was a reason no one else was rescuing him by the time I was halfway across the lake.’
‘Oh God,’ I snort again, taking another swig of champagne. We’ve hardly made a dent in the jeroboam and I already feel tipsy. ‘Please tell me the reason.’
‘It was one of those man-made boating lakes and you could stand up in it, even in the middle.’
‘Wait, so your friend wasn’t drowning?’
‘He bloody well looked like he was.’ Callum tuts, which makes me laugh even harder. ‘Honestly, he was flapping about so much.’
‘And you thought you were being the hero?’
‘I wasn’t thinking much, to be honest, it was so cold in that water. I was just trying to focus on not getting hypothermia and also saving my friend from imminent death,’ Callum says, rubbing his eyebrow with his thumb. I bite my lip. ‘As I got closer to him I could hear my mates back on dry land chanting something.“Stand up! Stand up!” And then I got close enough to my allegedly drowning friend and watched as he heard them too, stopped flailing about and put his feet down. I did the same. Turns out the water was so shallow both of us were head and shoulders out of it when we put our feet down.’
I clamp my teeth down on a knuckle.
‘So you didn’t need to risk hypothermia after all?’
‘No, I did not.’
‘And your friend was okay?’
‘Absolutely fine.’
‘That was very sweet of you,’ I say.
‘I thought maybe I’d be in the local press, you know? Man saves best pal from drowning on stag do.’
‘And … were you?’
‘The groom – my absolute bastard of a best friend – filmed the whole thing and put it on TikTok. I got recognized for ages after that, and not in a good way.’
‘Oh no,’ I chortle, passing him the bottle. ‘That is quite embarrassing.’
His fingers brush against mine as he accepts it and takes a long drink. Watching my arch nemesis drink champagne like this is not a chore, I can tell you. Every time he puts his lips to the bottle I find myself longing to be the jeroboam.
‘All right, your turn,’ he says.
‘Oh hell,’ I hiccup. ‘Why did we even start talking about most embarrassing moments?’
He leans back against the wall opposite. ‘You were singing “Mambo No. 5” as we came out here for some reason.’
Damn it. He’s right. And I was embarrassed.
