“Niamh! Come back here! We’re playing a game!” the maid of honor yells down the aisle.
She winces at her name. “I hate these stupid games.”
“All part of the fun,” Jamie reminds her, before drinking some water.
She smiles at us and then makes her way back to her seat, wobbling and steadying herself as the train trundles on.
“Is Matthew your ex?” Jamie asks, as soon as she’s gone.
“Yep.”
“The one who said you were too ‘together’? And sent you the message at the wedding that made you look like you’d seen a ghost?”
“The very one.” I take two large gulps of my drink.
“Got it. I feel bad now about banging on about you being early for everything,” he says cautiously, making a face. “Is that what he meant by you being too ‘together’? You know, super organized or something?”
“Yeah, sort of. But I also think it was my lack of overt emotion, so I wouldn’t worry.”
He seems surprised. “Lack of emotion?”
I down the last of my can and get out another one. “When he compared us, he said that he was temperamental and emotional, and I clashed with that. I never really saw it that way. I might be more levelheaded, and more pragmatic about things, but I didn’t feel that made us less compatible. I thought it was good that we balanced each other out. I don’t know, maybe I was naïve.”
I don’t know why I’m giving this amount of detail to Jamie, someone I barely know. That pornstar martini has obviously gone straight to my head.
“He sounds like an idiot,” he states.
I bristle at this description of Matthew from a stranger, even after everything. It’s like a natural instinct in me to defend him.
“Why do you say that?” I ask grumpily.
“Because I barely know you and I can tell he’s talking bollocks.”
I stare at him, completely thrown. “But he’s right, I’m not emotional. I’m sarcastic. Like Isabelle said at her wedding.”
“You can’t be both?”
“Of course you can, but I’m not.”
“Okay, well I don’t think it’s fair to say you clash with someone temperamental and emotional,” he argues. “I’m temperamental and emotional, and we don’t clash.”
I blink at him, surprised by this statement. “That’s because… because we’ve barely spoken. And we did clash a lot at first. Wait… are you emotional and temperamental?”
“Yeah. That’s why I have the tattoo. It’s an eagle wearing a monocle.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
He smiles apologetically.
“You have a tattoo of an eagle wearing a monocle?” I check.
“That’s right. Remember the ex I mentioned? The one who cheated on me? We had a huge fight when we broke up and I marched straight to the tattoo parlor to get it just to piss her off.”
“Why would a tattoo of an eagle wearing a monocle piss her off?”
“She hated tattoos and birds.”
“Okay, but why the monocle?”
