The bartender starts passing out Craig Davids. I know tequila is a bad idea, but I don’t have too many good ideas at the moment, soI go along with it. Jules raises her shot glass in the air. “To my last days of freedom before being cut and carried!” she hoots.
One of the bridesmaids, a school friends of Jules’s from East London, tells me thatcut and carriedmeansmarried, dating back to how brides were cut off from their parents and carried by their husbands. “Good bit of irony in the context of a lesbian love story, innit?” the woman says. “No men needed.”
We all clink tequila shots, then toss back our heads. My face pinches as it goes down. I chug the pineapple-juice chaser, then wash it down with a few thick-cut chips.
It doesn’t take long to feel the effects. The rest of the hen doers start to feel like long-lost sisters as they pull me into their circle, gushing over my American accent and insisting that I rank their own attempts at one. The Maid of Honor wins the contest with her Valley Girl California accent, but Jules gets runner-up with her sorority-girl Southern drawl, only because it’s too rib-splittingly atrocious not to award points to.
I try to pace myself as we move over to the Old Queen’s Head on Essex Road. (When I ask Jules if there’s an unwritten rule that every pub in London must include the wordhead, she just sniggers and says she knows where my own head is at.)
By the time we reach the Camden Head, a haunted-looking castle-type building at the spout of Camden Passage, dusk is falling, and the night is spinning. Not enough to make me dizzy—just enough to make me curious about where I’ll land on the roulette wheel tonight.
The outdoor terrace is closed for the season, so everyone is packed inside around the circular bar, with overflow at the rowdy comedy club upstairs. The pub’s classic Victorian furnishings aresimilar to those at the King’s Head, but more torch-style lights dangle from the wood-beamed ceiling, so everything feels a bit brighter. Or maybe that’s just the work of the pints and shots.
“I haven’t had a girls’ night out in so long,” I confide to one of the bridesmaids, and then all the others, as we stash our coats in a musty corner, à la the college frat party days. “Didn’t realize how much I needed it.” There’s a pang of longing for Blake and our other friends from the New York days. All those nights out together that we took for granted.
Jules overhears and blows me a tipsy kiss. “This is a cracking start to the wedding fun, this is,” she says. “You’ll be a bridesmaid, Kat, won’t you?”
“You don’t mean that,” I say, though I hope she does. I’ve never actually been a bridesmaid before. I’ve always seemed to rank just beneath the cutoff in my friends’ lists, ousted by sisters and cousins and childhood best friends I’d never heard them mention before. “Ask me again when you’re sober.”
“I’m dead serious. Don’t we, Nines,” she asks, pulling Nina into the conversation. “want Kat to be a bridesmaid?”
“’Course we do,” Nina says with a cherubic smile. She seems significantly more sober than Jules, and I get the feeling she’s been tossing the shots over her shoulder. “Eleventh of May—put it in your diary.”
“You’d best take Rory as your plus one,” Jules says, a scheming look breaking over her sweaty, glittery face.
A dull ache rises from somewhere far down. It doesn’t quite reach my outer layers, and I take a hearty sip from my pint to keep it that way, but it still pokes and prods from within. “I can’t,” I say glumly. “He’s back with his ex.”
Jules looks appalled, as if there could be no worse news. “Not that Kal-a-wa-choo bird?” she laments. “Gimme all the goss.”
As briefly as possible, I fill her in about how we haven’t seen each other or even talked since Christmas.
“What a faff this is,” she says, looking as despondent as if her own happy ending has been thwarted. “Reckon ’e figures ’e doesn’t ’ave a chance with you, so ’e’s going for the backup choice so ’e doesn’t get hurt.”
“No,” I say, though I’ll admit that I like how that scenario sounds. “He loves her. That’s all there is to it.”
“’E’s being a bloody idjit, ’e is,” Jules says, false lashes blinking indignantly. “Never liked that bloke anyway.”
I roll my eyes at how obvious the lie is, but it still makes me feel a little better. “He didn’t do anything wrong,” I say. “We were only ever friends.”
Jules gives me a dubious look but thankfully lets it go. “Righ’o then,” she says, briskly changing tempers as quickly as London changes weather. “So who’re you shagging tonight? Let’s have a gander.” She scans the pub, which has filled up to the brim. “Those rugby blokes over there are quite fit, ya reckon?”
“Stop it,” I grumble. “I’m not in the mood.” But I can’t help but glance over to see who she’s pointing to.
A group of burly, athletic-looking guys is gathered across the pub, still in muddy, grass-stained jerseys. They have a self-important air about them, as if they’ve just won a big match.
Though they’re all decently attractive, one of them stands out. He’s a bit taller than the rest, with the swagger of someone who nominated himself to be captain. His sandy blond hair falls wet and tousled onto his scruffy face. He’s exactly the type of guy I would’vegone for ten years ago. But I’ve grown up since then, and people like him haven’t. I’m way beyond needing to flirt with a gorgeous man-child just to feel better about myself.
Oh come on,the drunk voice chastises.Just loosen up and have some fun, won’t you?
Fit Rugby Lad must feel me staring because he looks up. We make eye contact, and I watch as he takes in my leotard-and-lipstick ensemble. Drinking it in slowly, like he wants to linger over the flavor, he looks thirsty for something more than beer.
That old excitement courses through me. I’d forgotten how fun it was to play the eye contact game. To seduce and be seduced with the delicate exchange of facial expressions. My confidence in my ability to read and speak eye contact was ruined by the whole Alexander/Rory debacle. It’s gotten me wondering if maybe I’ve lost all my talents. Left them back in my twenties with my toned glutes and hangover-proof drinking abilities.
But there’s zero doubt that Fit Rugby Lad is looking at me. That he’s interested. He’s already defied British cultural norms by holding eye contact for more than two seconds, so that’s basically the equivalent of a five-page love letter in this day and age.
I need to prove myself right. After a large swig of beer, I hand my pint to Jules to hold. “Be right back,” I tell her, then shimmy my way through the crowd until I emerge right in front of Fit Rugby Lad.
He’s every bit as attractive up close. There are a few stray blades of grass on his forehead, as if he slid headfirst in the rain for a match-winning score.
