‘OK.’
‘You do want him to leave, right?’
I stared at the patchwork paint job on my toes and considered this.
On one hand, he was a handsome man who wanted to put his penis in me and owned his own car. On the other hand, he was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger who had willingly put his penis in me without so much as asking my last name. I probably did want him to leave. He probably wanted to leave.
‘It’s just a one-night thing,’ I said, convincing myself. ‘He was the best man at the wedding. Everyone wants a shag at a wedding, don’t they?’
‘He was best man?’ Lauren asked. ‘And he went home with you?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She guffawed down the line with her throaty American laugh. Lauren has an excellent laugh. It’s big and deep and makes women clap and men’s underwear fall off. ‘I’m just saying the best man usually has the pick of the crowd. Good going, girl. You needed to get back on the horse.’
‘It’s nothing like riding a bike and it’s nothing like riding a horse,’ I grumbled. ‘Why do people say that?’
‘Maybe you’re doing it wrong?’ she suggested.
Dear God, my greatest fear come true.
‘Maddie?’
‘Lauren?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Bathroom.’
We’ve been on the phone for kind of a while − you should probably go.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, fluffing my hair and then immediately smoothing it down. ‘It’s fine, isn’t it? Totally fine.’
‘See you later,’ she said. ‘I want to hear all the gory details.’
‘A lady never tells,’ I replied. ‘And you’re disgusting. Love you.’
I hung up, stashed my phone in with the spare loo rolls and stared into the mirror. My green eyes were a bit red, but I had eye drops that could fix that. My hair was my hair and didn’t look any better up or down, so I decided to leave it down for sexy flicking-around purposes, and as for the rest of it, he’d already seen me completely naked from every angle so there wasn’t a lot I could do about any of that.
At least it was one less thing to worry about.
‘Now all I need is a baggy, lived-in, sexy jumper that’s nice,’ I told myself. ‘And the job’s done.’
‘Morning.’
When Will emerged from the bedroom, I was carefully padding around my kitchen in slouchy sports socks, a sort-of clean T-shirt and the Marks & Sparks cardigan my mum had left last time she came to visit. It was a carefully put-together outfit based on something I’d seen in a Nivea commercial slash the clothes that were in my bathroom and seemed all right for the ‘Oh hi, random man I brought home with me last night, hair toss, hair toss’ attitude I was attempting to give off.
‘Morning,’ I squeaked.
Will was standing in the middle of my flat completely stark bollock naked. Bollock being the operative word. This never happened on Nivea commercials. My mother’s cardigan was aghast.
‘I was starting to wonder where you were.’ He stretched, man parts flopping as he went, and wandered across the room to park himself on a bar stool in front of the breakfast bar. Naked. ‘I thought you’d done a runner from your own house for a minute.’
‘I was going to make coffee,’ I said, trying very hard not to look at his penis. But it was like staring into an eclipse: you knew it was bad for you and you still couldn’t help it. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Love some,’ he replied, staring out of my window. Oh dear God, the neighbours. Mrs Meakin’s heart wouldn’t be able to take something like this.
‘So, big plans today?’ I asked, shaking as I pulled out the cutlery drawer. Femme fatale I was not.
‘No,’ Will replied, still naked. ‘I’d more or less written the day off for a hangover. You know how weddings can be. Happily, not the case.’
‘Yeah,’ I nodded, trying not to spill the milk. ‘Weddings, eh?’
‘I’ve got some work to do.’ He tapped his fingers on the kitchen counter and gave my flat the once-over. Happily it was a bit cloudy out so you couldn’t quite see how incredibly filthy it was. Job number one after he left, dusting. Actually, that would be job number three after I’d Dettoxed the stool he was sitting on and had a brief lie down. ‘But, you know, nothing major.’
‘You’ve got to work?’ I asked, but in a totally cool way. ‘I don’t actually know what you do.’
‘I’m an associate at a law firm in town,’ he said, resting his elbows on the counter while I expertly boiled the kettle. ‘I went to law school with Ian.’
I was cursed only ever to be penetrated by men in the legal profession. I suppose it could be worse, but really, was a doctor or an architect too much to ask for?
‘That other man was a lawyer,’ I said, memories coming back to me. ‘From last night. The usher.’
‘Thomas?’ Will pulled a sour-milk face. ‘Yeah, he was in law school with us but he dropped out, so he didn’t qualify when we did.’
‘Why did he drop out?’ I sniffed my own pint of semi-skimmed and thanked the gods of Cravendale for lasting one day past their best-before date.
‘I don’t remember,’ he shrugged, accepting his mug of instant coffee as though it was a golden chalice full of unicorn tears. ‘Because he was shit, most likely.’
It seemed as though I shouldn’t take Thomas’s pep talk from the night before too seriously after all.
‘Do you like it?’ I asked, sipping my coffee and considering him a little more closely. He didn’t seem to be in any rush to leave. Maybe I could afford to be very slightly optimistic. ‘Being a lawyer?’
‘I don’t like the hours,’ he replied, scratching his stubble. On his face, not his neatly topiaried man parts. ‘But the money’s good. And it’s interesting. Do you like your job?’
‘Most of the time,’ I said, not wanting to go into the details. That seemed like a drunk-under-a-tree–with-a-complete-stranger conversation, not a bright Sunday morning didn’t-you-have-your-penis-in-me-a-few-hours-ago-stranger conversation. ‘Unless I have to play waitress for a lot of drunk people. I work for the company that planned the wedding, I was only waitressing yesterday to help out.’
‘Sounds fun.’ He glugged his coffee and smiled. ‘I can’t imagine spending every weekend at a wedding. It must be knackering.’
‘Well, we do all kinds of things,’ I replied, almost for one second forgetting he was naked. And then remembering again. ‘Weddings, birthdays, anniversaries. Sometimes corporate stuff. I’m working on a birthday thing and an engagement party at the moment. Keeps me on my toes.’
‘The last party I had was for my eighteenth,’ Will said. ‘My best friends got me a dodgy stripper and my mum cried. We had it in the village hall. Good times.’
‘Our events tend to be a bit more involved than that,’ I said. I wanted to be diplomatic, but I also wanted the image of a ropey middle-aged village stripper with a fag hanging out of her mouth while she rubbed her boobs on eighteen-year-old Will’s face out of my head ASAP. ‘But I’ve organized burlesque performances before.’
‘Do you fill in for the dancers if they call in sick as well?’ he asked with a shimmy that should never be performed by a naked man, no matter how handsome. ‘Is there something