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 you want to tell me?’
I stood in the middle of my messy kitchen, in my carefully careless outfit, holding my ancient Garfield mug and staring at the nude stranger on the bar stool.
‘God, I was only joking,’ Will said, abandoning his stool and coming over to me. I swallowed hard and looked up at him for as long as I could stand to make eye contact. Which was about four seconds. ‘I’m not asking you to strip for me or anything. Not right now, anyway.’
‘I don’t do this,’ I said, holding my mug of hot coffee away from his body and ignoring the semi that was starting to bother my thigh. ‘I don’t usually go home with people.’
‘You don’t have to explain yourself,’ Will said, still standing in front of me, his peen properly waking up and poking me in the leg. ‘I’m not judging you.’
‘I bet everyone says that, though, don’t they?’ I tried to reach the kitchen top to put my mug down but it was too far away. ‘I bet everyone says “Ooh, I don’t usually do this”.’
‘I don’t know,’ he muttered into my ear, his hands circling my waist and resting on my bum. ‘I don’t usually do this either.’
There wasn’t enough time for me to work out whether he was making a joke, telling the truth or taking the piss, because the next thing I knew, we were awkwardly clambering down onto the floor, my mum’s cardigan was off and we were doing it on the kitchen floor.
Which is a part I will leave out when I tell the grandkids about how we met but have already texted to all my friends. Obviously.
Being a bridesmaid is a huge honour but it’s also a celebration! Tell us all about your bride and your special friendship in the spaces below:
Tell us about the day you met your bride:
We were flatmates at uni and I was very excited to meet a proper American. She bought our love with Peppermint Patties and Reese’s Pieces and Maybelline Great Lash mascara. It was a simpler time.
What were your first impressions of her?
I thought she was incredibly glamorous because she was from New York and she had really cool clothes, like proper Levis and Abercrombie & Fitch jumpers, and she said ‘sneakers’ instead of ‘trainers’. She was sweet and funny and thoughtful, and even though she was nice, she was never a drip. She just seemed so much more grown-up than us.
What were your first impressions of her husband-to-be?
Before I met him, all I knew was that Michael had bought Lauren a Swiffer sweeper for her birthday. Entirely without irony. When I met him at Lauren’s party, we had a perfectly nice conversation about dinosaur erotica and the price of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I still haven’t got over that Swiffer though.
Share a happy memory from when you met your bride-to-be:
Lauren had never had a drink until she moved to England. We changed that pretty quickly and introduced her to snakebite and black. Unfortunately she drank one too many and threw up all over the Student Union toilets and was barred for the rest of the semester. Maybe you had to be there.
What life lesson have you learned from your friendship?
She was the first person who made me look at the wider world and realize there was more out there. She also taught me how to make fajitas, and you can’t put a price on something like that.
Sunday May 17th, evening
Today I feel: Full.
Today I am thankful for: Food.
‘Bloody hell.’
When Lauren had sent out the e-vites for her engagement party at her dad’s house, we figured we were looking at a lovely Sunday afternoon of handmade sandwiches in the living room with a glass of Pimm’s in the garden if we were lucky.
It was ten years since we’d been to Lauren’s dad’s house. Lauren’s dad had moved.
‘How is this somewhere people actually live?’ Sarah asked, handing her coat to one of the two people clamouring over it at the front door. ‘Are they his servants? Does he have servants?’
