Right now, I have an hour between meetings and nothing that urgent to do, so I decide to leave my laptop charging for a bit and take a very long tea break with the girls, who are bingeing their way through old episodes of Come Dine With Me, which Addison has never watched before and is totally entranced by.
“All right?” Kim asks me, as I leave “my office.” “Are we being too loud?”
“No! No, of course not. Just thought I’d take a break for a bit.
Anyone want a cuppa?”
There are murmurs of assent from everybody, and Lucy joins me in the kitchen to help out. She asks me how work has been so far today, sounding like she genuinely cares.
I like Lucy. She’s sweet. She’s the youngest of our group, and tells great stories, although the subject of most of them is her wild friend Imogen. We’ve never really interacted much before, past being mutuals on Instagram.
“You have such a lovely place here,” she tells me, sounding wistful.
“I’m living at home so I can save the money I’d be spending on rent to put toward a deposit, but God, this makes me really want to move out and have my own place. Is it really sad that I can’t wait to buy my own kitchenware?”
“Absolutely not.” I laugh. “Kim was always saying the same, whenever she came to visit, before she and Jeremy bought a place together.”
Initially, Kim had come to look at this apartment when she and Jeremy were considering buying somewhere in the city. I’d trailed along, since Jeremy couldn’t make it that day and Kim wanted a second opinion.
It didn’t “feel right” for them, she said, within about twenty seconds of setting foot over the threshold. But I thought it was pretty perfect.
I tell Lucy as much now, and she smiles. “Yeah, this doesn’t strike me as very Kim and Jeremy. It doesn’t have ‘growing space.’”
“I don’t know. Four of us packed in here okay. I think they’d be able to find space for a crib, if they have a baby.”
“When,” she corrects me. “And don’t forget the dog.”
“The border collie Jeremy’s got his heart set on having one day.
How could I?”
Lucy shakes her head, a fond smile on her face as she hands me the milk. “We always used to tease him about having such a clear idea of what he wanted from life, but he’s really found it with Kim. I still remember him coming home from their first date and telling us she was the one.”
“Kim did the same thing. I told her she’d better not tell him that if she wanted a second date and not scare him off.”
“Match made in heaven,” Lucy says softly, and smiles to herself, genuinely happy for them.
It’s not that I’m not happy for them, or like I don’t love Kim to pieces, or like I’m not a fan of Jeremy, but sometimes . . .
Sometimes, it’s just a bit much. You know? All that lovey-dovey, hopeless romantic stuff being shoved in your face, all the damn time.
Even when they fight, they’ve made up within an hour, having talked everything out and tried to compromise and find a solution. They’re just so damn perfect together that it gets . . . it’s a little exhausting.
Especially for those of us whose relationships always fail after only a few dates.
But I am happy for them. really. I am.
Lucy glances at me expectantly, so I smile back, hoping it doesn’t look as forced as it feels. Fortunately, I’ve finished the tea by this point, so busy myself handing mugs over to her to carry back into the living room. We find Addison and Kim in the middle of a discussion, the episode of Come Dine With Me paused, apparently too important to risk missing even a minute of it.
Addison looks up as I put down her mug. She snaps her fingers at me, like she’s beckoning a waiter. I half expect her to call me garçon.
Instead, she says, “Livvy, have you got your plus one for the wedding yet?”
Something like dread prickles across my body and my stomach flip-flops. I’m sure my palms are sweating already. For a horrible second, I think she can read minds, and knew what I was thinking about in the kitchen a few seconds ago.
“No,” I admit. My whole mouth feels like it’s full of sawdust, like a bad hangover.
“See?” She turns to Kim with a triumphant look. “I don’t know why you’re so worried. I’ll find someone to bring. Look, babe, I know you want to confirm with the caterers how many people want the vegetarian risotto, or the beef casserole, but don’t stress it.”
“Have you got someone in mind?” Lucy asks.
“Huh? Oh. No. But I can find someone. That’s what Tinder’s for, right?”
She laughs—loud and brash and grating. I stare at her in horror.
“I’m sorry,” I have to interrupt, “but you’d go on a dating app and just ask someone to be your date to a wedding? Just—totally out of the blue?”
She turns those big blue eyes on me and blinks once, the very picture of innocence.
“Sure. Why not?”
“You don’t think that’s a bit . . . serious? A bit fast?”
Addison scrunches up her face. “I’m inviting them to drink free champagne, eat a free meal, and go dancing. I’m not proposing.
What’s the big deal?”
Kim pulls a face at me, and then looks away to sip her tea. It’s judgemental—but directed at me, not at Addison, and I know instantly what she’s trying to say to me. That I take commitment too seriously and take myself too seriously.
“Let me guess,” Addison drawls, misreading the look between us, “you got this lecture about needing to confirm your plus one months before the wedding too?”
“I never asked for one,” I mutter, directing the comment more at Kim, who only gives me a deadpan look in return.
Lucy pipes up, “I don’t have one either.”
Addison must not have heard her, though, because she laughs again and says, “Well, that settles it. If Livvy doesn’t have a plus one by the time it comes around, and I don’t, either, we’ll be each other’s hot date to the wedding.”
My cheeks begin to heat up so I busy myself picking up my tea, because it gives me an excuse to turn away from them all for a couple of seconds. But I scoff and say, “There. See, Kim? Problem solved.
Now are we watching the rest of this episode or not? I want to see who wins before I have to go back to work.”
Lucy presses play on the episode, and Kim fills me in quickly on the scores so far, and who we’re all rooting for—her way of making peace.
I know she and Jeremy wanted to offer all the bridesmaids and groomsmen a plus one, to make it fair, and because for those of us who are single, we might not be single by the time the wedding rolls around, and then we’d just be bitter. I know that; but I’ve been telling Kim since the start I don’t want a plus one.
I don’t want a plus one, because my parents are going to the wedding, too, and I still haven’t figured out how to tell them the reason I haven’t brought “a nice boy” home to meet them is because I’m not interested in bringing any kind of boy home. They’re just so traditional, I’m not sure how they’d take it. And now it feels like I’ve kept it from them for so long I don’t know how to explain I’ve been hiding all this from them for years.