“Fine.” Eliot looks over at me and shakes his head, smiles. “And you’re sticking with a Picnic?”
“Hell would have to freeze over before I chose another.”
“But with all those raisins, it’s pretty much fruit.”
“Picnic, and that’s my final answer, Eliot.”
“All right. And I’ll stick with Dairy Milk.”
“And that’s because you’re a boring bastard,” says Lucas groggily beside me on a sun lounger. “Come on, then, what’s next? Potatoes? Choose one sort of potato to eat for the rest of your life. Me first. Mash.”
“Mash?” Eliot grimaces and pulls his aviators down over his eyes. “I may be boring, dude, but you are disgusting.”
It’s a sunny, cloudless day, and we are sitting in the Moreaus’ back garden, Lucas and I on the bed-like sun loungers at the bottom of the garden, while Eliot slumps on a navy-blue old-style deck chair. Jean and Amanda have gone out to buy things for a barbecue for mine and Lucas’s birthday tonight, and like always when I’m here, I’ve had the most wonderful day, so far. Which means I feel a bit uneasy. It’s weird, but in moments like this, with Lucas and Eliot, our cheeks aching from laughing, with nothing to do but to make up silly games to pass the time, with cold lemonades at our feet, the sun in the sky, and nothing but lovely plans for the next few days, it feels almost risky to be this happy. It feels like I am goading all the things that could go wrong, to happen. Because everything was so awful, so hopeless, before Luke. I lost my best friend because she believed her dad over me. That I was a silly teenager with a crush. That the only assault was on her family with my lies. A family I’d known and trusted and idolized for five years—her sister, Megan, Georgia’s mum, and Georgia’s father, Robert, too, of course. Even Georgia’s grandmother, who’d pop in on Friday nights for a takeaway when I’d stay the night, with pajamas and popcorn, and Robert always so funny, so interested in Georgia and me. And I lost them. In one blink. Classmates who’d lend me pens, laugh at my jokes, compliment my new bag, now laughed at me, snarled at me, called me awful things I can barely think about, let alone say aloud. Even the teachers. Most were kind, but I’d often catch a couple of them looking at me out the corner of their eye. I was a mystery, I suppose, with missing school trip admission slips, a mum like mine, mostly absent, but who wrote long complaint letters about the pointlessness of subjects I was learning, as if she was anything but. My life lost all warmth, all love, after the night of the Summer Ball. And friends like Lucas and Eliot—a family like this. A life like this, all this acceptance. This love. It feels too good to be true. For me, at least.
“Go on then, Em,” says Lucas, nudging my knee with his hand, across the small gap between the loungers. “Spuds. Go.”
I hesitate. “It’s got to be chips.”
“Yes,” says Eliot, clapping slowly, as Lucas groans. “Homemade chips, that’s what I said.”
“Chip shop chips or homemade, nothing else,” I say.
“Ah yeah, shit, those ones you make are good,” says Lucas, hand behind his head. “But I still think I’m sticking with mash, you know.”
“Mash is shit,” says Eliot. “Sorry, dude, but it’s school dinners to me.”
“So? School dinners were the bollocks, what’re you even talking about, El?”
“Get rid of the the and you’ll be spot on. Our school dinners were bollocks.” Eliot sips his lemonade and gives me a lazy smile. “Your turn, Em. Choose the next question.”
I pause, my head to one side. “Um. Celebrity crushes? You can only have one for the rest of your life.”
“Deal.” Lucas yawns.
“I’ll go first,” I say. “Jo—”
“Jon Bon Jovi,” say Eliot and Lucas at the same time, and the three of us look at one another and burst out laughing. The boys stretch over and slap each other’s hand in a high five. “Nice one,” says Lucas, and then he looks at me and grins. “Too easy,” he says. “It’s always Jon.”
I can’t believe now that I reached out to Georgia last week. It was a weak moment, I suppose. I was alone in the college cafeteria, and so was she. I looked at her across the room and saw a thousand memories play out in front of my eyes in a moment. When we were in year seven and we’d do each other’s hair. When we were fourteen and her mum took us to see Busted and bought us a poster each and we were so excited, we cried when they came onstage. Sleepovers, where we’d shared a bed, a pillow at each end. Baking. Makeup. Sunday roasts. And I felt desperately sad, thinking that we had shared all of that, and now we couldn’t even say hello. It wasn’t her fault. It was his. Not hers. Not mine. His. But I had barely opened my mouth, barely got to her table before she had stood and said, “Don’t you dare, Emmie. Don’t you fucking dare.”
“You like blondes, don’t you?” Lucas cuts through my thoughts. “I mean, you say you don’t have a type, but you do.”
“I guess,” says Eliot, then looks at me. “Whereas he just likes them with eyes, a nose, and a mouth, right?” he says to me, and Luke bursts out laughing.
“Hey, fuck you,” he says. “I am not that bad, am I, Em?”
“You are,” I tell Lucas. “I’m sorry, and I love you, but you do fancy everyone.”
“And you don’t?”
Eliot shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “I tend to only fancy one person at a time.”
“Anyway,” says Lucas, turning over on his side and nodding at me. “Next one. Movies. And you better not say any of those train wrecks you make me watch, Em. They’re barred.”
I don’t need Georgia. I have Lucas. I have Eliot. That will always be enough.
Marie holds a powder-blue dress next to me and smiles.
“This color and your blond hair,” she beams, “is a dream come true.”
“I do love the blue,” I say, and she puts the dress back on the rack, her brown eyes not leaving the line of dresses, plumes of creams and blues and yellows. She grabs at another.
“Oh! This would work too, no?” A dress swings in her hand from a padded pale-pink hanger.
“Oh, definitely,” I say, reaching and running a hand over the fabric in her hands. Jean, Lucas, and Tom have gone to Jean’s tailor, and when I woke up this morning, within minutes of rubbing my eyes and sitting up in bed, I was surprised to find Marie knocking on the door, and not Lucas. I answered it looking like something from a swamp, to find her hair glossy and blow-dried, face made up, and top to toe in perfect but casual Parisian fashion, keys in her hands.
“No rushing,” said Marie, “but the boys are already up, and I thought us girls deserved some proper time too. There is a boutique near Lucas’s office that has beautiful dresses and ball gowns. I thought we could take a look?”
Half an hour later, we were in Marie’s pristine car, winding our way through the leafy country lanes as she talked nonstop about her business—a new deli she’s opening soon—and I listened, but mind wandering the whole time to Lucas’s face as he had waved us off. It’s the same face I’m sure he’d wear waving off his two children to school for the first day. A proud face. That “and there they go” smile. And why wouldn’t he? It’s a dream situation, isn’t it? Your fiancée getting along with your best friend.