“Me,” says Rosie. “This bloke I’m going on a date with tonight. Ravi. We have the same star sign, and his mum is from Pakistan, like my pops. I said to Fox, it probably means it’s fate and we’ll get married.”
“It definitely sounds like fate.” I smile. “Does Fox need to borrow my best man book? Oh, I can send you my spreadsheet!”
Fox folds his arms and raises his eyebrows. “You have a spreadsheet? And also, absolutely not.”
“She does.” Rosie nods. “She studies hard, does Emmie. She has these Pinterest boards, too, and it’s like a fucking library of its own. There are brides everywhere that would hire you on the spot through those alone, Em, you do realize that, don’t you?”
I shake my head and sip from my can of 7UP.
“Mhmm,” says Rosie.
I shake my head again. “Maybe until they found out the last and only wedding I did, I spent most of it staring at the groom, wanting to scream why isn’t it me? Then I’m pretty sure I’d be blacklisted and written about, like a cautionary tale, like that psychopath husband-stealer from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
“Oh!” says Rosie, flinging her arms in the air. “As if that’s what you are. That is the furthest from what you are.”
Fox unfolds his arms and pulls out his cigarettes. “Agreed,” he says, then getting one out, he asks, “What’s brought this on?”
I scrunch up the empty bag of Maltesers. “What do you mean?”
“Well, not that I’m stripping you of your right to be pessimistic or self-loathing, but… well, you’ve been fiercely determined and positive about this whole wedding and best woman business and now you sit here, in front of us—”
“He said before us this morning,” adds Rosie with a smirk, but Fox’s voice overlaps hers.
“And you seem different about it. Has something happened?”
They both look at me. I don’t want to tell them about my dad’s cards, which is starting to seep and swirl, like ink in water, into my every thought, and I don’t want to talk about Tom and the bar, and the school I couldn’t walk into. I’ve gone over it all so much in my head over the last few days. So instead I shrug and tell them the thing that’s on the surface. I miss Lucas. And looking at him outside that bar, I realized just how much, and how much I will miss him after he says “I do.” I tell them everything is changing. Yet I feel like I’m standing still. And they listen, eyes narrowed, nodding, all sympathetic sighs and hand-squeezes. Rosie cuddles me and says, “I still think you should talk to him,” and Fox leans back on the bench, blows out a stream of smoke, and finishes his cigarette.
“You know what I think, Emmie?” he says. “I think you put too much onus on this man. You don’t give yourself enough credit. Who you are on your own.”
We walk back to the hotel, all three of us in a line, arms around one another, regardless of how reluctant Fox was to let Rosie’s hand hold on to his waist. And deep down, I know he is right.
But it’s hard for them to realize, I suppose—Rosie with her large and warm and loving family; Fox with his dad who visits, and his postcard-sending mother—that over the last fourteen years, Lucas has been my only constant. And when I had nobody, he was right there.
* * *
It isn’t very often that I enter Fishers Way and hear voices, besides the radio. Louise doesn’t really ever talk on the phone, and she never has visitors. When I walk through the hallway door today, just to say hello, Louise is talking quickly, smile on her face, old hands cradling a cup of mint tea at the kitchen table, her crossword book closed, her golden pen retracted and on the cover. Eliot, from his seat at the table, looks up at me, mug in hand. “Hey,” he says with a smile.
I stop, feet on the carpet. “Um. Hi,” I say, and Louise looks at me, the whites of her eyes bright and twinkly, color in her cheeks. She smiles, and it’s nothing like her usual polite smile. The one reserved for postmen and passing neighbors in the street, so to not appear completely without a heart. “Sorry, I just—I didn’t screw up and forget we had plans, did I?”
Eliot shakes his head. “No, no, not at all, I was just passing through. Thought I’d stop by. Plus, I wanted to run something by you.” God. The STEN party, I bet. I really can’t think of anything I want to do less right now, feet throbbing, cheeks red, hair stuck fast with the smell of cooking, than sit and talk about the bloody STEN party. Tom has booked the venue—something he announced excitedly in the group chat. A ballroom not far from Le Touquet that’s been featured in a number of films I’ve never heard of, which I know will be right up Lucas’s street. It has shocked me, actually, because I’d expected the French equivalent of Stringfellows or something; a roast dinner served on some poor woman’s oiled-up buttocks.
I nod at Eliot. “Sure,” I say.
Louise is already getting up, putting her mug in the sink and shuffling past the table to the conservatory out the back, where she waters her tomato plants and sits among shelves of books I never see her read.
“I made a vegetable curry,” she says, her woolly-cardiganed back to me. “It’s on the stove. There’s plenty for you, Emmie, to eat for your dinner, if you’d like.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised. “Thank you, Louise. That’s really kind.”
“You can’t keep living on toast. It’s empty calories.” Then she stops, glances over her shoulder. “You’re welcome to some too, Eliot.”
Eliot smiles, looks at me. “Thanks, Louise. Smells really good.”
“I’m still good at some things,” she says, the corner of her mouth lifting, and walks away.
I take a seat at the table. Eliot balls his hands together in front of him and looks up at me, brown eyes, long eyelashes. He looks like his dad. And this is something I only know from the photos Eliot used to keep of him in his bedroom, when we were young. He’s dark, like him, tall, sharp jaw always peppered with stubble, his hair always “just” on his head, hand raked through it. He reminds me of the men Georgia would crush on when we were fifteen and we’d wander around smoky Camden Market buying posters, and jeans from Punkyfish.
“How are you doing?” asks Eliot, and I know what he’s referring to. The last time he saw me. Shaking and wobbly, outside that bar, the anger in his voice at Ana helping Tom over me, obvious as he spoke.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Luke got pretty wasted after we left, I hear,” he says, eyes on me.
“Did he?” I lift my shoulders to my ears. “I wouldn’t know. I left. We’ve not really spoken much since then, actually.”
Eliot hesitates, raises his eyebrows, gives a nod; one singular nod. “And how’s work?”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Tiring. I did a double shift today and I cannot feel my feet.”
“Do you want tea?” Eliot asks, brows raised, already getting up. “I’ll make it. Kettle should still be hot.”
I go to say no, but then I nod because I can’t remember the last time I got home from work and someone made me a hot drink. “Yes. Please.”