It would be nice to know his name. She wasn’t big on snogging anonymous strangers.
Her mum was right: Evie wasn’t always very good at spontaneity when it came to men.
She clapped herself a little closer to him, widened her smile and said, ‘I’m Evie.’
‘Well, hello, Evie. I’m Jack.’ Jack looked her up and down, very deliberately, from head to toe, which, if she was honest, made her a bit uncomfortable, and then, with a slow smile, started to bend his head towards hers. Oh, okay, the kiss was going to happen right here. Under bright lights. In front of lots of people. In Sasha’s parents’ house. Well, at least her mother woulddefinitelysee, and it wasdefinitelyspontaneous. And she did know his name. It was definitely the right thing to do.
She inched closer to Jack.
God. She hoped her mum couldn’t actually see her now. If she could, there was every chance that she’d have some tips for Evie on kissing technique tomorrow.
Evie looked at Jack. His gaze was roving up and down her body again. She really wasn’t up for this. She kind of just wanted to do her blouse buttons up to her neck, fold her arms over her chest and glare at him.
No, it would be fine. It would probably benice.
She moved even closer to him, and he moved closer to her, so close that she could smell the beer on his breath. They were going to kiss, any second.
Andthen, they did not kiss. Because Jack lifted his head and smiled at someone beyond Evie. He took Evie’s hand, lifted it high above her head and spun her until she was breathless, kissed her cheek, said, ‘Thank you for the dance,’ and strut-walked himself over to speak to the person who had clearly caught his eye just as he’d been about to kiss Evie.
Which would have been kind of a relief, really, had it not been for the fact that that person was Evie’smum.
Evie’s mum did a serious shimmy, adjusted her gold, ruched boob tube, pouted her still very scarlet lips – that lipstick was good – and twirled her hair with her finger and then did acringebeckoning thing with the same finger. And Jack,who Evie had been about to kiss, followed her, very closely, right into the middle of all the dancing, with a mega shimmy of his own.
Evie was pretty sure that his crotch connected with her mum’s bottom at the apex of the shimmy.
‘Noway,’ she said, out loud. The only saving grace was that she was pretty sure that her mum would never have realised that Jack had binned Evie for her because there had been tall people in between them and she wouldn’t have been able to see that Jack had been dancing with Evie before he spotted her.
‘No way what?’ Sasha’s older brother Dan put a glass of mulled wine into her hand. Evie downed half of it in one and started coughing. Dan whacked her on the back. ‘Are you okay?’
‘There are alotof cloves in there.’ Evie’s eyes were still watering. She wasn’ttotallysure that all the watering was due to the near-choking – it was seriously humiliating realising that you were so bad at spontaneously snogging people that, when you’d finally decided to go for it with a stranger, the stranger in question ditched you in favour of your own mother – but Dan wouldn’t realise that. Thank goodness. She didn’t need her gorgeous secret crush to know about her humiliation at the hands of a different man.
What was actually wrong with her? Jack had danced very enthusiastically with her for three songs running. Her mum was beautiful and glamorous and lively, but she was twenty years older than Evie, and Jack was quiteyoung. How square-lookingwasEvie?
‘Who’s the man my mum’s dancing with?’ she asked Dan.
‘Old friend of Lucie’s from uni. Moved to Cheltenham recently for work. Seems like a nice guy.’ Lucie was Sasha and Dan’s older sister. Evie was pretty sure that she was about twenty-seven, which presumably meant that Jack was a similar age. Five years older than Evie and fifteen years younger than her mother. And much more attracted to her mother than to her. Right.
There had to be a lesson there somewhere. Like, don’t decide to snog someone just to keep your mother happy. Evie downed the rest of the contents of her glass and started coughing again.
Dan hit her on the back again. ‘Still too many cloves?’
‘Yep.’
‘So how are you doing? Apart from nearly choking to death?’
‘Good, thank you.’ Evie nodded, still coughing slightly.
‘Hello, hello, two of my most favourite people.’ Sasha had danced over to them with a plate of mince pies. ‘Wow. Look at your mum. Is that Lucie’s friend Jack?’
‘Yep.’ Evie finished coughing and took a mince pie.
‘I know I’ve said it before, but your mum’s got amazing legs. And great boobs.’ Sasha put the mince pies down on a side table. ‘I’m bored with handing these round.’ She grabbed Evie and Dan’s hands. ‘Let’s dance.’
‘Maybe notrightnext to my mum.’ Evie eye-swivelled and head-indicated towards where her mum and Jack were slow dancing with hands going in far too many places for Evie’s liking.
‘Oops, yes. Love you, Evie Green,’ Sasha told her as the three of them moved to the opposite edge of the dancing group.
‘Love you too, Sasha Marshall, but are youpity-loving me because my mum’s pulled and I haven’t?’ Evie dodged round one of Sasha’s uncles and into a space next to the holly-and-berry-decorated fireplace, where four stockings were hanging neatly in a row, despite the fact that Sasha, the youngest in the family, was turning twenty-two in April. Sasha’s mum kept the house in a state of permanent perfect tidiness and preparedness for any given holiday festival. Evielovedall the tidiness and preparedness.
