Andrew’s hand poked out from the side of my body, hovering suspiciously above my hip like a UFO over a cornfield. I waited for it to land. It didn’t.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I grabbed his hand and flattened it to my waist. His hand was big, and my waist felt tiny beneath it. His fingers felt like they stretched on for ever, like they could wrap around my entire body, even though I knew that was impossible.
‘Smile!’ the Apple iPhone photographer said. I attempted a smile and she burst out laughing. ‘You’re so funny, Pippa!’
But there was nothing funny about what I was doing: I was genuinely trying to smile. If I’d known beforehand that I was going into a situation where I needed to have my photo taken, I’d have practiced my smile in the mirror. But today I had not done that. I tried again, and she laughed once more. But when I tried for the third time and she didn’t laugh, I think she finally realized I wasn’t joking.
‘I’m not good at smiling on cue!’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Okay, no problem. Why don’t you put her out of her misery and kiss her instead. That’ll make a great picture.’
The word ‘kiss’ felt like it punched a hole in the air between us. Andrew and I looked at each other. This seemed like a necessary moment. In fact, I would rather kiss him than attempt another disastrous smile. Andrew raised his brows, and I gave the most imperceptible nod. We leaned towards each other slowly, and I tried not to grimace, or something equally off-putting. Our noses touched briefly, and then our lips. I heard an ‘aaaah’ from the amateur photographer.
‘Perfect. Hold it for a moment,’ she said.
I kept my lips pressed to his.
‘Hang on. I need to turn the flash on – hold it!’ she said.
We must have looked ridiculous like that, standing next to each other, lips pressed together but not actually kissing.
‘Another second! I turned on the torch instead of the flash. Can you believe it?’ She laughed, and now this situation was just farcical. How much longer did we need to pose like this?
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ I said against his mouth, and then I kissed him. Properly. Not a silly lip press but an actual kiss. Slow, soft, lips slightly parted. I could taste and smell the champagne on his lips. I felt warm pressure on my waist as his hand tightened. His mouth followed suit and then, for a second, a warm, wet, glorious second that sent a bolt down my spine, the tip of his tongue grazed my lip. A light flashed around us and I pulled away.
CHAPTER10
‘You kissed me with tongue,’ I said to Andrew as we got into the Uber and drove back to our hotels.
‘You kissed me back with tongue! And I didn’t intend on using tongue, but when you opened your mouth like that—’
‘I only opened my mouth because we weren’t really kissing and I thought it was starting to look strange,’ I said.
‘You opened your mouth to make it look more authentic?’
‘Exactly,’ I concluded.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to use my tongue – it was just . . . muscle memory.’
‘What?’
‘Like riding a bike, or . . . you know what I mean.’
‘I don’t actually,’ I said.
‘When you opened your mouth, it signalled to me that a real kiss was happening. So my tongue kind of joined it, without really thinking about it. Besides, it’s not like I stuck my entire tongue in your mouth. It barely grazed your lip.’
He was right, of course. It had just grazed my lip and, perhaps like him, my tongue muscle memory had kicked in too, because the tip of my tongue had somehow reached out and brushed his lips as well.
Andrew sighed next to me. ‘Sorry. I apologize, I know we said no tongue.’
It was my turn to sigh. ‘I tongued you back,’ I said, and we sat in silence for a while. The Uber driver eyed us in the rear-view mirror and I narrowed my eyes at him disapprovingly.
‘You’re a really good kisser,’ I stated. ‘It was quite hot, actually.’
‘Uh . . . thanks.’ He wriggled in his seat.
‘Did that make you feel awkward?’ I asked.
