It was worth it, though. It took about three seconds of the footage of Jonno and Harriet kissing for the room to explode.
It was intoxicating, that feeling of blowing everything up; I was drunk on it when Murray and I finally left the bistro, after a completely insincere apology to the manager about one of his tables mysteriously getting flipped.
I couldn’t contain it. I wanted to tip back my head and howl at the moon. I wanted to run five marathons in a row. I wanted to lift a car over my head and hurl it a hundred metres, smashing it through the side of a building.
‘I can’t fuckingwaitto cut this together,’ Murray said. ‘This is going to be unbelievable TV. Unbelievable!’
I couldn’t find the words to respond. Instead, I flung my arms wide to the night sky, spinning around and laughing like a madwoman.
‘What did we just do, Lily?’ He was laughing too, eyes and face alight with it. ‘What the fuck did we justdo?’
‘That,’ I said, ‘was magic.’
‘There’s this part of my brain that’s telling me “you should feel bad, Murray, you should feel bad about pushing people’s buttons like that, normal people don’t enjoy shit like that”,’ he said, ‘but you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I don’t care.’
I did not believe in fate, or destiny, or the universe. In that moment, standing there, looking at him, listening to him say that, I only believed in two things.
Myself.
And that this boy – this boy, with his pullable hair; this boy, who always paid attention; this boy, who had as few lines as I did – was myperson.
‘I don’t care either,’ I said.
There was the briefest pause, and then we were both laughing again, wild, uncontrollable. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he lifted me clean off the ground, spinning me around and around as we laughed, and I was so happy it felt like my heart was going to leap out of my chest.
Mine. Mine.Mine.
‘God, Murray,’ I said, when we finally slowed, ‘I loved that so much.’
He was still holding me off the ground. His chest was pressed against mine, and I could feel his breathing, shallow, rapid.
‘Me too, Lily.’
His face was very close to mine.
Should I lean in and kiss him? Or did I need to play this slower?
Julia was his first and only everything. Crossing that line would be a big deal. Did I need to coax him across it gently, or did I need to put a bomb under it and blow it up?
He set me down. I was disappointed, but it made my decision for me. Slow play it would be. And fair enough,really – Julia would still behurt, of course, and there was a strong chance she would hate me forever, but it probably wouldn’t be as bad if—
‘I have something to ask you,’ he said.
… or maybe this wouldn’t be a slow play. Maybe this would be very, very fast. Maybe I wouldn’t need to make a play at all.
‘Ask away.’ My heart was in my throat.
‘I was wondering if you’d be my best man.’
My soul left my body.
‘We finally set a date. Julia wants to get married before she graduates, so she’ll have her married name on her testamur. She’s hyphenating – there’s some other Julia Scott out there, and she says Scott-O’Connell will be better for recognisability on her research metrics.’
‘What a good reason to get married,’ I choked out.
