Page 33 of The Wedding Forecast

I put my hand in his, and he pulls me to my feet, and once I am standing, he keeps hold of my hand. Or maybe I keep hold of his. It’s a friendly gesture. Except touching his hand is giving me an unexpected thrill.

Mac is looking at me, and it feels like he can really see me.

I swallow hard, and I’m about to turn away when he suddenly, gently, pulls me towards him, and hugs me.

He’s a good hugger. I’ll give him that.

It’s a pity hug, I know, and yet it feels so good. I don’t even hug him back at first, I just kind of lean my whole body against him and let my head rest on his shoulder. I tuck my face into the crook of his neck, and he smells so good. I’m scared he’s going to notice me inhaling him. After a few more seconds, I move hands up and around his neck and hug him back kind of desperately, which is humiliating in more ways than I can even begin to count, but I don’t care—I’m drowning, and I need someone to drag me up, metaphorically and physically. I barely know this man, and I don’t care.

I am acutely aware that we have been hugging for a long time, but I don’t want to let him go. I think I’m just trying to scoop up a scrap of affection, from him, from anyone, before I go out there and sit down and see Joel’s face again, before I see Bianca, before I see my parents, before I have to try to flirt with Patrick.

A little morsel of kindness. A little hit of joy. An escape. A handsome man has his arms wrapped around me and I don’t want this sensation to end.

I finally get a grip on myself and pull back a little and he does too, but our hands are still on each other, and now we’re in the even more intimate stance of standing with our faces very close together looking at each other.

Then without thinking, without really understanding what I am doing, I lean in and kiss him.

9

I’M WORRIED HE’LL pull away immediately, or swear, or cringe, or extract himself with a grimace. And then what? I could try and turn it into a joke. What’s the punchline? ‘Hahaha, look at me, I have hit rock bottom.’ Or, maybe, ‘Sorry, it was a dare!’ A dare from whom? We are in our thirties. Well, not in. I object to the ‘in’ part. I am only thirty. I haven’t tipped over into in yet. I am still on the precipice of my thirties.

I’ll tell him it was habit. A man’s face that close to me, I just leaned in. An impulse. I could appeal to his ego, say it was his Hollywood allure. Or it was the sexy bra’s fault, it gave me false confidence. No. I’ll say it is Joel’s fault. That’s the one. My ultimate defence for everything this weekend. Look what Joel has done to me. I have lost my ability to behave in a normal way.

All of this flashes through my head as we kiss. Or, okay, as I kiss him. Mac remains still, accepting the kiss, not resisting but not responding, exactly, or responding very softly, very carefully, not taking it any further. A pity kiss to follow a pity hug. God. You sad woman.

I pull back and look at him. The whole thing is suddenly absurd. What am I doing?

But then Mac brings his hands down to rest on my waist, and he gives me a look, and I don’t quite know what it means, but it’s definitely not a pity look. Then he leans down and kisses me back.

He kisses me roughly, hungrily, walking me backwards to the wall, and pressing me against it. He smells so good, he kisses so well, his body fits so perfectly against mine. I am suddenly breathless. Forget screaming, crying, drinking, throwing myself to the ground, sobbing, running cold water over my wrists, going for a walk, breathing in like I’m smelling a flower. This is what I wanted, this is exactly what I need. To be ravished by a man I will probably never see again after this weekend against the wall in a restaurant I will definitely never enter again. I have maybe never wanted anything more in my life.

I push my hands into his hair. He has one hand gently on my cheek, and I make a sound, a kind of groaning moan, a pleasure moan, a sound I don’t think I have ever made before, a sound that surely should be reserved for activities well beyond kissing. But, my god, this man is very good at kissing. And touching. And pressing into me. But! We are in a public hallway.

My horny unstable mind says, go right now and have sex with him in the toilets. And once the idea forms, the better it seems. I haven’t had sex with anyone since Joel. This has been weighing on me. I had been reading a book about women who became nuns later in life, who took vows of celibacy, lived in total isolation, communing with the land and thinking, yes, this all makes perfect sense. I will close my physical self off from men, and open my inner self, my true womanhood, to the earth. But now, in this moment, kissing Mac in a hallway, I’m reconsidering that path. Maybe the earth can wait.

Mac kisses my neck. Then he lifts his head and says into my ear, ‘We should stop. Someone might see us.’

I suspect he knows this will have the opposite effect. There’s a reason he does voiceover. He has the kind of voice that does half the work in any situation. More than half. Especially this kind of situation.

‘Let’s go into the bathroom,’ I say.

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

We keep kissing, and Mac guides me through the door of the bathroom, and then he lifts me onto the bench (this man has been trained in these moves, I swear), and I lean back against the mirror, eyes closed, my legs wrapped around him. I have never been so in the moment like this. My skin feels like it’s on fire. Mac knows what he’s doing. I open my eyes briefly, looking over his shoulder as he kisses my neck.

At a bay of urinals.

Urinals that don’t look in the least bit clean. And there is wet toilet paper sticking to the floor, and the door to a cubicle swinging half-open so I can see a toilet too.

What am I doing?

It’s like a bucket of cold water has been thrown over me.

Also, I hadn’t realised we were in the men’s bathroom.

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Oh god.’