way he does when he’s confused. He was a little pale, his freckles darker than usual.
Oh God.
It was all supposed to be a big white dream. We’d be like paper dolls cut out of a magazine. A pretty little church, the perfect lace dress, star-shaped flowers with delicate trails of ivy. Charlie would be nervous and I’d be trying not to laugh. We would kiss in soft focus. Bells would ring.
My phone goes—and it’s playing the fucking Wedding March. My sister must have programmed it as a joke. I pounce on my jacket, scrabble through the pockets and find it, hit the cancel button before I look at the name.
Charlie. Of course it’s Charlie. Did I think he’d just disappear? Six years don’t evaporate that easily. Even if I’ve broken his heart and ruined his life, we’re going to have to at least pretend to be grown-ups. I should call him back.
I don’t. Instead, I pick at the lace of the bright yellow garter Susie made me promise to wear. It’s a hideous thing—the color of crayon sunshine in a kid’s drawing, with too many bows and ribbons sprouting from it—but for some reason I can’t stop playing with it. Back when she gave me the garter—a hundred years ago, the night before the not-wedding—it seemed like a silly, joyous little joke. Now it makes me wince.
“The yellow ones are supposed to attract lovers. Maybe some of your good luck’ll rub off on me, eh?” Susie had given me a big, theatrical wink, but I think she meant it at least a little bit.
Susie and I are best friends from high school. We’ve been through crushes, boyfriends, breakups and make-ups. I’d always been the one with the hectic love life, Susie the one with the steady boyfriends. Until I met Charlie.
My head snaps up as the doorbell rings. I don’t want to speak to anyone, not the flower arranger, the dressmaker or the caterers, not friends and relations or in-laws. There’s not a single one of the thousand people involved in the biggest not-wedding this century that I want to hear from.
The bell goes again. Maybe Susie forgot her key, I think. Maybe it’s not even for me. I tread nervously to the door and reluctantly open it a crack.
On the step is the one person I want most, the one I fear most. The door swings open and Charlie and I are facing each other over the threshold.
“Seb.” It’s his secret name for me. Silly, I know, but it makes me feel as if I’m about to collapse, like I’m a bicycle tire with all the air let out.
I’m shaking my head but I can’t break my gaze, tear it away from those eyes the color of wet slate. Charlie is hard to read, but over the years I’ve learned his tells. Usually, I can pick up his quirking smile, some little giveaway angle of his eyebrow or how he tugs at his ear. Today, he’s standing on Susie’s front step with his arms hanging by his sides, and I can’t tell a thing. Whether he wants to hold me or hit me. I close my eyes.
I don’t know how to apologize.
“I just couldn’t. I can’t.” My voice is thin, about to break. “Where do I start, Charlie?”
What I want most is to sag into his arms. He’s my comfort, usually, my solace and support. I straighten my spine. No. Not now.
I stand back and let him in, taking a breath of his fresh-air-and-skin scent as he passes.
I follow him into the kitchen and it’s easier, somehow, when we’re not facing each other, so I turn my back on him and fuss with the kettle and the teacups. My hand shakes as I pour milk.
As the water comes to a boil, I turn and he’s got the garter, that hideous yellow badge, and he’s turning it round in his hands.
“You wore this?” he asks, a frown folded between his eyebrows.
“Susie asked me to.” I want to snatch the garter away from him. I remember the sensation, tight round my thigh, the cheap fabric stiff and prickly. I stood there being prepped for the wedding and I remember having the sudden, violent urge to run away and rip it off and scratch and scratch and scratch.
Charlie nods slowly.
Normally, he’d crack a joke. Normally, this would be easy—being together, the easiest thing in the world, like everything’s right and how it should be and … and perfect? I look at the yellow of the garter against Charlie’s skin.
“It was all too good to be true,” I say softly. Surprising myself.
He looks up and I can see for the first time a spark in his eyes. It could be dangerous. It could be promising. I take the chance.
“I’m scared, Charlie.”
“Of what?”
“Of us.” I watch his lips. I owe him honesty, at least. I take a deep breath.
“Of suffocating. I was standing up there at that altar and …”
“And what?” he says, his voice edged with flint.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I start to say, before I realize what I’m doing. I start again. Look right in his eyes.
“I don’t know if I can promise you so much. Just you, just me, forever.” There’s a rushing over my skin, and I’m running fast down a slope. But I can’t stop now. “I saw my sex life flash in front of my eyes, Charlie. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I know I’m almost shouting.
Is that worse? I wonder. To have ditched Charlie in front of all his family and friends, to have left him awkward and alone at the church, or this? To tell him the truth, what I’ve been darkly afraid of all along? My lurid, cherry-red, heart-throbbing dirty secret.
How can I promise never to have another lover? Me, who’s always been quick to get bored, and quicker to discard unsatisfactory bedfellows. Who’s been first to try every practice and position, whose whole life is punctuated by sex—exotic and romantic and thrilling and brief and heartbreaking. Yes, I love Charlie, and yes, I love fucking him. But will I really be able to sacrifice every other man in the world—every other possible man?
I think about how Charlie is, and try and match it against the invisible future. I know it’s wrong, but I’m trying to measure him. Testing, to see how I love him, how much and how far.
Yes, I love how his eyelids kind of slide down a few degrees, so he’s giving me a snake’s gaze, one that slips over my body in a prelude to his touch. I love how his mouth goes tight. How his fingers travel, how he takes mouthfuls of me.
And this. Yes, I’d forgotten how much I love this.
“Charlie?”
“Shut up.”
How he is silent. How he pulls me to him and works his way from my wrist to my shoulders. Charlie is gentle. Most of the time. But he knows how to fix me in place. He’s clever, too—sees immediately how he could take an ugly yellow garter and twist it around my wrists, how it would hold my arms behind my back firmly, but stretch enough not to dig in too much.
“What if Susie …”
He ignores me. I think this might be what I love most about us. He knows me so well, he can tell when to listen and when to just keep on going. Like now, as he strips me methodically, slowly, almost brusquely. He pushes the cardigan off my shoulders and lets it bunch at my tied wrists. Reaches for the buttons at my throat and lets the backs of his hands scuff over my breasts.
I’m biting my lip again, trying not to moan. For some reason, it seems important to match Charlie’s wordless intensity. As though the only way I can apologize is with my silence, as though any more words would be too many.
He peels my shirt aside, bares my breasts and belly. He’s holding my shirttails in his fists and he tugs me from side to side a little as he leans in to kiss me, letting me know how he can move me, how he can turn me.
And then we’re kissing and it’s too late for explanations. I forget why I left the church, I forget where I am and what my name is. All I can think