“What do you think?” She bites her lip.
I take her hand. “It’s beautiful.”
She smiles. “About the whole thing. I thought you might be a bit…unenthused.”
“What? No! I love Paddy!” I say with maybe too much zeal.
“I know that,” says Sarah. “I was worried you’d think less of me or something. Because you’re anti-marriage.”
“I’m not anti-marriage. Why do people think that?”
“Not anti. But you can take it or leave it.”
“I mean, it’s fast,” I say.
She looks confused. “We’ve been living together a couple of months already, and going out for nearly a year.”
“Seven months,” I correct her. “It’s not that long.”
“My parents got engaged after two weeks. Seven months isn’t fast. Okay, it’s not seven years, but I don’t want to wait seven years before I get married.” She chips at a drip of wax on the table, eyes locked on the task. I wonder if she’s referring to the fact Luke and I have been together for seven years.
“I don’t know.” I take a long sip of Prosecco. “It’s just happened a bit sooner than I expected, that’s all. I think it’s great — if it’s what you want.”
“It is!” She looks like she might cry. “You’re the first person I’ve told. Not even my mum knows yet.”
I seize her arm. “I’m so happy for you, Sarah, really and truly — I’m sorry, I needed a moment to catch up. Just because I wasn’t mentally prepared for this doesn’t mean you aren’t. Please tell me everything: how did he propose?”
She blots her nose elegantly with the back of her ring hand as she relays the details. The diamond goes berserk in the candlelight. “…Then he came out with this incredible, emotional speech — about me and how he’s finally found his soul mate…Honestly, I can’t do it justice, but we were both in floods of tears by the end of it.”
“That sounds amazing,” I murmur, and I am amazed, not only that he’s capable of such moving rhetoric, but also that he’s comfortable pouring out so much feeling, unbridled. I feel a newfound admiration for him.
“And yeah, I was a bit surprised when he asked, but it feels…It does — it just feels right.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this”—I knock back the rest of my Prosecco, and flag down the waitress for another round—“or maybe I should wait until we’ve had a few more drinks, but what the hell.”
“Go on…”
“Early on, I had a few reservations about Paddy.” To be fair to my acting ability, this does seem like news to Sarah. “In the beginning.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“This is my point: I don’t even remember!” I try to silence the voice in my head, reeling them off without any difficulty: monosyllabic, sullen, boring…“You’re my best friend: any guy you ended up with was going to have a hard time impressing me. But the moment I saw how important he was to you, I was there: on board, one hundred percent. So what I’m getting at is, if Paddy ever needs anything — and I mean anything—a kidney?” I segue into a gruff mobster voice, pointing a thumb to my chest. “You send him over to Mama. Ya hear me?”
“I hear you,” says Sarah, looking relieved. “Thank you, that honestly means a lot.”
God, I hope Paddy looks after his kidneys.
Checking in
It’s Saturday, Luke’s working, and I’m home alone trying to advance my career plans. I’ve designed a new color-coded spreadsheet delineating companies to target, application deadlines and training programs that might be of interest. My formatting skills, though, are not up to scratch and I’ve spent much of the morning resizing columns and truncating text to fit inside boxes that simply won’t expand, for all the troubleshooting solutions I’ve tried.
I scroll through my phone and realize I haven’t been in touch with my parents for a while. Calling them feels a bit much, too involved, given I haven’t spoken aloud yet today, so I fire off a text instead.
Hi, Dad. How are you both? Any news re: work? Hope all OK. C xxx
No.
No = no news? Everything OK? xxxxx
Fine claire just in town having a muffin witH MUM X
Lovely. Enjoy. Say hi to Mum. x
OK WILL DO TAKE CARE DAD
Explode/implode
“What are you watching?” Luke asks, taking off his coat.
“It’s amazing,” I say. “You’re just in time. Look.” On the screen, a man in white coveralls makes careful incisions in the belly of a beached sperm-whale carcass. “Wait. It gets really good.”
“Where is this?” Luke asks.
“Not important! Faroe Islands, I think. Okay, watch this — are you watching?”
“I’m watching!”
The whale explodes, guts and blood flying into the air, zipping many meters along the decking before slamming to a stop against a wall. The jumpsuit guy, nearly knocked off his feet by the force of the gush, scuttles quickly, comically out of shot.
“Did you hear the sound?” I say. “The way it pops! The gush! Let’s watch it again.” I hit “replay.” The clip is prefaced by an advert for a honeymoon cruise package — an algorithmic joke? — and I recite with the voice-over in perfect sync, “Sail off into your happily ever after with Sunset Voyages—”
“How many times have you watched this?” interrupts Luke. He moves around the kitchen, opening cabinet doors.
“Not nearly enough. Here we go: are you ready?”
From the fridge he takes the milk and fills a glass by the sink.
I press “pause.” “You don’t want to watch it again?”
He lifts his eyebrows as he drinks, and the glass clinks quietly against his teeth. When he’s finished, he ducks his head, slightly out of breath. “I’ve been dealing with blood all day. How has yours been? Did you not even get dressed?” A frill of milk runs along his top lip.
I return to the screen and click “play”: pop, gush, scuttle.
“Imagine the pressure in there!”
“So what do you want to do tonight? DVD? If your appetite for quality film hasn’t been sated already…” Luke tips his head toward the screen.
“Why are you making me feel bad?”
“How am I making you feel bad?”
“Never mind,” I say quickly; but his hackles are up.
“No, go on — what did I do?”
“Don’t be so defensive. God!” I say. He strides to the fridge and slings the milk back inside. “Maybe you should cool off while you’re there. Long day, was it?” The door thunks shut and the fridge judders.
“You’re going to have to help me out here.”
I enumerate, pointing a thumb at him. “Try: you making snide, unhelpful remarks about me not ‘even’ getting dressed on a Saturday, when I’ve been working all week.” Next comes a forefinger. “And hassling me for taking a two-minute break from my — really quite stressful — job hunt to watch a natural spectacle, which you seem bizarrely intent on pretending not to find interesting even though fourteen million”—I check the views count—“Okay, but still, one point four million hits would beg to differ.”
“As if two minutes,” he mutters.
“What was that? Another snide remark? Ten minutes, then. Fine, fifteen minutes. Happy?”
Luke steps behind me and massages my shoulders. “I’m really happy with you,” he says in the joke-sappy voice we sometimes deploy when things are getting too heated; on this occasion, however, he couldn’t have made a worse call.