Chapter 23
‘Now, you have to choose one final side dish.’ Lucy, our perky wedding venue’s event coordinator (whose job to date had mainly been communicating bad news) looked at us expectantly.
‘Fries, please,’ Matt and I replied without consultation or hesitation. We turned to each other and smiled. Matt had organised a last-minute food tasting (take two), knowing that nothing would be better for morale than ticking something off the wedding to-do list.
‘Great, well that’s your menu sorted again.
And’ – Lucy, whose aesthetic was generational wealth and whose energy was real estate agent on a Saturday in spring, flicked her glossy hair as she paused for effect – ‘the amazing news is that the renovations are on track to be finished by your wedding date. And, even better, the builders said it should smell way less smoky after they’ve painted it! ’
I felt Matt kick my foot under the table and tried not to laugh.
We both found Lucy’s ability to deliver any information as if it was the best news ever, even though almost every update had been dripping with disaster, hilarious.
Matt had even started sending me text messages in the style of Lucy that made me cackle at work.
( The great news is that only one of our toilets is blocked! !! )
‘Amazing! And I’m sure all the flowers will help with that too!’ Matt added, pathologically incapable of not being the most positive person in a room.
Lucy left us alone at the small table in the corner of the commercial kitchen to finish all the samples of desserts we’d been given.
‘Maybe things have turned around. I think from now, everything will come up Matt and Rebecca,’ I said.
Matt smiled, and it went all the way to the crinkles in his eyes.
I could tell that my renewed positivity meant everything to him.
I felt Matt’s leg brush up against mine under the table and I felt my stomach flip.
‘There’s a theory called emotional hedging,’ I said. ‘I think we should apply it to our wedding, so no matter what disaster strikes, it’s all upside.’
‘I’m intrigued,’ Matt said. I reached across the white linen tablecloth and took his hand in mine.
‘So how it works is... we brainstorm all the possible bad things that could happen at our wedding and come up with a correspondingly good thing. This means that even if everything goes wrong, we’re still happy,’ I explained.
‘So, say... a dog breaks into the venue and eats all the fancy charcuterie and cheese on the grazing table, then—’
‘That night we do it doggy-style,’ Matt said, a twinkle in his eye.
I snorted with laughter. ‘Exactly, you totally get how the theory works,’ I said, when I could speak again. ‘Okay... the wedding day temperature is forty-three degrees so...’
‘We do it doggy-style,’ Matt replied, deadpan. This time we both collapsed into giggles.
‘I’m loving your thinking. But I think we might need some variety.’
It was a sunny afternoon but I felt much warmer than I had a few minutes earlier. Matt gently twisted my engagement ring around my finger and all I could think about were his hands everywhere else.
‘I like variety,’ Matt replied, his voice a bit slower and gravellier than it had been. ‘The three-tiered cake falls off the stand and smashes onto the floor?’
‘Chocolate body paint?’ I suggested, raising what I hoped looked like a suggestive eyebrow.
The sparkle in Matt’s eyes transformed into a glint. ‘My suit pants split open?’
‘That’s got to be anal,’ I replied instantly. We both burst out laughing again.
Why hadn’t all the wedding planning been this much fun? Could it have been if I hadn’t lived in my own head so much, if I hadn’t allowed little things that had gone wrong to become outsized in my mind? If I’d done what Matt had suggested and laughed off the curse as a bad joke?
‘God, I hope it all goes wrong,’ Matt said.
‘Me too.’
‘Should we sneak in next door?’ Matt suggested. We’d been told we couldn’t look at the venue itself because it was still a building site. But I could hear Lucy filming a TikTok in her office and surely the builders had finished for the day.
‘Definitely,’ I replied. This game, well the sexy version Matt had turned it into, had made me feel alive and reckless.
Giddy, I crept behind Matt through the kitchen and into the courtyard where, in a few weeks’ time, we’d become husband and wife.
It was still very much a construction site – there were tools and dust everywhere.
But as Lucy had so emphatically promised, it looked like the repairs were almost finished.
‘Rehearsal?’ Matt asked, already walking towards the spot we’d designated as the end of the aisle. I nodded and moved to the entrance of the courtyard.
What would happen in this spot, the question of which parent would walk me down the aisle, had already caused me a lot of angst. But it didn’t matter. They weren’t there right then. It was just us.
As I moved towards Matt, carefully stepping over a few stray wooden offcuts and then skirting a paint tin, I felt silly.
But then we locked eyes and it all felt real, like we were actually about to get married.
I couldn’t see the paint-splattered ladders or drop cloths.
All I could see was him – the most handsome groom in the world.
And under his gaze, wearing my ancient black cotton dress, I was the most beautiful bride that had ever existed.
I reached the end of the aisle where Belinda would be waiting to officially marry us.
‘This is the part when I’ll tell you that I can’t believe how lucky I am,’ he whispered and kissed the side of my already flushed cheek. ‘Or maybe that my wedding suit pants have split open.’
I laughed.
‘Let’s go home. It was a ridiculous idea to leave our bed,’ I said in what I hoped was a sultry voice.
Soon we were back in our bedroom.
‘Isn’t it weird to think that not that long ago lots of couples had sex for the first time on their wedding night?
’ I asked, slowly undoing the buttons on Matt’s pale blue shirt.
‘Imagine if, right now, you were getting undressed, out of your wedding suit, and I didn’t know anything about your body.
‘I wouldn’t know that you loved to be kissed here,’ I said, then slowly kissed the soft spot of his neck, just under his jaw, inhaling his soft citrusy smell.
I gently ran the tip of my finger over his now-bare nipple.
Matt closed his eyes and groaned. I smiled.
‘Or that you lose control when I touch you there.’
‘Imagine if you stood in front of me in your wedding dress,’ he said as he opened his eyes again. ‘But I didn’t know that you’d like me to pick you up and take you to the bed.’
He folded his strong arms around me. I pressed my hips into him and I heard him take a deep breath.
As our bodies became entwined, my brain emptied of thoughts.
I kissed his neck again and rode the high of his cologne or pheromones or whatever his embrace did to me.
He carefully placed me down on the bedcovers and then lay next to me. My whole body tingled.
‘And then I’d pull off my wedding dress,’ I said. I half sat up and without breaking eye contact, pulled my summer dress over my head. ‘And you’d see me in my underwear for the first time.’
Matt’s eyes widened when he saw I was wearing my red lingerie set. I smiled, biting my bottom lip.
‘But I wouldn’t know that when you start to eat your lips like that, it means you think you can’t wait another minute,’ he said with a glint in his eye.
‘And I wouldn’t know that you’d enjoy it more if I teased you a bit longer.
’ He ran his hand up the side of my body, and curled his fingers into my hair. I whimpered.
‘I want you,’ I said. My body was screaming for Matt. I could hear impatience in my voice. He moved his head forwards and his mouth met mine. My lips parted and it felt like the world was just us, our almost-naked bodies pressed up against each other.
‘Is this where you want me?’ he asked as he pulled his head back then gently kissed my shoulder. I shook my head.
‘What about this?’ He moved down to the inside of my thighs.
‘I want you,’ I said again, my vocabulary reduced to three words.
‘You’re going to have to wait,’ he said as he slowly pulled the pair of lacy underwear, down my legs. I let my knees drop to the bed in response.
Matt knew how to turn my impatience into giddiness, how to take control in a way that made my toes curl.
‘I want you,’ I said, a final time. And then I stopped talking.
‘I think we were always good at this, even the first time,’ I said once I could finally speak.
I lay on Matt’s chest, recovering and wondering why everyone didn’t spend Tuesday in bed with their fiancé.
Our various limbs were entangled, the linen bedding twisted.
Belinda’s questionnaire, half complete, was scattered around us.
‘Movies and books make it seem like sexual tension is the hottest thing in the world. But I think when we became each other’s person and there was no more tension.
.. that’s when the fireworks happened.’
‘I agree. When we started sleeping together, it was great because it was exciting,’ he said. ‘But I think it’s better now that we know we belong to each other.’
I rolled off Matt’s chest onto a few crumpled pages.
‘I’ll return the forms to Belinda in the morning and we can drop the cake stand at your parents’ house on the weekend,’ I said as I smoothed out the pages. ‘You’ve told your mum there won’t be cake toppers, right?’
‘All taken care of,’ Matt said, still catching his breath.
‘And maybe let’s not mention the decapitated groom cake topper to my mum. She doesn’t need another reason to invoke the—’
‘Don’t say it—’
‘Curse.’