The Crystals
THEN HE KISSED ME
‘Imagine what you’ll be like when you’ve slept together,’ he shouted over the music.
‘David, don’t be crass,’ I answered, tugging one last outfit option from my wardrobe.
There was a pair of jeans that I hadn’t worn in at least ten years, and it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that they might not even fit anymore.
Still, there was a new and sparkly energy that encouraged me to try them on all the same.
‘Patti–’
‘Don’t open your eyes!’
‘We’ve been married for five years,’ he answered, but he still put his hands in place to form a makeshift blindfold.
It had always been a line in our boundaries: David wasn’t ever to see my unmentionables.
No man ever had, and that wasn’t about to change.
‘You do realise that we need to be at Joe and Anita’s before they arrive, don’t you? ’
Joe and Anita were one of our old married couple friends, and they were about to celebrate fifteen years of wedded bliss.
As far as they were concerned, it was a friendly dinner party hosted by their two doting daughters.
The two daughters, however, had decided that a surprise party featuring all of their friends was a better option.
‘Of course, how else do you make fifteen years of marriage worthwhile unless there’s a massive party at the end of it?’ David had said when our invitation arrived two months ago. I’d decided not to take the comment personally.
‘Okay,’ I announced, still standing in front of my mirror; still unsure about the outfit.
The old jeans definitely fit me, hugging my shape in a way that nothing had in a long time.
But for the last four days I’d been painfully aware, somehow, of the rise and fall of each curve, and it was nice to see them held by the tight fabric.
I’d paired them with a light blue linen shirt that was part tucked into my waistband, and layered gold necklaces that David had bought me last Christmas. ‘I think this is the one.’
David moved his hands away and his eyes widened. ‘Bloody Nora.’
‘In a good way?’ I asked, suddenly uncomfortably aware of the outline of my thighs.
‘Bloody Nora.’ He struggled free of my bed. ‘I can’t believe you’re my wife.’
I laughed. ‘I’m a proper wife for tonight, too!
’ Joe and Anita knew that David and I had a platonic marriage, but there were going to be couples there who we’d never known well enough to bother explaining ourselves to.
For tonight, David and I would laugh and talk and dance like we were a real-life husband and wife – not that I imagined it would change our behaviour much either way, but still. ‘Will I do, then?’
‘Honestly, Patti, if this is you on romance…’
‘What’s the end of that sentence?’
‘Let’s just say.’ He offered his arm for me to take. ‘Romance really suits you.’
* * *
I was three drinks in and listening to an inane story about a stranger’s child and how well they were doing in life, when David finally reappeared.
He’d volunteered to get us both another couple of drinks, which I knew from the off was a ploy to buy himself a break from– I want to say Margaret?
The woman who had started talking to us both approximately three years ago; though a sly glance at my watch revealed that it had only been thirty-something minutes since the woman had cornered us both.
Seventeen minutes since David had disappeared to source more gin, I thought as I span around to face him and snatched a glass.
‘Have you been brewing it?’ I said, my eyes wide and my voice stern.
‘I was just telling Patti about–’
‘Patti, I’ve just met the most extraordinary woman,’ David announced as though Margaret hadn’t spoken at all.
I felt my eyes roll back so severely that I’m surprised I didn’t catch a glimpse of my own brain.
Not only was he being rude, but he’d also clearly forgotten that for a single night he needed to be married!
‘She was at the bar, and do you know something, she wasn’t my type, at all, but there was no one else around to kill a bout of time with, so I thought I’d straighten up and talk to her and–’
‘Sorry, Margaret.’ I took my turn to cause an interruption. ‘Apparently my husband has forgotten his manners.’
The woman giggled. ‘That’s quite all right. It’s about time I went and found my own, I should think.’ She reached forward and squeezed my hand. ‘Lovely meeting you both, it really was. I’ll see you on the dance floor.’ She was mock dancing already as she walked away.
‘I thought we were husband and wife?’
David looked flummoxed. ‘We are?’
‘So this interesting woman?’
‘Oh, right, well,’ he said before launching into the rest of his story, not catching my meaning at all. My bloody idiot, I thought warmly as he rambled. ‘…no sooner had I pulled up a pew alongside her and she simply said, “No.” Can you believe that?’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘Are you enamoured with this woman because she turned you down?’ David’s posture straightened as though cold water had dripped down his back and I burped out a three-gin laugh.
‘You are, aren’t you? She said no and suddenly she’s the…
What was it, most extraordinary woman?’ I said, my tone playful, and I tickled at the spot beneath his right ear as I spoke – like I might do for Fred when we were curled up on the armchair together.
‘I only thought she was extraordinary after I started a proper conversation with her,’ he said, sounding every bit the petulant child.
‘So she’s extraordinary because you had a conversation with her?’
‘Patti.’ He set his fingertips on his forehead. ‘You’re tying me in knots.’
‘Oh, my darling.’ I cupped at David’s cheek. ‘Come on, point her out to me.’
We wandered arm in arm through the partygoers, looking for the woman David had since christened Eudora.
‘Extraordinary name,’ I said with a smirk.
‘It is, isn’t it, and…’ David caught my expression. ‘Piss off, Patricia. Look.’ He stopped short and my fourth gin – we’d made another bar stop on our travels – sloshed over the edge of my glass. ‘There she is now, talking to Anita and Joe.’
‘Perfect.’ I started to steer us in their direction but David held me back.
‘Are you utterly off your trolley, Patti?’
‘No, but I’d say with another drink I’ll be close. What’s wrong with talking to Anita and Joe?’
‘We’re only talking to them because she’s talking to them,’ David said in a low whisper.
I matched his tone. ‘But it’s their party, so shouldn’t we be talking to them anyway?’
‘Oh, well.’ His back straightened as it had done before. ‘Well, I suppose that… Oh, tits and arses she’s gone now. Okay, I need to find her, and I need to find occasion to talk to her again. I didn’t get much from what she said at the bar.’
‘Did you get anything besides her name?’
‘She owns a vintage clothing shop on the high street and–’
‘Hang on,’ I interrupted him. ‘This woman knocked back your advances–’
‘I wish you wouldn’t put it like that.’
‘This woman knocked back your advances, but you managed to determine where she works?’
David’s cheeks bloomed with a pale pink that could have been either alcohol or embarrassment. I wasn’t absolutely sure which, but I was willing to foot the bill for the next round that I could guess.
‘Tell me you didn’t…’ I pushed.
‘It’s not a common name.’
‘You searched for her on Facebook! When did you even have the time?’
‘While the bartender was mixing our drinks.’
‘David, you–’
‘I know, I know. I’m not proud of it.’
‘I suspect you are, actually.’
He laughed. ‘Well, I am a little. But would it be strange, do you think, if I happened to wander into the shop one day? Maybe even looking for something for my wife?’
‘How, Romeo, does that help your chances of pursuing this woman?’
‘I’m not a romancer of women if I’m out clothes shopping for my wife.’
I gasped. ‘You’re going to friend trap her!’
‘Patti, I asked you never to call it that ag–’
‘But you are!’
This was a tried and tested David move. In the years that I’d known him, his skills as a heartbreaker had become much more refined – along with his charisma and the fact that I would swear blind he was more attractive now than he had been through the entirety of our thirties.
When we were younger, there were a few occasions – and admittedly, it was only ever a few – when David couldn’t quite get the car into the garage when it came to pursuing a woman.
These few women – who I thought really deserved a club, with comfortable clothing and a logo – had rebuffed David’s efforts, marking him as a playboy type who wasn’t going to take them further than whatever number date involved them sleeping together.
Which was a fair assumption on their parts.
But to overcome that hurdle, David – husband of mine – had developed what I had early on coined the friend trap.
He would get close to a woman, convince her that he had absolutely no romantic interest in her at all – which, in some ways, was true, depending on your definition of the term – and once they were “friends”, that’s when he’d strike.
In his most famous execution of this move, he’d somehow managed to convince one woman that she was the one encouraging him into bed rather than the other way around.
He hadn’t done it in a long time though, mostly because he hadn’t needed to.
‘And there must be something extraordinary about her for you to bring that move out of retirement,’ I added.
David pulled away and looked at me through the slits of his eyes. ‘Sometimes, Patricia, you can be quite cutting, and I truly don’t know why I put up with it.’
‘But I do make a good, cooked breakfast, and I know how you like your drinks made.’ The opening chords for The Supremes’ ‘Come See About Me’ juddered in through the speaker system and I searched out a spot where I could abandon my drink.
‘And I will always dance with you at parties,’ I said, holding out my hand.
David rolled his eyes and threw back the last of his drink. ‘Come on, you silly old cow, I only want to see what you move like in those jeans…’