The One with All the Bridesmaids: A hilarious, feel-good romantic comedy. Erin Lawless
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‘Yup,’ Gray grinned. ‘Your favourite.’ Cleo had gone through a big amaretto-and-cranberry stage at the end of last year, and it was precisely that delightful mixture she’d vomited all over Gray at the staff Christmas party (he’d joked that he’d smelt like a Bakewell tart for the rest of the holidays). Gray poured them both healthy measures over crackling ice cubes and sat back down in the other armchair. The chairs were only slightly angled, so they both watched the fire in silence for a few moments, enjoying their first few sips of the almond liqueur and the feeling of peace settling over them after the manic day. Gray’s profile was painted orange; holding the delicate etched tumbler in his big hand, he looked like the lord of the manor. Cleo thought back to the cheesy selfie they’d snapped in front of the porch of Withysteeple Hall last month and sighed.
‘So, how is trying to complete Tinder going?’ she asked. ‘Any future Mrs Sommers there in the mix?’
Gray looked at her, curiously. ‘I’m not sure many people find their wives on Tinder,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s more for fun.’
‘Not everyone sees it that way,’ Cleo immediately argued, thinking of Daisy, who loves to be in love and all the hopeful swipe-rights her fingers have given.
‘I can guarantee you that most of the men do at least,’ Gray assured her. Cleo fell silent at the thought of all those missed connections: one person looking for a forever, the other just looking for a shag. She refilled her drink, feeling vindicated.
‘And that’s exactly why I don’t go on these things,’ she confided. ‘I’d feel like some sort of cheap impulse buy, left out at the tills.’
‘Yeah, I, er, noticed that you’d never come up on Tinder for me,’ Gray poked his finger into the button indent on the arm of the chair.
‘I have technically been on a Tinder date, though,’ Cleo said. ‘I went out with this guy for about two months after my friend Daisy decided they didn’t have any chemistry together, and she’d met him on Tinder initially; does that count?’
‘If you want it to,’ Gray laughed.
‘Seriously, though, what is the appeal? If you’re not actually looking for a girlfriend, I mean. If you just want someone to go to the cinema or to have a drink with, well, there’s always me.’ (Ack.) Cleo regretted it the moment she’d said it; not the sort of thing you say to your colleague, however flirty (or dishy) he was. Gray regarded her thoughtfully.
‘I don’t know. I guess it was because one day I realised that I was thirty-two and had wasted my entire twenties in a really toxic relationship. All my mates had done their wild-oat sowing back then and were starting to settle down, but it was like I was coming at life backwards. Making up for lost time.’ He smiled ruefully and topped up their glasses a little bit more. ‘Anyway. You don’t feel like sowing any oats, then?’
Cleo grimaced. ‘Well, you have to remember, of course, that I am the field in this lovely analogy.’
Gray burst out laughing. ‘You are so not the field. You are the sort of girl that makes men want to settle down.’
‘You make me sound like some sort of mousy housewife,’ Cleo complained (but secretly she was filing that away as a compliment).
‘I don’t mean to,’ Gray assured her, still looking thoughtful. Cleo pulled her skirt a little further down her thighs. The combination of the heat from the fire and the gravity caused by Gray’s attention was leaving her a little breathless. ‘So, then how do you meet your dates?’ he queried.
‘The old-fashioned way, I guess,’ Cleo shrugged. ‘Through friends. At bars. I don’t know. Once I met someone waiting for a bus. I don’t really go on all that many dates, to be honest.’
‘That’s such a waste,’ Gray shook his head regretfully and Cleo lost hold of her breath again.
Gray seemed to sense something in her silence and sat back in his chair; Cleo hadn’t even realised how much he’d been leaning in towards her. ‘Sorry.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘I’m being unprofessional, aren’t I, Miss Adkins.’
Cleo took a drink to lubricate her senses. ‘Not at all, Mr Sommers, not at all,’ she managed to tease back, just about pulling back to an even keel.
Gray studied the remnants of his drink. ‘Good. Because – trust me – I could get quite unprofessional this evening, if I was allowed.’
The popping of the fire seemed over-loud, and over-important.
Would it be so terrible if she slept with him, tonight, just this once? Because, God, in that moment she really wanted to. Grownups did it all the time (as Bea was always quick to scathingly point out). It wasn’t like Cleo had never had a one-night stand before, or slept with someone a little too close to home (must smile graciously at Harry and Archie’s cousin if I see him at the wedding, Cleo reminded herself, to lessen embarrassment at having been up close and personal with his knob last year). And (if she was being honest), there had been many, many unguarded moments over the last few months where Cleo had caught herself wondering how Gray felt beneath her fingertips.
But then she thought of the staff-room chats that would never happen, and of how Bea had once felt forced to leave her job, and of the disappointed awkwardness that might fall between them when Gray realised she was just another field to him, after all. And life was too ugly a place to be without a friend that you could call up at 8.30am on a Saturday and ask for a two-hour lift. And so rather than top up her drink, Cleo pushed it aside.
‘I’m really wiped,’ she announced, and Gray smiled sadly at her like she’d said something else.
‘Okay. Sleep well.’
‘You too. I’m sorry,’ Cleo gestured to the still mostly full decanter.
‘Hey, you’ve got to save yourself for the big party next week, after all,’ Gray said mildly.
Invite him, the Nora that Cleo had long-since internalised howled in her head: invite him!
Cleo’s fingertips tingled. He was her friend. Where was the harm?
‘Actually, speaking of the engagement party. If you’re not busy …?’
Cleo’s face really, really hurt.
It was a combination of all the smiling and, of course, the balloons. How she had ended up responsible for the balloons, she didn’t know.
Daisy was literally of no help, chatting away brightly. ‘Right?’ she asked Cleo, waving a limp balloon around expressively as she did so as opposed to blowing it up.
Across the function room Sarah was opening the French doors through to the beer garden, sending the balloons that Cleo had already managed to get inflated and tied off rolling around in every direction. Immediately Harry and Eli abandoned their efforts to get the folding tables up and started enthusiastically kicking the balloons into the corner. Cleo – mouth otherwise occupied – eyed them furiously over the swell of the balloon she was currently seeing to, to no avail.
Bea was – as usual – nowhere to be found, and Cleo could only assume that the three missing groomsmen were causing more trouble than those in the room. This was Day One, nuptial Ground Zero; if a generously large wedding party of eight couldn’t efficiently set up an engagement party in the local pub, how the hell were they meant to assist pulling off a spectacular wedding for a hundred and twenty guests in just under a year’s time? Nora was going to flap, definitely. Cleo sighed, redoubling her balloon-related efforts.
‘Hey,’ Bea groaned, finally making an appearance from the back room, balancing three Marks and Spencer sandwich platters somewhat precariously and realising she had no tables to place them down on. ‘A little help here, guys?’ she snapped.