by Lovett, Jo
Dan looked around. ‘I think they’re dancing. Over there, look.’
‘Oh, yes. Maybe we should join them,’ Evie said. ‘This is our big birthday trip and tomorrow I’m going to be the birthday girl and I should probably be dancing with my friends.’ She hiccupped. ‘I need to make the most of the last night of my twenties. Maybe we should have some more green cocktail before we dance. It’s very, very good. And then when we’ve had some more of it we should dance with everyone because dancing’s fun and also it’ll work off the drink.’ She poked Dan triumphantly in his chest. His solid, muscly, lovely chest. ‘And that is a wise plan. It’s wisdom I have gained in my twenties. Ten years ago I didn’t know all this wise stuff.’
Dan nodded very solemnly. ‘So wise,’ he said.
They were halfway through their next green cocktails when ‘Dancing Queen’ started playing.
‘Oh. My. Goodness,’ Evie said, trying to put her glass down. Weird. It was like the table had moved. She tried again. ‘There. Glass down. Anyway. As I was saying. OMG. It’s like this is our song.’
‘Totally. The ABBA wedding.’
‘Exactly. We have to dance to this.’
‘We do.’ Dan pushed his chair back and it fell over. He turned round and frowned at it for a moment and then bent down to pick it up. He tried a lot of times but it didn’t work. ‘Something wrong with that chair,’ he said. He held his hand out to Evie. She took it and they began to dance-wind their way through all the tables to the dance floor.
‘Wait,’ said Evie suddenly. ‘We need to make you more Vegas.’ Dan had the top button on his shirt undone, but it wasn’t enough. She started to undo the next three. She was concentrating hard but it was really tricky doing buttons this evening. Dan tried to help her but he was rubbish at it too. Eventually she had them undone.
‘Liking your hairy chest,’ she said admiringly.
‘Well, thank you. I like your chest too.’
They both kind of scrunched their faces and looked at each other for a moment, and then started to move towards the dance floor again.
When they got to it, Evie stood on tiptoes to say over the music, ‘We should look for the others,’ in Dan’s ear. She didn’t want to look for the others.
‘Definitely,’ Dan said, spinning her round and making no attempt to move further into the centre of the dance floor.
Two songs later, Evie was very hot and her stomach was churning a bit.
‘I think I need to get some air,’ she told Dan.
‘Let’s go,’ Dan said, grabbing her hand.
‘Woah,’ said Evie as they left the building. ‘That’s so chilly. Why isn’t Las Vegas hot?’
‘It’s December.’
‘Oh yes. You’re very good at months. It’s December because it’s my birthday tomorrow.’
Dan started to sing ‘Happy birthday to you’ as they walked down the Strip.
Evie got her phone out to google the sights of Las Vegas. The Fountains of Bellagio and the High Roller were supposed to be somewhere around, but it was really difficult to work out what direction they were walking in.
‘You’re shivering,’ Dan said. ‘Come here.’ He put his arm round her and Evie leaned against him. Melted against him if she was honest. ‘That better?’
‘Mmm?’ Evie loved how their hips were bumping as they walked and how Dan’s arm felt along her shoulders. She could smell his musky scent too. And if she glanced up she could see his strong jawline and cheek. So bloody sexy.
‘You should have brought a coat.’
‘I don’t need a coat. I have a gorgeous man heating me up.’ She stopped and pointed. ‘Look. It’s an actual Vegas wedding chapel. We have to check it out.’
Dan nodded. ‘Important sightseeing.’
‘That is one of the tackiest Christmas trees I’ve ever seen,’ said Evie in delight, stopping outside the chapel. She looked up above the chapel entrance. ‘And that is one of the biggest bunches of mistletoe I’ve ever seen.’
Mistletoe.
She looked at Dan and smiled. He looked at her and smiled too.
‘Mistletoe,’ he said. ‘It’s obligatory.’
Evie closed her eyes as Dan bent his head and kissed her. And, God that was good. His firm lips on hers, their mouths opening for each other, his arms round hers, hers round him, her hands on his back, his legs hard against hers.
They were pressed up against the wall of the chapel now, kissing and kissing.
‘Remember,’ said Dan, between urgent kisses, ‘the pact we made. Under the mistletoe. Our fallback pact. We were young then.’
‘Yes,’ panted Evie. ‘A lot… older… now.’
‘We said your thirtieth birthday.’ Dan ran a finger along her cheekbone and jawline.
‘Mmm.’ Evie couldn’t really speak. Where else was he going to trace his finger?
A couple came out of the chapel and nearly bumped into them.
‘Whoops.’ Evie would have fallen over if Dan hadn’t held her up. ‘Your arms are very, very strong,’ she told him, giving his biceps a little squeeze. ‘Let’s go and look inside.’
‘You wanna get a licence, you only have a half hour. Closes at midnight,’ a woman with a gigantic beehive hairdo and a pale-yellow pussy-bow blouse told them as they stood there, still with their arms round each other’s waists.
‘Do you work here?’ Evie asked.
The woman nodded. Her hair didn’t move.
‘You have great hairspray,’ Evie said. ‘I’d like hairspray like that.’ She leaned in towards the woman and pulled Dan in with her. ‘I’d like to get married. I’d like to get a licence. This is Dan. I’m Evie. We have a pact. We made it under the mistletoe and we kissed just now under mistletoe.’ She stuck her finger out to point at the mistletoe but everything was spinning a bit and she couldn’t remember where it was. Never mind. It was irrelevant. The point was the pact. ‘We’re supposed to get married on my thirtieth birthday tomorrow if we’re still single.’
‘And are you both still single?’ the woman asked.
They both nodded.
‘So you need to get married, right now.’
‘What’s your name?’ Evie asked.
‘Susan.’
Evie turned to Dan. ‘Susan’s making a lot of sense.’
Dan nodded, looking really serious. ‘She is.’
Forty-five minutes later, they emerged from the chapel, Evie holding their marriage certificate and a glass of sparkling wine, and wearing a gigantic beam.
She clinked her glass against Dan’s and they both took a long drink.
‘Look. We’re back under the mistletoe,’ she said, pointing.
Dan kissed the back of her neck and then moved the neckline of her dress down so that he could kiss along her shoulder.
‘That is so good,’ Evie told him, shivering. ‘And you’re my husband and I would very much like you to have your wicked way with me.’
‘I would very much like that too.’ Dan kissed the curve of her neck some more.
‘Hotel’s this way,’ Susan called.
Evie opened her eyes and tried to focus. It was difficult, because Dan had his hands inside her dress and she had hers under his shirt and his stubble was grazing her face and her chest so deliciously.
‘And get a room,’ Susan yelled. ‘This way.’
‘Different hotel,’ Dan said.
‘No, you bought the honeymoon suite package. This way.’
Thirty-Two
Now – September 2022
Dan
Dan clapped Katie as she pulled the extending squeaky giraffe neck on her playmat over and over again.
‘You’re so clever,’ he told her. His daughter was amazing in every way. Her smiles, her chortles, the way she held her arms out to be cuddled, her giraffe-neck pulling.
The doorbell rang and he tensed as the familiar wave of sadness washed over him. He hated saying goodbye to Katie each time. And there was the underlying worry that Hannah might decide to move t
o New York after her maternity leave. She’d been vacillating about it for months now.
‘Hey, Hannah.’ He used his best cheery tone. You wanted to be on good terms with your daughter’s mother, however much you wished that she would just bloody tell you her plans.
‘Hi, Dan. How’s she been?’
‘She’s getting really good at pulling. Watch her go with that giraffe. I think she’s definitely a lot more advanced physically than your average baby of this age. And mentally. She recognises so many people.’ He might have to fake cheeriness around Hannah, but he didn’t have to fake adoration of his daughter, and if there was one thing they agreed on, it was that she was literally the most perfect human ever born.
They sat at opposite ends of Dan’s sofa and watched her for a minute or two, both clapping for her, while she gurgled and beamed at them.
Hannah suddenly stopped clapping and turned to face him and said, ‘I’m so sorry, Dan, I should have told you immediately. About New York.’
God. Dan felt his face and stomach drop, like the joy had been sucked straight out of the day. Out of his life. He couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Katie regularly any more.
‘I’ve decided not to go,’ she said. ‘I’m going to co-head the desk with someone already there, so I’ll only need to visit from time to time. I just can’t bring Katie up away from you, and my family. It wouldn’t be right for her, and I don’t actually think I could cope. I’d have to have at least two full-time nannies to cover my working hours.’
‘Are you certain?’ Dan said.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to be honest: I’m incredibly relieved. I’d have been devastated not to be able to see her regularly.’
‘I know.’ Hannah turned back round to Katie, who was still busy with the hanging giraffe. ‘I’m sure she’d have been devastated too, growing up far away from you.’ She turned back to Dan. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to work things out but I’m sure now that I can manage things remotely from here and just fly out there every month or two for a few days.’
‘Not a problem,’ Dan said. He really wanted to ask about formalising arrangements about how often he would see Katie going forward, but maybe now wasn’t the time.
‘So I’m thinking maybe we carry on like this for a while,’ Hannah said – Dan had Katie one full day each weekend and for the occasional evening – ‘and then once I stop breastfeeding you could see her a minimum of one evening a week and have her to stay over one night every weekend? And have her for at least a couple of weeks’ holiday every year? Would that suit you?’
‘Yes,’ Dan said. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘No, thank you. You’re an amazing dad.’
* * *
Dan was still in such a state of euphoria that he genuinely wasn’t that pissed off that he was going to be seeing Evie with Matthew that evening. Angus had won a wine tasting for eight at a London wine merchant’s, and he and Sasha had invited Max and Greggy (who they were staying with), Evie and Matthew, and Dan and Angus’s brother Rory, who also lived in London, to join them. Dan hadn’t really wanted to go, because of Evie and Matthew, basically, but he hadn’t felt like he could say no, especially now that things were so good between him and Max, because he wanted to keep them that way.
He arrived about fifteen minutes later than the others, due to the longer-than-expected handover chat with Hannah, and walked in to see the seven of them sitting round a table, with one spare chair, for Dan, obviously.
Evie was telling an anecdote – something to do with spiders and her classroom – and she was gesticulating and laughing almost as much as she was talking. She looked gorgeous, as always. God, he’d messed up not asking her out when she was single.
He frowned. The man she was sitting next to really didn’t look like the man Dan remembered as Matthew. It wasn’t like Matthew was etched in Dan’s mind but at the same time he did quite clearly remember talking to the two of them – and not enjoying it – and Matthew had definitely been tall and blond (and annoyingly handsome), and this man was shorter and dark.
‘Hi, Dan. This is Jimmy, my flatmate,’ Rory said. Looked like Matthew wouldn’t be coming given that there were no more spare chairs. Excellent. Probably playing more golf.
Dan said hi around the table, trying not to smile too much at Matthew’s absence.
An hour and a half later, they’d all shifted positions round the table and Dan was sitting next to Evie, who was completely ignoring the host – who’d been a sommelier at a couple of very fancy restaurants before setting up this business, and sounded like he really knew his stuff and was currently talking about vineyards in Armenia and Turkey – and was busy re-tasting the six different reds they’d tried so far.
‘I always like the cheapest ones,’ she said happily. ‘Which I think you’ll find is this one because it’s the nicest.’ She finished one of the glasses.
‘Wasn’t that the one he said was served in the Ritz Paris and is incredibly rare, like the grapes only develop once every twenty years and are trampled by foot by princes and unicorns?’
‘Nope. I really like it, so I think you’ll find it’s Chateau Lidl at best.’ Evie picked up one of her other glasses, took a sip and sucked her cheeks in. ‘This will be the expensive one. One mouthful of that and I can feel a headache coming on. Seriously. I know my stuff. I can rank them in order of price based on what I like.’
Their host raised his voice and said, ‘So now I’d like to play a little game. I’d like you to rank them according to price. There’s a prize for the winner.’
‘Yessssss,’ said Evie. ‘Finally, my life skills come into play. I’m going to get them all right.’
‘There’s no way you will.’ Dan closed his eyes and re-tasted all of his and started to arrange them in order.
When he’d finished, Evie looked at his and compared them to her own. ‘You’re rubbish,’ she said. ‘You’ve only got two right.’
‘I’m genuinely quite good at this,’ Dan told her. It was only fair to warn her. ‘Currently you only have two right. You’re welcome to copy me.’
‘No way,’ said Evie. ‘I want that prize.’
‘And let’s go,’ said their host.
Five minutes later, Evie was bowing and clutching her prize: a bottle of rosé. ‘Six out of six,’ she crowed.
‘I’m genuinely impressed,’ Dan said when everyone had finished clapping and she’d sat back down.
‘Always works. Nicest the cheapest, worst the most expensive. I’m a very cheap date.’
‘So what’s Matthew up to this evening?’
‘We split up,’ Evie said.
‘Oh, no,’ said Dan, trying really hard to sound sincere. ‘Are you okay?’ He really wanted to ask what had happened.
‘Yep, fine, thank you.’ Evie gave him a small smile and said, ‘So which was your favourite of the wines?’
They spilled out onto the road outside the wine merchant’s at about eleven, all saying how much they’d enjoyed the evening.
‘Tubing it home?’ Dan asked Evie. Max, Greggy, Sasha and Angus were going back together to Max and Greggy’s place in North London.
He was going to take the plunge. He should have asked her out at the beginning of the year, built on their night in Vegas. Maybe she’d be happy to go on a date with him now, maybe she wouldn’t, but he should give it a shot. He could ask her on the way home.
‘Yep. I think Rory and Jimmy are going to Wimbledon on the District Line too so we can all go together.’
‘Great,’ Dan said. Not exactly what he’d had in mind.
‘Night,’ he said to the other three, fifty minutes later, when the train stopped at Fulham Broadway. He could have saved himself a fair amount of time and left them at Earl’s Court and not waited for the Wimbledon branch train, but he’d hoped the whole time that he might be able to chat to Evie, just the two of them.
Okay. He was going to text her instead. The worst that could happen would be that she
’d say no.
Thirty-Three
Now – September 2022
Evie
Evie’s phone buzzed with a message from Dan as they pulled into Putney Bridge Tube station, two stops after Fulham Broadway where he’d got off. She took a quick peek at it.
He wanted to know if she’d like to go to the cinema next Saturday evening. He wanted to know if she wanted to go to the cinema with him. It had to be a date. A date. With Dan.
Well, yes, she wanted to go out with him. But should she go out with him? She already knew that there’d be a lot of potential for hurt in a relationship with him, and it didn’t feel like he was the one for her long-term. But she really wanted to go on a date with him. A proper date after all these years.
She was busy next Saturday, and the one after. She could cancel her plans.
And that would be stupid. You shouldn’t put your love life – love life – he’d asked her out – above your friends.
And if he was properly interested, he’d be happy to see her in three weeks’ time.
‘Evie, you’re in a world of your own,’ Rory said. ‘It’s our stop. Good job we’re here or you might have ended up spending the night on the train.’
* * *
They met three weekends later. The cinema was within walking distance from Evie’s flat, but she was running late. She’d spent too long deciding what to wear and arrived, at a bit of a run, a good ten minutes after the time they’d agreed. Dan was standing, hands in pockets, in the middle of the cinema’s wide entrance, smiling at her as she hurried through the rotating doors. There was something very nice about the fact that, unlike all the other people waiting, he didn’t have his phone in his hand.
‘Hi,’ she said, trying not to pant. She really needed to get fitter.
