The Rom-Com Collection: The Plus One, Something for the Weekend, A Marriage of Connivance

by Natasha West

  Amy felt Charlie’s mouth begin to travel down her body, and realised where she was going. She felt deliciously scandalous. She was about to receive oral sex from a girl. She’d had sex before, but hadn’t had this particular pleasure. She wondered if she’d like it.

  The second Charlie’s mouth found her, that became a silly question. It was replaced by another question. ‘Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me it could feel like this?’ Because Charlie knew her business, it turned out. Amy’s orgasm was shockingly powerful. Quick but strong.

  But Amy knew she had to be quiet, they were only in a tent after all, so Charlie didn’t hear the screams she was hoping for. But when Amy’s trembling body suddenly relaxed and flopped back, Charlie sensed it was over. She had no idea if she’d done it right, being that Amy had mostly been on mute. But when she looked up to find out what kind of reception she was getting, she saw Amy’s flushed, perspiring face and dopey smile. It was her first time seeing that look but she knew it immediately for what it was. A rave review.

  Amy was amazed. This had been considerably better than the eight times she’d had sex before. They had all been with Greg, her second and now former boyfriend. It had been, she’d told friends later when pressed, ‘fine.’ And that was the word for it. Not amazing, not horrible, somewhere in the middle. Amy never orgasmed. Greg always did. She thought that was probably a pretty standard way for sex to go. She didn’t mind too much. She knew she was able to provide for herself in that department, if needed. But now she was starting to realise just how much Greg had short-changed her, in a lot of ways. Because Charlie was putting her first, making her feel special in a way he’d never managed. She would have been angry if she hadn’t felt so mellow, the booze and sex creating a tranquillity she rarely felt. Greg simply seemed like a bad dream.

  Charlie slid up next to Amy, lying down next to the panting girl, watching her pulling her knickers up. They lay there in the dark for a second. Amy had a sudden thought.

  ‘Oh, would you like me to-’

  ‘No, that’s alright’ said Charlie. And it was alright. She’d just gone down on the girl of her dreams. It seemed greedy to ask for more than that.

  ‘That was amazing’ Amy said, still trying to catch her breath.

  Charlie smiled cockily.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Amy swatted her.

  ‘Hey, don’t get a big head about it.’

  Charlie laughed, feeling good. Everything felt different. She felt like she was becoming the person she wanted to be. And she’d snagged Amy Sinclair along the way. Life was finally happening.

  Later, they said their goodnights at Amy’s tent and Amy had given her a slow, tender kiss on the cheek. Charlie hadn’t tried to make more of it. There was time for that.

  That night, she barely slept, abuzz with the possibilities that seemed to be opening up. Amy had said that things would be different at school, that they couldn’t be friends. But that was before. They were a lot more than that now. Surely this changed things? Charlie wasn’t expecting to be announced as Amy’s girlfriend on Monday morning, but she thought maybe something could be worked out. Maybe they could meet secretly, be together in stolen moments in their final year. After that, who knew? Because Charlie knew without doubt that she was completely in love with Amy.

  In a tent across the campsite, Amy was having a rather different reaction. She was starting to sober up. And with sobriety came a growing, nagging feeling that she had done something she shouldn’t have. By the time the sun came up, that feeling was set in stone. Amy had let Charlie Black, a girl, and worse, a social outcast get her drunk and seduce her. At least that was the story Amy had decided to believe once the morning came. She was horrified. Everything that had felt good in the middle of the night was scrubbed away by a tide of panic. Amy was imagining what people would say at school if they knew about this. She’d be demolished, ruined and most certainly dethroned. No one would speak to her again. No one that mattered, anyway.

  There was only one way to handle this. Pretend it hadn’t happened. Stage one of that plan involved getting her Dad to drive to Wales and pick her up. He’d ask questions but she thought she could get around that with the phrase ‘Women’s troubles’. It would halt further enquiries. She’d hide until he arrived. There was no way she was going to be able to explain this to Charlie’s face. Better to avoid an awkward scene. Charlie would get it, given time.

  The next morning, Charlie drifted to her final breakfast shift, past the food storage area, smiling to herself about what had occurred there just hours before.

  In the breakfast tent, Charlie got her hairnet and pinny on, all the while looking for Amy. She wasn’t there. By the end of breakfast, she still hadn’t arrived. Charlie was confused. Maybe she was too hung over to get out of bed?

  As the kids all said tearful goodbyes to their new best friends and favourite counsellors, Charlie drifted through the campsite, searching for Amy. She asked around, no one had seen her this morning. By the time the tents were pulled down, Charlie finally accepted that she was gone. As she waited for the bus with the other counsellors, she sent Amy a text gently asking where she was. There was no reply.

  The next week, school started. Charlie was nervous and sad. She hadn’t heard from Amy, but had seen from her MySpace that she was at home safe. She knew what that meant but part of her kept hoping she’d gotten it wrong, that Amy would have some crazy story about what had kept her away from Charlie. That she’d be apologetic and pleased to see her.

  As Charlie walked through the hall to her English lesson, she saw a blonde flash at the other end of the corridor. It was Amy, surrounded by the usual gaggle of sycophants. She watched her for a moment and then Amy turned and caught her eye. It was just for a second. And then she looked away, turning back to her friends, laughing at some joke made by a large boy in a rugby jersey.

  Charlie, the invisible girl of Harewood, had finally been seen by someone. And that person had looked away. Charlie had been right all along. There were worse things than being invisible.

  Chapter Six

  Present day

  Round the corner from the hotel, Charlie and Amy were silently staring at each other. Charlie was agape. The silence had lasted for about three seconds so far. It felt like forever. Or to be more accurate, it felt like eleven years.

  Eventually, Charlie’s mouth spat out a word.

  ‘Amy?’

  Amy had a split second to decide how she was going to handle this situation. The decision she made was to pretend she didn’t know who Charlie was. She slapped her most professional smile on her face.

  ‘Have we met before?’

  Those four words were like a punch in the throat. Charlie had never really forgotten Amy. How could she? Amy had made her final year at school absolutely hellish. It had been awful watching Amy strutting about the campus while she’d been suffering with a teenage lovesickness of superhuman proportions. Amy’s refusal to acknowledge her had been like a knife in her stomach, slowly twisted deeper with every passing day. And suddenly, it was all rushing back to Charlie. Because it was actually happening again. Amy was pretending not to know her.

  Charlie felt liquid fury filling her veins as an eleven-year-old anger abruptly shot to the surface.

  ‘Have we met before? Are you fucking kidding me?’

  Amy’s smile began to fade. She’d made a huge mistake in acting as if she didn’t remember Charlie. That much was obvious.

  Charlie was staring at her with black rage in her eyes. She might have descended into a complete meltdown if a voice hadn’t broken the moment.

  ‘Oi, Charlie! Is this Lucy?’

  Charlie turned to see Maddie holding her large dress up and tottering toward them. Charlie had about two seconds to decide what she was going to do. It was a hell of a pickle to be caught in.

  On the one hand, Amy Sinclair, life ruiner, had turned out to be her Rent-a-Date. And then had the temerity to act like she’d never met her before. Even t
hough she’d been the deliverer of what she knew full well had been an epic teenage orgasm.

  On the other, Amy was also possibly her only salvation from a humiliation that would never be lived down, not till her dying day. It wasn’t much of a choice.

  Charlie turned back to Amy, murmuring ‘You’re Lucy, alright?’

  Amy didn’t blink. She simply stepped toward Maddie, her smile back in place.

  ‘You’re Maddie, I presume? I’m Lucy, Charlie’s girlfriend.’

  Maddie shook her hand, and looked her up and down.

  ‘Wow, you’ve done well for yourself, Sis!’

  Charlie didn’t have a reply to that. She was still trying to figure out how to be normal, given the situation. In the end, she simply shrugged and tried to give a look that said ‘I don’t know how I did it!’ She managed to get seventy percent of the way to that look, which was frankly amazing, given how discombobulated she felt.

  Amy was a different animal altogether. This was what she did for a living, faking intimacy with strangers. It was her skillset. Her transition to Lucy had been immediate.

  ‘What are you talking about? I’m the lucky one.’ She turned to Charlie and gestured at her. ‘I mean, look at her in that dress.’

  Maddie appraised Charlie, as though through fresh eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose she scrubs up alright.’

  Charlie, who had been mute throughout this bizarre exchange, couldn’t take anymore. She had to break this up.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ she asked Maddie. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready to walk down the aisle?’

  ‘Not without all my bridesmaids, dipshit.’

  In all the weirdness, Charlie had forgotten that she was supposed to be a bridesmaid.

  ‘Oh, yeah, of course. Sorry.’

  ‘Come on then. Lucy, I think there’s a spot ready for you in the fourth row if you want to jump in there now.’

  Amy nodded and turned to Charlie. She pecked her on the cheek and said ‘See you in there’, already walking toward the hotel entrance. Charlie watched her go, her blood re-boiled. She knew that technically, Amy had just saved her hide. But that didn’t mean that all was forgiven. Far from it. In fact, Charlie would have needed the Hubble telescope to see forgiveness from where she was.

  Charlie was stood in the foyer of the hotel, watching as the flower girl, Jane’s daughter, Milly, walked down the aisle in the reception hall of the swanky hotel, scattering rose petals with a surprising amount of precision for a six-year-old. Charlie, Jane and Lilah were to go next, with Paige behind her and then Maddie and Ed.

  Charlie was doing her best to concentrate on her role, but her head was all over the place. Because sitting a few feet away, at that very moment, was the one person she’d never wanted to see again in her life. Not only that, but she was stuck pretending she was in love with that person until the DJ packed up his decks tonight.

  ‘Walk!’ Paige suddenly squawked in her ear.

  Charlie felt a small shove and realised it was go-time. She shuffled quickly forward, realising there was too big of a gap between her and Lilah. After a few stumbling steps, she found her rhythm and began to do the wedding pace. Left together, right together, left together, right together. And that helped. As long as she kept focus on what her feet were supposed to do, she didn’t have to think about Amy. She certainly wouldn’t be able to look at her. That was very lucky because some masochistic instinct was telling her to do just that.

  Amy, for her part, was also doing her best not to catch Charlie’s eye. Her professionalism had saved her in the moment, but it was all starting to catch up to her. The first girl she had ever slept with had hired her to pretend to be her girlfriend. What the hell were the odds of a thing like that happening?

  Amy was glad of the few minutes she had while the ceremony took place to figure out how she was going to handle the situation. Technically, she could leave. That option was on the table. She’d be able to explain to Gary about the situation and how angry Charlie seemed. She could plead that it was an unreasonable working environment. He wouldn’t be happy about it, but he probably wouldn’t sack her. She brought in too much business for the agency.

  Amy considered all that, but in her heart, she knew she couldn’t really leave Charlie like that. Not again.

  Because in her adult life, Amy had come to terms with the fact that she’d treated Charlie horribly. She knew full well what a bitch she’d been. In the intervening eleven years, it had been one of her few sources of shame. She’d considered reaching out to Charlie over social media, but in the end, had never quite managed it. She thought that on reflection, she would only be picking a scab that had most likely healed. She decided to leave Charlie to get on with her life.

  And then, in a coincidence that would have made Amy laugh if it wasn’t happening to her, Charlie had been forcibly shoved back into her life. And what had Amy done? She’d tried to claim plausible deniability. It was an old Amy trick, one she thought she’d grown out of. In retrospect, it had been the worst possible move. Just thinking about the look on Charlie’s face was enough to bring her out in a slight sweat. The woman had been livid. Thinking about that furious look, Amy briefly revisited the idea of fleeing the hotel at the first opportunity. But then she considered what happened when Charlie’s sister had shown up. She’d asked Amy for help.

  Amy decided then that no matter what happened that day, no matter how uncomfortable things might get, she’d take it. She would do her job. She supposed she owed Charlie that much.

  The ceremony was pleasant enough. Maddie and Josh had decided against self-written vows, going with the traditional ones instead. Everyone in the congregation was quietly pleased about that. Written vows could be a minefield. They always said more than the couple saying them realised. If they were too romantic, it felt like overcompensation for some deep problems. If they were too understated, it was a sign of the same. So as the current couple repeated all the standard promises, the wedding attendees felt safe in the knowledge that no one was going to say anything embarrassing. They didn’t want any unpredictable jazz with their weddings, thank you very much. They wanted classic karaoke. The comfortable predictability of a Madonna hit from the eighties.

  After all the usual to-ing and fro-ing, Josh kissed Maddie and everyone clapped. Everyone except Charlie. Because the clapping signified the end of the wedding and the start of the reception. Charlie had been safe while all eyes were on the woman in the big white dress. And now some of that focus might start to turn her way.

  The registrar took Maddie and Josh to the side of the room, where a table was set up for the signing of the marriage license. Everyone else was starting to chatter while that took place.

  It couldn’t be avoided anymore. Charlie turned to see Amy. Amy gave her a little wave. It was pure panic, but it was all she could think to do with those resentful eyes pointing right at her.

  Charlie walked, very slowly, to where Amy was sitting. She sat down next to her and Amy was expecting some sort of dig to be directed at her.

  But Charlie didn’t do that.

  ‘Well, I’m starving. I hope there’s some good hor d’oeuvres at the reception. It always takes forever for the wedding meal to be served.’

  Amy was thrown for a second, forgetting to reply. Charlie took deep pleasure in seeing that. Because Charlie had decided that if Amy wanted to pretend not to know who she was, two could play at that game. Amy was supposed to be Lucy. Charlie would stick with that. She knew she’d thrown her teddy out of the pram when she’d first seen her, but she would never give her that satisfaction ever again. She’d never know how much she’d hurt her.

  Amy took this new approach as a sign that the way Charlie had initially reacted had only been a weird blip, a reaction to seeing her again after all this time and under such odd circumstances. And if Charlie could let it go, which she seemed to have done, then there was nothing further to say about it. She was here to be Lucy. And Lucy she would be.

 
; ‘Me too. I could eat a horse.’

  Charlie and Amy smiled at each other, a little too much teeth on both sides.

  But from a distance, they looked quite normal. In fact, after Maddie had finished signing the paperwork and posing for more snaps, she spotted them together. She turned to her new husband, Josh.

  ‘They really do look like the perfect couple, don’t they?’

  Chapter Seven

  Everyone was standing on the patio of the country hotel while the staff did the furniture swap around inside, and it was clear from the colour of the liquids in people’s glasses who was pacing themselves and who was ready to cut loose. Both Charlie and Amy were holding orange juices.

  They were stood next to Charlie’s Uncle Jack, who was already on his second champagne.

  ‘Lucy, is it?’

  Amy nodded.

  ‘And you two are a couple?’

  ‘Yes, it’s been, what?’ she turned to Charlie as though for confirmation, but she knew what the answer was. She’d had her bathroom research time. ‘Four months?’

  Charlie nodded ‘Mmm, about that.’

  ‘And how’s that going?’ Uncle Jack enquired.

  Charlie resisted the urge to shake her head. It might look to an outsider like her uncle was taking an interest in her new girlfriend, but Charlie had a feeling he was simply being pervy. Amy was, as far as he was concerned, a hot lesbian. It was his fantasy come to life and he was trying to squeeze out some details. Charlie marvelled at his ability to compartmentalise the fact that this sexy fantasy was, as far as he knew, sleeping with his niece.