Page 68 of The Wedding Forecast

‘Doing his sudoku on the toilet.’

‘Okay, I really have to go. Bye.’

I hang up.

‘Do they think I’m a bad influence?’ Mac asks, when I emerge from the bathroom.

‘Worse. A potential murderer.’

‘But I’m wearing a Christmas jumper. Did they see my Christmas jumper?’

‘That would make you less trustworthy in their eyes.’

‘Why?’

‘You look like you’re trying to appear innocent.’

‘Of what?’

‘Everything.’

‘I am innocent!’ he says.

‘You don’t have an innocent face,’ I say, and he smiles.

‘I’ll work on it.’

I decide to wear the long dress of Hayley’s. I feel good in that dress, and I want to feel good right now.

Mac’s eyes are on me when I come out of the bathroom.

‘Shall we go?’ I say.

‘Will you be warm enough?’ he asks.

‘You sound like my mother,’ I say, smiling. ‘It’s thick material.’

He reaches out and touches the dress, resting his hand on my hip.

‘I’m warm,’ I say.

He moves his hand to my bare arm.

‘You are,’ he says. He’s sitting on the bed and I’m standing in front of him, and there’s a moment, with his hand on my arm, and the bed behind him, and I imagine myself gently pushing him back onto it. I can imagine all sorts of things. I can hear my breathing, and I can hear his.

But then he moves his hand, and the spell is broken. I step back, and put on my unsexy giant puffer jacket, and my big boots, and I grab my bag, and we’re off, just friends. It was one thing for me to flirt at the dinner table, but not making a move during that moment, when we have a whole hotel room to ourselves, that really sends a clear message.

Nothing is going to happen.

This thought lands like a thud in my guts. I knew it last night, intellectually, and accepted it this morning, but now it’s real. It hits hard. Because, for all my New York excitement, my white Christmas enthusiasm, my packed schedule of touristy experiences, I came here most of all for him.

We get the subway to the show, which I find thrilling to a degree I shouldn’t, since I get trams and trains every day in Melbourne, but the New York subway is more magical somehow. More glamorous. I’ve seen the subway on so many TV shows. When I tell Mac this, he laughs.

‘I saw a rat on here yesterday.’

‘Still magic.’

‘And look, there’s a magic puddle of an unidentifiable liquid.’