Page 74 of The Wedding Forecast

‘You’re not English.’

‘He thinks I am.’

‘Go back to the hotel. I’ll call you.’

‘Are you coming back later or what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I need to know so I can go to sleep or wait up for you.’

‘I’ll message you. I’ll let you know.’

‘You don’t have any of your stuff.’

‘True. So I probably will come back.’

The cab starts moving.

‘Anna! Goodbye!!!!’ Hayley leans out the window, looking distraught and confused, like we’re never going to see each other again, like a woman waving a handkerchief from a train window in an old-time war movie.

I laugh. I turn to Mac, who has flagged another cab.

‘Hold this cab while I get my jacket,’ he says, running back into the bar. I smile at the cab driver and slide into the backseat, nervously, half thinking Mac will get caught up in there and not come back and then what will I do, just get the cab back to our hotel and slink in a few minutes after Hayley? But there he is, jogging over the slippery ground with ease and then getting into the back of the cab and leaning forward and telling the driver his address.

He pulls on his jacket, shivering, pushing his hair back. The cab pulls out down the street, and we both lean back on the seats and look at each other.

‘What are we doing?’ I say.

‘I don’t know,’ he says.

‘This is your idea.’

‘Well I just—’

‘What?’

‘I didn’t want to say goodbye.’

‘Me neither,’ I say. ‘But—’

He looks at me and waits.

‘But nothing,’ I say, because I can’t quite bring myself to say, ‘But what’s going to happen, sexually, when we get there?’

‘Remember when you were little and you would make friends really quickly and beg your parents for a sleepover?’ I say instead.

‘I didn’t really have that many sleepovers.’

‘Maybe it was just me. I’m an only child. I always wanted my friends to sleep over. It felt like the most exciting thing in the world. Another child in the house.’

‘Well then, yes, it’s like that. Will you come and have a sleepover at my place tonight?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ I say.

I regret this because now it feels like I have put us in the box of friendship. Even worse, childhood friendship.

He’s in a walk-up apartment, and I climb the stairs behind him. He turns to wait for me on the landing, and I smile up at him, trying not to show how hard I am breathing after five flights. My calves would be exquisite if I lived here.