Page 82 of The Wedding Forecast

‘Me too.’

I take out my phone and look at my email as the cab is pulling up at the diner. There’s a reply from Marco. I quickly put my phone away. Tomorrow’s problem.

‘Tell me everything!’ Hayley practically screeches with delight when I slide into the booth. ‘Every single detail of the se…Oh. Hi Mac,’ she says, suddenly registering him behind me, lowering her voice and attempting to look calm and sensible.

He smiles at her. ‘Hi,’ he says, eyes twinkling.

‘I didn’t see you there,’ Hayley says.

‘I assumed.’

‘Mac thought he’d have breakfast with us,’ I say.

I’m not sure if Hayley will be okay with this or not. But she smiles.

‘Oh Mac, stay with us for the whole day if you want, we need a tour guide,’ she says immediately. I smile at her gratefully.

And so, we all spend the day together. Or most of the day, until Mac has to go to work. I decide I will keep some distance from Mac so Hayley doesn’t feel like she’s stuck hanging around with a loved-up couple, but that idea quickly falls away as I realise I can’t keep away from him and we sit with our legs pressed together in the booth. We’re like magnets, always finding ways to touch, at the hip, the arm, his foot touching mine under the table, his eyes always seeking me out, his hand slipping into mine. I lean back into him when we’re standing looking at art, and he wraps his arms around me. He sneaks a kiss when Hayley’s not watching. He runs his hand gently across my back.

I see Hayley noticing us, and I avoid her eyes. I think she’ll have a lot to say about it, even with just her face, and I don’t want to open any of those comments until after we’ve left. I am in the bubble. I have just a few hours left of this.

Hayley is determined to see as much as she can in one day, and so we walk from one thing to the next, from MoMA to Central Park back to Grand Central Station, with a focus bordering on manic. I want to complain that my legs are sore, but I dare not.

Then Mac has to go, and we’re faced with that goodbye moment again.

‘Come back to my place tonight, after your show,’ he says to me.

‘Okay,’ I say, as if it’s reasonable and sensible and practical to catch a cab across the city at 11 pm, and then back to my hotel early the next morning to fly home.

25

THE TRIP HOME feels cursed before we even start. I somehow set my alarm to the wrong time at Mac’s house, in a post-orgasm haze. (We had sex as soon as I walked in the door the night before, pressed against the wall, hungry, almost insatiable, aware of the clock ticking—is this the last time, the second-last time, the third-last time?) And now I am scrambling, late again but it really matters this time, there’s a plane to catch and Mac is coming with me in the cab again. I tell him not to. We should just say goodbye here in his apartment. He says we can say goodbye at my hotel. And I’m glad, because I want the extra minutes with him. We’re counting in minutes now. He holds my hand in the cab. He presses it against his chest.

The traffic is terrible, the weather is terrible, and Hayley is frantic when I get to the hotel room. She can’t get everything in her bag. I packed mine yesterday, but I still seem to have things strewn everywhere. The trinkets from the Christmas market don’t fit but I have to take them with me. They’re sentimental, precious, the most important items in my life maybe.

Mac is waiting in the lobby downstairs. Every time I think we’re doing the final goodbye, he finds a way to stay a bit longer. Hayley and I get our suitcases closed, do a final room check, and head down to the lobby. Hayley goes to reception to check us out, and I stand in front of Mac.

‘So this is our real goodbye,’ I say.

‘This is it.’

I slip my arms around him. He is wearing a denim jacket with a sheepskin sherpa collar, which is the style of jacket I have always found irresistible on men. Have I? Or am I in such a state, I’m rewriting my own history? I don’t know. He is irresistible to me in it now. Underneath the jacket, he has the grey zip hoodie I wore at his apartment, and I pull on the drawstrings.

‘Can I have this?’

‘Have what?’

‘Your hoodie? To wear home?’ I am aware it is probably an unreasonable request, but I don’t care. We are at the don’t-care stage. I need a piece of him, the ugly taxicab ornament isn’t enough, the badly designed snow globe isn’t enough, the photos won’t be enough, I need to peel something off his body as a memento.

He looks at me, takes off his jacket and then unzips the hoodie and gives it to me, even though he’s only wearing a white T-shirt underneath. I pull it on, over what I’m wearing, and it smells like him.

‘You look cute,’ he says.

‘You’ll freeze,’ I say.

He pulls on his jacket and shrugs. ‘I’ll survive.’

He gives me a quick smile.