Beauty and the Bridesmaid

Chapter Eight

Damien lives alone in a new-build block of flats near Wakefield city centre. Whenever one of the flats come up for sale, I always want to call up the estate agents and pretend I’m interested in buying one, just so that I can go for a look inside. Now I get to do that. I get to look inside Damien’s flat.

I feel almost nervous at the prospect. I mean, there’s no actual reason for me to be here. Anna would have been none the wiser if we’d just shared a taxi back to our respective homes. As I wait for Damien to unlock the door to his third floor flat, I wonder why this thought didn’t occur to me sooner.

Whose idea had it been anyway? He was the one who had suggested that he needed my help choosing a wedding present. But maybe he had expected me to tell the taxi driver my address after he gave him his. The taxi ride back here had actually been pretty quiet. I realise that I don’t really know the man whose flat I’m standing in that well at all. And I’m a lot more cautious than Anna about going anywhere with strangers. We’d only talked about Anna and how he couldn’t believe I could live with her. I was wrong to assume that he was flirting with her; apparently she’s totally not his type.

He’s pretty tidy, I observe from the minimalist living room/kitchen. Way tidier than me anyway. Even his fruit bowl on the kitchen counter looks organized. Maybe we would be incompatible? Or maybe I shouldn’t be thinking that far ahead at this stage.

“I won’t stay long,” I say, after declining Damien’s offer of a drink. My head is already pretty fuzzy from those cocktails and I’m an embarrassing drunk. Too embarrassing to be intoxicated around a man who might just be my wedding date.

“How do you know I don’t really need help with a wedding present?” he asks with that sexy sparkle in his eyes.

Oh my God. Is he flirting with me? I always was terrible at flirting. Maybe I should just say something funny. “So Andy Warhol, huh? He really had his fifteen minutes of fame,” I say in a fluster, seeing the pop-art print of Marilyn Monroe on the living room wall.

Damien quirks an eyebrow at me, as though he’s just realised he’s invited a crazy woman back to his flat.

I shrug away the horrendous joke and step further into the room. “What a lovely space!”

“Yeah, it suits me.”

I slip off my jacket and nod, trying to think of intelligent things to say about the interior but my brain still feels alcohol-woolly.

He breaks the silence, saying, “So I was round at Ash’s last night for a few drinks and Lela’s minions came home with her.” He pauses and rolls his eyes. If he shares my opinion of Steph and Kerry, maybe we are compatible. “They said you’d freaked out or something.”

I groan at the memory. “Some pre-wedding makeover, only it wasn’t really. I ended up looking worse and…well, it brought up all my feelings about Lela marrying Ash without ever talking to me about it.”

Damien slides onto the only couch in the room and pats the faded beige cushion for me to join him. “I know it’s been tough for you to get over him,” he says like an agony aunt as I sit beside him.

I shake my head in frustration. Why does everybody assume that my feelings towards Ash and Lela’s wedding are because of unresolved love for him?

“And it’s really insensitive of Lela to expect you to follow all her crazy demands without even thinking about how you might feel,” he continues, sounding even more like a Dear Deidre advice column.

“Let me clear this up.” I sigh and say, “Ash and I are very much over and, if he was marrying some random stranger, then I wouldn’t really be that interested. The reason I’m so mad at Lela is because she just didn’t think it was important enough to tell me sooner that she had struck up a relationship with him before dropping it into conversation that she was marrying him, and asking me to be her head bridesmaid.”

“Okay,” Damien replies slowly. “I think I get it.”

“Great. Now, how do I explain that to Lela?”

“She doesn’t see what she’s done wrong, does she?”

“Not at all. Did you know she actually contacted him on Facebook? She went out of her way to speak to him and never even mentioned it to me. Not one ‘guess who I was talking to the other day!’ in the catching up phone calls we’ve had.”

“Maybe she thought you’d be upset?”

“And the way around that is to ask me to be head bridesmaid?”

Damien shrugs, unable to explain the inner workings of Lela’s mind. “Good point.”

I wrap my arms around myself, wishing I hadn’t taken my jacket off. “What else did Lela and the Toxin Twins have to say about me?”

“Toxin Twins?”

“An old nickname,” I explain. “Steph and Kerry used to dress alike at school.” I don’t bother telling him that Lela and I used to think we looked like twins when we were kids.

“Ah okay. Well I didn’t hear all of their conversation ‘cause we guys aren’t supposed to be interested in all your girlie gossip.” He raises his right hand in a flippant gesture. “All I really heard them talking about was how you’d acted at this makeover thing, and then one of them suggested that…that maybe you’re still in love with Ash and…that was it really.”

I sense from his hesitancy that he might know a little bit more than that but I don’t push it. Knowing that they think I might be after Lela’s fiancé is enough. How am I supposed to get out of that? Should I apologise to Lela, pretend to love the dress and the crazy makeup, and that I’m totally happy for her? Will she even still want me at her wedding if she thinks I’m going to make a move on the groom? Actually, that might not be so bad. I could live with her thinking I never got over my high school boyfriend if it meant I wouldn’t have to participate in her bridal demands.

But she’s my childhood best friend. My only best friend really. Unless you count Anna. And I know I paint her like a complete bitch but she has good points too. She’s fiercely loyal for one, and never ditched me to sit with someone cooler in the school cafeteria of cliques. And she puts on her ditsiness for some unknown reason. She’s actually really clever and knows loads of useful stuff. Not just fluff like which celebrities are dating and how to act around boys, although she always was good for advice on the subject of the male sex. She was the one who got me through my breakup with Ash, ironically. Oh God, I really do want to be happy for her. I want to be excited about being a bridesmaid. I want to plan a playful hen party for her involving large quantities of alcohol and embarrassing missions for her to do like getting a pair of boxer shorts or grinding with a bald man.  I want to call her right now and tell her how sorry I am. But I can’t. Because she’s still going to marry Ash. And neither of us can change the fact that it didn’t occur to her to tell me sooner.