The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights

by Sarah Lefebve

  It’s evening by the time we get back to the hotel.

  Waiting for the lift James strokes the back of my neck and I shiver. Inside he presses the button for our floor and then kisses me, pinning me to the wall by my hands.

  I don’t want to go home. I want to stay here forever.

  We reach our floor and I can barely move, I’m aching for him so badly.

  Back in our room James slips my bag off my shoulder and tosses it on the bed.

  He kisses me softly, his lips barely touching mine and tugs gently at the ribbon securing my top around my neck. It falls to my waist and he pushes me towards the wall with his body. I can feel him harden against me.

  I lift my arms up and he slides my top up over my head, dropping it to the floor. He says nothing, but his eyes never leave mine. I don’t think I have ever wanted someone so badly. Or needed them. He unbuttons his own shirt and I slip my hands inside to slide it off his back.

  I tug at his belt. I want to feel him inside me.

  I wrap my arms around his neck and pull his face towards mine. And as I kiss him hard on the mouth his hands move down to where I want them. Where I need them.

  I want this night to last forever.

  I think this is how it feels to have found Mr Right.

  James is like the missing piece of my jigsaw puzzle. When he makes love to me I lose myself in him. I don’t know where I am, what day it is, whether it’s night or day. All I know is that I’m where everything is right.

  “Are you okay?” he asks softly as he moves inside me against the crisp white sheets, our clothes abandoned across the room with the unopened jar of chocolate body paint. Turns out we didn’t need it. We just needed each other.

  “Yes,” I whisper, the words barely audible, my arms holding him tight against me, scared to let go, scared no moment will ever compare to this one.

  I have to tell him.

  He has to know.

  “I have a present for you,” he says, later, tracing the curves of my body as we lie naked on top of the duvet, the air conditioning battling against a hot summer’s evening.

  “You just gave me one,” I smile.

  He grins. “Yeah, well, you deserve another one.”

  “What is it?”

  He slips off the bed and I watch him pad across the room.

  He returns with a small Macy’s bag, lies down next to me on the bed and hands it to me.

  There’s a box inside. A small box.

  I take it out and look at him.

  “It’s not a ring,” he laughs nervously.

  He’s right, it isn’t a ring. It’s earrings. And I’m no expert, but they look like diamonds.

  “They’re beautiful,” I say.

  “You’re beautiful. Becky, I…”

  “Wait!” I say, panicking.

  He looks hurt.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I say.

  He sits up on the bed. “What?”

  “I lied to you,” I tell him. I’m scared, but I have to tell him.

  “About what?”

  “When I said I hadn’t heard from any magazines yet, I lied. I have. I got a commission from one a couple of months ago. Before I met you.”

  “But that’s great. Why would you lie about that?”

  I look down at the earrings in my hand.

  “Why would you not tell me something like that?” he asks again.

  “Because of what it is I’m writing about. I didn’t want it to scare you off.”

  “What is it? How to lose a guy in ten days?” he laughs. “Because I have to tell you, you’re not doing very well!”

  I smile at him. “No.”

  “Well? It can’t be that bad, whatever it is.”

  “It’s ‘How do you know you’ve found Mr Right?’”

  He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me.

  He’s probably planning his escape. He travelled lightly – he could pack his bags while I’m on the loo. A taxi to the airport. A seat on the next flight home.

  I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s too soon.

  It feels like hours before he finally says something. It’s a question.

  “And have you found him yet?”

  “Yes,” I say, because I’m guessing the damage is already done, and I’ve got nothing left to lose.

  “Well that makes what I was about to tell you much easier,” he says.

  “And what’s that?” I ask.

  “I love you.”

  “Just out of interest,” James asks an hour later, after we have made a significant dent in the chocolate body paint.

  “How do you know?”

  I dip the flannel into the bath water and squeeze it out over him (well, there’s only so much chocolate you can lick off a person…)

  “Honestly? I don’t know how,” I tell him. “I just know.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN

  I consider phoning Jennifer Dutton. Telling her that it is indefinable after all. That my friends were right. That you do ‘just know’. That James isn’t my Mr Right because of how he makes my stomach flip over every time I see him, or because he can make me laugh without even trying, or because he’s the first guy I have ever truly been myself with. That it’s not because of his cute dimple, or the way his hair stands on end when he wakes up in the morning, or the way he touches my face when he kisses me like it’s the most precious thing in the world and he’s afraid he might break it.

  It’s none of those things and yet all of them.

  But if you do ‘just know’, then that’s still an answer isn’t it? It’s not the one I was expecting of course, but it is an answer.

  CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT

  The problem with finding Mr Right, I’m finding, is that it leaves no time for writing about him.

  Since we have been back from New York I have been busy every weekend.

  First there was the weekend in Brighton, when James met my parents. And Johnny and Sarah, and Jacob. I didn’t need to worry about them liking him. What with Johnny entertaining him with embarrassing childhoods stories about me, Jacob immediately holding his arms out for a cuddle (which was more than I got, the traitor,) and my mum making roast beef for the first time in about three years in his honour, it was like the bloody James Newman Appreciation Society.

  He was nervous though, which surprised me.

  “Are you always this nervous when you meet a girlfriend’s family?” I asked him on the way there.

  “You make me sound like a serial dater,” he said. “How many girlfriends’ families do you think I’ve met?”

  “Ooh thousands, probably!” I said.

  But he hadn’t. He’d only met the families of two girlfriends. Hannah – his very first girlfriend, and Rachel – his girlfriend from the age of twenty five to twenty eight. They split up because she wanted to get married and have children, and he didn’t. Not then.

  “It’s a big thing, meeting a girlfriend’s family,” he said. “It’s the thing that often means the most to them. It means you’ve become part of their family in a way. Hannah and Rachel were the only girlfriends I loved enough to want that. And now you.”

  Then there was the weekend in Watford when I met his dad and Grace. Judging by their reaction to me, he doesn’t introduce his girlfriends to them very often either. I felt like a rare specimen indeed. Not that it wasn’t lovely to meet them. But I did feel a bit like I was on an interview.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Where do you work?”

  “What do you do?”

  “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

  “How long have you and James been seeing each other?”

  “What’s your shoe size?”

  They didn’t really ask me that last question. They might as well have done, though.

  “Sorry,” James said to me on the way home. “They’re not used to meeting my girlfriends!”

  “You don’t say! I th
ought they were going to pinch me at one point to make sure I was real!”

  “I feel like doing that myself sometimes,” James laughed.

  And then there was the weekend when I met his friends – when I walked into the pub and found six pairs of eyes all staring up at me expectantly.

  “Everybody, this is Becky,” James announced, standing up and kissing me on the cheek.

  “Becky, this is everybody.”

  ‘Everybody’ included his brother Dan and his wife Christina, his friend Simon and his girlfriend Anna, and his friend Gary and his girlfriend Beth.

  Simon and Gary both went to school with James.

  After just a couple of beers they attempted to embarrass him with tales of fashion disasters, romantic mishaps and drunken debauchery.

  It was great fun.

  “Has he told you about the time he was caught cheating in his history exam?” Simon asked me, getting up to get the drinks in.

  “No,” I said, grinning at James.

  “He had all the answers written on the inside of his arms in secret code. He claimed they were henna tattoos he got on holiday in Rhodes. He was made to stand at the front of the room until the end of the exam, with his sleeves rolled up and his arms in the air.”

  “They were tattoos!” James protested. “Don’t believe a word of it Becky.”

  “Oh, I will,” I said, putting my hand over his mouth.

  “So James tells us you want to be a journalist,” Anna said.

  “Yes. I’ve just got my first commission,” I told them.

  James was under strict instructions not to tell them what it was. By the lack of sarcasm that follows I decided he’d kept his word.

  “What’s it about?” Christina asked.

  “You’ll have to buy a copy of the magazine in September if you want to know,” James said, coming to my rescue. He squeezed my thigh affectionately.

  “Which magazine?”

  “Love Life,” I told them proudly.

  “Wow! Brilliant! I love that magazine,” Anna said. “I’ll look out for your name in it! Are you doing anything else in the meantime?”

  “I work at Potty Wotty Doodah,” I told them. Most of them looked completely bemused.

  “It’s a ceramics café in Clapham. That’s where I met James.”

  “She thought Leonie was James’ wife,” Dan said, embarrassing me.

  “And she was jealous,” James added, with a wink.

  “Thank you James,” I said. And everyone laughed.

  So anyway, after all this socialising, I have finally found a bit of time in which to do some work.

  I start by transcribing all the interviews that I recorded on my Dictaphone. It takes me hours. I really must learn how to write in shorthand.

  I’ve been through all the letters sent to me from the magazine, separating the pass-the-bucket mush from the ones that are actually worth using – like the one from a girl who got back together with her childhood sweetheart seventeen years after they first dated. “Everyone said we were perfect for each other, we just met when we were too young,” she wrote, “so when fate brought us back together seventeen years later, we knew it was meant to be”.

  I have also borrowed a stack of psychology books from the library. And a book of quotations with a useful section on love.

  And now I simply can’t put it off any longer. I have a deadline to meet, after all.

  James is under strict instructions not to come round until at least 9pm. He knows I have no willpower. He knows I can’t resist him.

  I look at my watch. It’s 7pm. I have at least two hours before he gets here. I could write a lot in two hours.

  I turn my laptop on and stare at the empty screen in front of me, wondering how to fill it.

  I consult the notes I made in Sheila’s writing class.

  “Introductions – lots of types. Description, question, quotation…Up to you to find out what works best…”

  Hmm. I guess I could start with a question. That is what it’s all about, after all.

  I start typing.

  My boyfriend has got lovely brown eyes that I could look into all day long. My boyfriend has a cute dimple in his right cheek and a tiny scar above his left eye where he fought over a crook-lock with his brother when he was just a boy. My boyfriend makes me laugh – even when I feel like crying.

  Is this why he is Mr Right?

  No.

  I feel like I’m back at university, hunched over a dimly-lit desk at 3am, attempting to write a 4,000-word essay six hours before the deadline. Except it felt like hell back then. And this is fun. I feel Like Carrie Bradshaw, tapping away at her laptop building up to the big question – the point where the camera always zooms in on the cursor.

  Although, it seems to come much more easily to Carrie, while I have already re-written the first paragraph seven times and I’m still not happy with it.

  I decide to move on and come back to it later.

  I work my way through each interview, incorporating the best bits, leaving out the rubbish bits, and highlighting all the in-between bits – just in case I am a few words short, or a few hundred…

  It’s amazing how the words start flowing once you’ve started. I’m not sure where it’s all coming from, but by the time James arrives I have written. I check the word count on the laptop…two hundred and forty three words.

  Two hundred and forty three?!

  Bollocks.

  I thought I’d written at least a thousand.

  Two hundred and forty three out of two thousand. That leaves…

  Bollocks.

  James brings Chinese takeaway and a bottle of wine with him. I wolf down sweet and sour chicken with egg-fried rice and go back to my laptop, glass of wine in hand. No time to waste. James doesn’t mind. He watches telly and makes me cups of tea. I’ll put that in the feature. Mr Right will make you cups of tea when you are too busy to make them for yourself.

  “Can I read it?” he asks me, putting the mug down on the coffee table and leaning over to sneak a look.

  I fold the lid down so he can’t see it.

  “Not yet. Maybe when it’s finished.”

  “When will that be?”

  “God knows. I’m barely past the first paragraph!”

  “How long have you got to write it?”

  “It has to be with the editor by August.”

  “That’s loads of time,” he laughs.

  “Not when you’re doing it for the first time, it isn’t.”

  “Still – it’s enough time to take a break,” he says, brushing my hair away from my neck and kissing me.

  “I guess so,” I say, not at all reluctantly.

  CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

  Today is a fun day. Today Katie and I get to be prodded and poked again.

  Today is dress-fitting day.

  We meet Emma at All Things Bride & Beautiful. She’s in a good mood. She’s met a new man. He’s called Daniel. She met him in a Spanish class she’s started.

  He’s a solicitor. Thirty-two. They’ve been out on three dates. So far so good. He’s meeting us for a drink later. Even better.

  “I really like him,” she says, as we enter the shop.

  “Hello girls,” Pippa says, meeting us in the waiting room. “And how are we all?”

  “Fine,” we say in unison, Emma ever so slightly more enthusiastically, I note with delight.

  “So how was New York?” she asks me as Katie disappears behind the curtain with Pippa.

  “It was amazing,” I say.

  “Brilliant. And when do I get to meet the elusive James? I’m beginning to think you’ve made him up!”

  “He might join us tonight actually,” I say. “You need to meet him because I’m relying on you to look after him at the wedding while I’m running around after the bride.”

  “Too right,” Katie says, drawing the curtain back.

  “Oh Katie, it looks fantastic,” Emma says.

  “Really?”

  �
��Yes. It’s even better now it’s the proper size.”

  “Have you lost weight?” Pippa asks. “I’m sure it was a 12 you tried on but it seems a little loose.” She tugs at the dress and Katie’s boobs very nearly pop out.

  “I don’t think I have. Is it a problem?”

  “No, we can take it in. The question is are you likely to lose more weight before the wedding, or put it back on?”

  “What do you think girls?” Katie says, looking at Emma and me.

  “Well, if there was any justice in the world, you’d put three stone on, the amount you eat, but I’m sure you won’t,” I tell her. “You’ll probably stay the same, I’d say.”

  “I agree,” Emma says. “I’d have it taken in a bit. You don’t want it falling down while you’re saying your vows, do you?”

  “Is that okay?” Katie asks Pippa.

  “Of course.”

  While Pippa starts sticking pins in our friend, Emma and I hand her a variety of veils and tiaras to try on.

  She’s got her back to the mirror, which means we can put all sorts of hideous contraptions on her head and convince her they look fabulous. We settle on an elaborate crown affair. It makes me think of James and his foam crown at the Statue of Liberty and I start laughing.

  Pippa pretends to look disapprovingly at us and, when she’s finished pinning, lets Katie loose to find her reflection.

  The look of horror on her face says it all.

  “Are you feeling very Statue of Liberty?” Pippa asks with a little chuckle. And I laugh again.

  “How does that feel, love?” she asks, tugging at the dress again. It stays put this time. And so do Katie’s boobs.

  “Perfect.”

  “You’ll need to come back in a week or so to try it on again. You can make an appointment downstairs.”

  I’d like to say we have the same problem with my dress when we arrive at Bridesmaid Revisited for my fitting. Alas, we don’t. It fits perfectly. Except around the boobs, obviously, which, as promised, is rectified with a super-dooper-extra-padding-for-girls-with-no-boobs bra.

  I don’t tell the girls, but I feel like a princess. And for a brief moment I imagine what it would be like to be going through all this as the bride, not the bridesmaid. If I were marrying James…