by Lovett, Jo
Okay. Quick shower.
The (heart-shaped) shower was good. Powerful and hot. Until he was just about to get out and the water turned tepid. He turned the temperature knob as high as he could. Didn’t help. The water was getting colder.
Bloody hell. He hoped Evie wasn’t going to have to have a cold shower.
He dried himself fast, with one of the pink towels hanging on the refreshingly non-heart-shaped – just your bog-standard rectangular ladder-shaped – towel rail, and started to sort through his clothes. Jeans. Shirt. Socks. Jacket. No boxers. Jeans. Shirt. Socks. Jacket. Definitely no boxers.
Two choices. Go back out into the room wrapped in his towel and hunt around for his pants while Evie lay in the bed, if that’s what she was still doing. Or go commando.
Commando it was.
He’d literally never worn jeans without boxers before, and it wasn’t that comfortable. It was nothing compared to his mounting headache, though, and really nothing compared to the cock-up of currently being married.
He ran his tongue around his mouth over his teeth – it wasn’t great not being able to brush your teeth, although, again, that was a tiny issue compared to everything else – and put his hand on the doorknob.
He should knock. Let Evie know he was leaving the bathroom.
He knocked hard a couple of times, and then again, and heard Evie say, ‘Um, come out?’
He opened the door and saw that she was lying where he’d left her, straight as a rod in the bed, on her back, with the sheets pulled up to her chin and tucked in. Her lovely corkscrew curls were spread out on the Pepto-Bismol-coloured pillow and her beautiful dark-brown eyes looked huge in her unsmiling face. No sign of her dimple this morning.
‘Morning again,’ he said, aiming for cheery, but pretty sure that he’d landed on over-friendly-children’s-TV-presenter mode. When you’d essentially had a thing for someone for years and then finally slept with them, and it had been out of this world, but you didn’t want a repeat of it, and you weren’t sure how the other person felt, it was really bloody awkward. ‘I’m so sorry but I’m worried that I used all the hot water. You might end up having a cold shower. Or it might be re-heating now. Maybe they have an immersion heater-type system. You never know.’
‘Never mind,’ said Evie. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’ Yeah, she probably didn’t want to chat about hot water. Her voice sounded a lot thinner than usual and she wasn’t totally meeting his eye.
‘So I’ll get going then. I’ll probably see you later.’ Well, of course he would unless he avoided everyone for the rest of his stay. ‘I’ll find out about the annulment or divorce today. Probably easy to get it sorted out on the grounds of extreme drunkenness. Hopefully.’
‘Yep. Great. Thank you.’ No smile. This was horrible. Maybe he should try to make a joke out of it.
‘I think we took “having the full Vegas experience” a little too far. And the fallback pact thing,’ he said. ‘What a pair of muppets.’
‘Yep.’ Evie wasn’t raising a smile. Maybe it was too soon to laugh about it. Maybe she was regretting the sex and not just the marriage. Maybe she hadn’t enjoyed the sex. Maybe she’d never liked him as much as he liked her.
Probably better if he didn’t stay and look for his boxers now, on balance.
‘Okay, so I’ll see you later.’ He opened the door to the room and said, ‘Happy birthday,’ as he went out, and then immediately regretted it.
The cold air that hit him when he got outside the hotel helped his head at least.
He pulled his phone out to google the annulment question. Maybe he should also try to change his flight home, pretend there was a work emergency; maybe that would be the best thing for both him and Evie. Give them both a bit of space and then they could hopefully laugh this off next time they saw each other with Sasha or in Melting.
Ten minutes on his phone told him a few things:
A lot of people knew about the wedding because they’d taken some photos of themselves and posted them on Facebook. It was going to take a long time to wade through all the congratulations and set everyone straight. He’d better do it this morning – clearly it was a the-sooner-the-better matter.
It looked like if you got married in Nevada there was a fair chance you could get your marriage annulled if you stated that you were suffering at the time of the wedding from a ‘want of understanding’, which included being intoxicated. If not, it’d be the divorce route. Whichever, they were going to have to appoint an attorney and sign some forms together and fork out way more cash than you’d normally spend on even a seriously big night out.
And he wasn’t going to be able to change his flight at all given that he didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spare for a first-class Christmas Eve flight. Well, now he thought about it, that was probably for the best. In fact, it definitely was. What had he been thinking? Evie would probably have felt mortified if he’d just scarpered. Far better to stay here and laugh the whole thing off with her as soon as possible. And he was going home on Boxing Day anyway. Only forty-eight hours to go.
Five
Now – Christmas Eve 2021
Evie
The water was so cold. So bloody cold. Evie was going to freeze to death. Why had she on autopilot shampooed her hair? Why? And why had the water gone so quickly from manageable to tepid to painfully freezing just after she’d rubbed all the shampoo in?
Her headache was getting better, though. Maybe she should tell Dan about this. No need for paracetamol, just take a freezing shower.
Dan. Gaaah. It was going to be so embarrassing seeing him later. Sleeping with someone you’d known and liked for so many years was completely different from sleeping with someone you’d met recently.
So embarrassing, especially given how extremely vocal she remembered having been last night about how much she was enjoying things. She was pretty sure she was blushing just thinking about it. To be fair, he’d been pretty vocal too, even if he hadn’t seemed that happy this morning.
She took the hand-held shower attachment off the wall and turned her head upside down to wash the shampoo out of the underneath of her hair.
Ow, ow, ow, freezing. It was like the water was stabbing her. Why had she even had a shower here, actually? It was because Dan had mentioned it, so she’d just hopped in. She was too suggestible. She should have just dragged her clothes on and gone back to her actual hotel where all her stuff was.
She screeched as the water got even colder, if that were possible. So unpleasant. Not as unpleasant as her thoughts, though.
She was basically Rachel from Friends. She was thirty today and she had a broken engagement and a failed one-night marriage under her belt. How. Bloody. Ridiculous.
And, again, embarrassing. How was she going to face Dan later? She kind of wanted to just jump on a plane and escape home today. No, she was being ridiculous. She and the others had all saved up for this trip for over a year, and she couldn’t leave. And this had just been a one-night stand – only with a marriage thrown in. And the fact that it had been with her best friend’s brother, who was her long-term crush. But no-one knew that. It would be fine. They’d be a bit red-faced around each other briefly and then that would be that; they’d move on and Evie would accept that clearly they’d never really been going to come good on their fallback pact.
Right. It was too cold to carry on washing shampoo out of her hair. She was going to leave it, towel it dry as it was, walk-of-shame herself back to her hotel and have a nice hot shower there.
Last night’s clothes back on, she folded the velour bedspread that Dan had wrapped himself in this morning into four and placed it at the bottom of the bed. The staff were obviously going to strip the bed, but she could never actually bring herself to leave a hotel room anything other than tidy.
There was something on the floor half under the bed. She bent down to pick it up. Dan’s boxers. Black, stretchy trunks, which she remembered had fitted him very well. They were nice ones, C
alvin Kleins, but no way was she going to give them back to him. That would be one step too far on the rising-above-their-one-night-stand thing. She took them into the bathroom and binned them.
Right. Time to go.
Except – disaster – she had no idea how to get back to her own hotel. No. It was fine. She could Google-Map it.
She opened the clutch that she’d brought with her and took her phone out.
It was stone-cold dead.
Okay, not a problem. They’d be able to give her directions at the hotel reception downstairs.
‘Yeah, we can’t help with directions. Where’s your new husband?’ Susan looked around the hotel foyer like Dan might be hiding behind one of the large pot plants, or the cardboard Elvis.
‘Not really my husband. Just a drunken joke.’ Evie winced as she said it, even to a woman who she’d only met briefly last night and who she would never see again. And who was mean.
Susan shook her head sorrowfully. ‘You seemed great together,’ she said. ‘I thought you were one of the for-real couples. Anyway, yeah, I can’t help you. I’m very busy.’ She picked up an emery board and started filing her nails. ‘I can offer you a charger so you can use your phone. Five dollars for fifteen minutes.’ She pointed her nail file in the direction of a charger hanging out of the wall beyond the desk.
‘Right. Thank you,’ Evie said, actually mildly impressed at Susan’s hard-nosed business instincts. To be fair, right now she’d have paid a lot more than five dollars to get her phone working.
Evie plugged the phone in and sat down on the floor next to it, put her arms round her knees and closed her eyes. The positive physical effects of her cold shower had worn off. Now she felt sick, headachy and tired, and really miserable, and she just wanted so much to be back in her own hotel room.
Gaaah. Her alarm was going off. No, it wasn’t her alarm, but it was definitely her phone making that noise. Oh, okay, she’d nodded off and, now that the phone was slightly charged, about a billion messages and calls had pinged through. Probably birthday messages. She wasn’t going to read them right now. She was too hungover and shellshocked about last night to have the capacity to send lots of Thank you replies at the moment.
‘Your phone charged enough yet? You gonna call your husband? Try to patch things up?’ Susan’s cackle was loud.
Evie rolled her eyes, which hurt her head, and typed her hotel’s name into Google Maps, which told her that it was only a fifteen-minute walk from here. Yesssss.
It was the most immense relief to get back to her actual room in her actual hotel. Evie put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the handle outside and double-locked the door, put her phone – still without having read any of her messages – on her charger and then sank down into the room’s armchair.
Before another shower, she could really do with a lot of coffee and a lot of water and some breakfast. There was a menu on the bedside table and, yes, thank goodness, they did room service at any time of day.
While she was on the phone to Reception asking for an all-day pastry breakfast, her phone carried on pinging periodically. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d received so many messages. Thirty was obviously a big milestone age, but she didn’t actually know hundreds of people. Were her friends sending multiple messages or was it possible that they’d got wind of what she and Dan had done last night?
Okay. Deep breath. She was going to find out.
She opened up her messages. There were literally hundreds. Yeah, a lot of them were of the ‘OMG you got MARRIED’ and ‘Details NOW please’ variety. People had found out from the photos that she and Dan had apparently posted on social media. Eek. She’d better check them.
Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. They’d posted a lot of photos including selfies.
Oh God. They’d posted semi-naked photos.
Evie closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair as a wave of nausea washed over her.
When her stomach had settled, she opened her eyes and took another look.
Wow. She and Dan had been active on social media last night. They’d slapped ‘Married tonight’ stuff all over Facebook and Instagram. Everyone, literally everyone that Evie could think of, had seen, loved and commented on the posts.
Some of the photos featured Dan looking devour-me-now sexy in only his jeans with no top. He did have a very nice six-pack. Some of the photos featured Evie sprawled across the bed with the skirt of her dress up high – not quite showing her pants, thank goodness – and her neckline down low – showing her bra – and looking like she was about to have sex. And some of the photos – oh God – showed the two of them in various poses, apparently at various stages of the night. There were photos of their bare legs tangled together. There were photos of them with their heads very close together with both of them with bare shoulders. There were photos of them kissing.
They’d also carefully photographed their marriage certificate and posted it.
The one positive thing about the photos – and given how trigger-happy they’d been on the posting-suggestive-photos front, it was clearly a genuine win – was that none of them were actually pornographic.
The other positive thing was that neither of their mums were on social media.
Dan had already, thank goodness, been back on this morning and had slapped a lot more posts on, all basically saying Joke, ha ha. Evie posted some Joke messages of her own. Then she messaged Sasha and their schoolfriends Anita, Tola and Millie, who they were on this thirtieth-birthday mega-trip with, telling them she was totally fine but wasn’t going to manage to meet them for sightseeing this morning because she was too hungover but would see them at lunchtime. Then she googled how to get a divorce in Vegas. Yep, totally doable but a lot of hassle and quite expensive.
Bloody hell.
Once she had an almond and raisin croissant, a pain au chocolat, two cups of coffee and some painkillers inside her, Evie spent a very long time in the shower, and then a lot more time drying her hair and doing her make-up. It felt like she needed to look as good as she could manage for facing Dan and the world today. Dan, mainly, actually.
Obviously pretty much anyone in her position would be feeling embarrassed. But they wouldn’t necessarily be feeling like someone had taken their heart out, screwed it up and stamped on it, and then put it back in slightly the wrong place.
The thing was, though, when you’d slept with someone who you’d had a big thing for, since basically forever, and it had been amazing, but obviously a one-off, it felt like it might take a bit longer than it ought to to get over it.
And in the meantime, you wanted to avoid them, or look good for them if you did have to see them.
‘Happy birthday!’ Sasha swept Evie into a huge hug as she arrived in the hotel foyer to meet the rest of their group of friends for lunch, and whispered in her ear, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Thank you,’ Evie said, as chirpily as she could. She returned Sasha’s hug and whispered back, ‘Yes, totally fine.’ Utterly ridiculous that her eyes were pricking in reaction to Sasha’s concern.
‘So Angus, Dan and Rav are playing golf all day while we’re at the spa,’ Sasha said as they walked over to join Anita, Millie and Tola. Angus was Sasha’s truly lovely boyfriend – they were both vets, working in the same practice, and had been going out for years now – and Rav was Anita’s husband. They’d being planning this trip for a good year and a half to celebrate all their thirtieth birthdays happening over the next few months. Another schoolfriend had been coming but had unfortunately broken her leg last week and Sasha had persuaded Dan to join them instead because they couldn’t get a refund.
‘That sounds nice,’ Evie said. And a great relief, frankly. This evening, they’d booked to go to the Fremont Street Light Show in Vegas’s downtown, which hopefully would distract them all and mean that she and Dan wouldn’t end up having to talk to each other at all today. Evie felt like she needed a bit of time to process what had happened, and she didn’t want her first post-sex proper ch
at with Dan to be in front of all the others.
‘Happy birthday,’ chorused Anita, Millie and Tola.
‘Good night last night?’ Tola asked as they all piled in for birthday hugs.
‘Thank you. Yes, thanks. I mean, you know, too much to drink.’ Evie emerged from the hug and stood back and looked at the others. When you’d known people for a good twenty years, you knew when they had stuff they wanted to say. Especially Millie. She always looked as though her cheeks were going to burst when she was trying to be tactful. Her cheeks were so full-looking now. ‘So I’m quite hungover today,’ Evie said. ‘But I’m powering on through with coffee, carbs and painkillers.’
‘You have to tell us everything,’ Millie said, having clearly given up on tact. ‘About Dan, not your hangover.’
‘Nothing to tell.’ Evie went for a nothing-to-see-here shrug. ‘I mean, beyond what we posted on Facebook. We got married for a joke and now we need to get divorced. That’s it.’
‘How was the sex?’ Tola said, waggling her eyebrows.
‘Noooo.’ Sasha put her hands over her ears. ‘One, Evie never really wants to talk about sex and it’s her birthday so we should leave her alone, and two, Dan’s my brother and I do not want to know. Please don’t tell us, Evie.’
‘There’s hardly anything to tell and you’re right, I really don’t want to. I mean, I can’t even remember most of it because we were so drunk,’ Evie lied.
‘Okay, great,’ Sasha said. ‘So no more Evie-and-Dan chat then.’
The other three nodded, with some eye rolling.
It would probably be best to stick to Sasha like glue for the rest of their stay so that the others wouldn’t ask her anything else. Evie was never going to want to talk about last night. Because it was Dan.