by PH Morris
I manage to drink the coffee quickly and then feel more in the land of the living. I drag myself up and get ready in reasonably quick time. I don’t need to wash my hair because one of the great things about having thick hair, and it is the only great thing, is that it generally keeps its style and doesn’t need washing all the time. With my recent cut and colour, I know it looks okay. I manage to get ready quickly, but I still appear to be the last ready, and the girls are waiting near the front door when I finally grab my bag and head out.
“Wow, Mel,” Kate whistles, “you look H O T hot, girl. That dress suits you.”
Everyone agrees, and I feel amazing. After checking we have keys, I pull the door shut behind me, and as we walk down to the kerbside a minibus turns up. Sue is wearing the standard requirement for a bride-to-be of L-plate and veil, and off we go.
We all pile in, and I have been ‘volunteered’ as kitty keeper on account of me being the last to be ready. I know they have just made up this rule.
As we sit in the minibus and everyone hands over £20, I look around and see that everyone looks as amazing as I feel.
Everyone looks fantastic; we are going to take them by storm tonight.
As we arrive on Princes Street, I am last out of the cab, as I am the kitty keeper and so have to pay the driver. As we pile out of the minibus, a group of lads gives us a big cheer. Embarrassing or what?
We enter our first bar and it is dark in here, compared with outside, but maybe that’s deliberate. The bar is bustling, and we realise with the number of rugby shirts on well-built men, some with noses halfway over their faces, that there is a rugby game on tonight. Scotland versus England. Oh no, let’s hope it doesn’t get leery. Just as I am worrying about that, I see Kat wiggle her eyebrows at me. Oh no, she loves this.
As we leave the bar and go back onto the street another cheer goes up – god, what is wrong with this place, have they not seen a group of women before? I guess it’s because Sue is the bride-to-be; they are all going to be very disappointed if they are expecting anything special from these ladies. We head to the next pub, and this is a little less like a nightclub and more like a pub. We enter, and it is jam-packed, four-deep at the bar. As I am little, I manage to squeeze my way through, and I play all ‘damsel in distress’ and manage to get to the bar. I stand on the brass footrail to make myself taller but, damn it, the bar staff are all women. This was going so well, and now I will never get served. I wait patiently and try to get the staff’s attention, but I keep getting overlooked.
I am just about to give up when I notice a female bartender on the other side of the bar; she is wearing nice jeans and her butt looks cute. I wish my butt looked like that. She is leaning over to a customer as he shouts the order into her ear, and as she steps back, I notice a pair of piercing blue eyes in a semi-rugged face, and he is looking right at me.
I go to do a double-take as if he might be staring at someone else, but I am transfixed. He has a suntanned face, blonde, semi-scruffy hair, blue eyes and a short but grizzly beard, a few shades darker than his hair. I wonder absently what it would feel like to touch the beard and, as if reading my mind, he runs his hand along his jaw and scratches his cheek, and a little smile plays at his lips; he is apparently used to the look I am giving him.
I feel silly and look down as if checking something in my bag, and when I look up he is talking to the bar staff and pointing his chin at me. The girl takes the money he gives her, and he turns away from the bar, two pints in hand, and disappears sideways into the crowd, the space he just occupied filling easily with more bodies.
A minute later, little miss nice jeans appears in front of me.
“What would you like?” she asks in a lilting Scottish accent.
“Hey, I was next,” utters a man next to me.
“I’ll get to you next,” and she looks back at me.
“Can I get two vodka and cokes, one gin and tonic, and a bottle of dry white wine and four glasses, please?”
She turns away and gets cracking on our order and puts a tray in front of me, next appears a bottle of wine, a bottle of Moet and six glasses.
“Wait, I didn’t order champagne!” I shout.
“It’s from the guy with the beard,” she says with a little bitterness in her voice; “he already paid for it.”
“What? But, but…” I don’t know what to say, so I do what my mum always said and offer a thank you.
After I pay for the round, I weave my way shakily to the table with the tray. I have left the wine bottles on the bar, and the barmaid has left them near the glass-washing area so I can quickly retrieve them. I leave the tray of wine flutes and return to the bar, and with a bottle in each hand return to the table, puzzled but relatively unscathed.
“Wooow, champers!” exclaims Sue.
“Way to go, Mel,” Kat offers, “but that must have cost a fortune—” she stops mid-sentence, and her mouth drops open.
“I didn’t buy it,” I offer and realise that the girls are not looking at me. I turn my head slowly to see Mr Rugged Beardy Gorgeous Man appear over my shoulder. I will have to shorten his name or find out his real name. My mouth goes dry. His eyes are a lovely shade of blue with a yellow burst of colour around the iris.
“Hi,” he smiles and then glances down at the back of my dress.
Oh my god, I think, I’ve left the label on or something.
“Look, I wasn’t going to come over, well, because it’s a bit cheesy, but when I saw you walking away from the bar I just wanted to come and congratulate you.”
My brain has officially left home, shut up shop, and now I cannot engage my mind or mouth. What even is that accent? It sounds American, but not strong; it also sounds Scottish: I am confused. The way he said ‘look’ sounded American, like ‘luck’, and the way he said ‘over’ had a roll of Rs at the end.
Finally, my speech comes back, and I stammer:
“Thank you, for the champagne, that was nice of you; I didn’t think I was going to get served, and you didn’t need to come over…Congratulate me? Oh, sorry, I’m not the one getting married…”I then turn towards him, and there is a collective gasp from the girls.
“Mmm, it seems that the wardrobe malfunction is a possible oversight, gauging your friends’ reaction, but I have got to say it’s one of the cutest things I have ever seen.” He smiles at me and rubs his eyebrow as if trying to hide his amusement.
My head whips back to the girls, and they are looking shocked. I am even more confused, and Kate is giving me a mouth-splitting grin.
“What?” I offer to them.
“It’s your dress, Mel; it’s kind of…see-through?” Kat offers by way of explanation.
I look down at myself, and I am still puzzled. The dress is sheer, but it has two layers of fabric, and you can’t see anything through it as I tried it on and looked at myself in the mirror in the shop.
“It’s not the front, babe, it’s the back.” Kat is now laughing.
“What are you talking about?” I try to turn my neck to look over my shoulder at myself but risk looking like a dog trying to chase its tail, and then I realise I am wearing G-string knickers underneath a sheer dress.
“Shit, shit,” I mutter. I look up again, fully realising what Mr Rugged meant. My face is on fire now, and I quickly sit down on the nearest chair and put my head in my hands, my face burning.
“Shit, shit,” I say again. “What am I going to do? I can’t go out all night like this.”
“I’ll swap with you, “Kat replies;” I have black knickers on.”
“Kat, you can’t do that.” I look up between my fingers.
“Sure, I can, we’ve been sharing everything from age fourteen, and we’ve only been out twenty minutes so no snail trails.”
“Eeww,” the chorus comes from the girls.
“As I said, it is the nicest thing I have see
n in a while so, if I had a choice, I would say don’t change,” the husky voice replies, “although, thinking about it, it would be for my benefit only.”
I had forgotten he was there, and I am staring down at rough boots that are just scruffy enough to be designer and on-trend; slim dark jeans over muscular thighs; and, up to his full torso, a flannel shirt is open, covering a white T-shirt. Back to that handsome smiling face.
“Al, we got to go,” a strong Scottish accent appears over the newly named Al’s shoulder, and the newcomer glances at me and back at Al. “Dougie’s mad wi’it, and he’s gon’n’ got himself in a battle.”
“Reet,” he sighs. “Ladies, have a good night,” and he turns and walks with purpose towards the door, followed by about four equally built men.
“Oh my god.” I look back at the girls. “What the fuck just happened?”
“Well, it would appear,” Kath offers, “that you almost bagged a gorgeous guy with your ass and you didn’t even take off your clothes, so that’s a win in anybody’s book.”
“That’s why we kept getting wolf-whistled all night.” Ella’s eyes are shining.
Finally, I find the funny side and I am laughing too. I have basically had my arse out since we left the house. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask the girls.
“None of us saw you from the back; you were the last out of the house, last out the taxi, and the first pub was dark. It was only when you turned to speak to that gorgeous bloke that we saw your back,” Ella explains.
“You guys are going to be the death of me,” I complain in good humour.
“Oh no, it’s not our fault,” Sophie offers. “This is all on you.”
She is, of course, correct. Good job Louise isn’t here as she would be saying the usual of ‘it could only happen to you’.
We finish our drinks, including the lovely champagne, and Kat and I pop off to the loo to do the underwear swap. Only real friends would do something so personal, and I say a prayer to the god of best friends for having Kat in my life.
We head off to a number of pubs, and I keep hoping that Al will find us. I absently wonder what it’s short for – Alex, Allan, Andrew or Archie? I am scanning each pub for him, but we don’t find him. After the pubs, we end up in a club and dance our feet off. We finally spill out onto the street in the early hours. It is light outside, and I am initially puzzled, as we can’t have been in the club for that long, then I realise that it gets lighter earlier. We arrive back at the house, and I finally change out of my traitorous dress and toss it on top of my overnight bag, dress in my shorts and tank top and collapse on the sofa.
The next morning is another bright one, and I squint into the daylight. Oh, I feel rough, my head is splitting, and the sun is not helping. I groan under the covers, and I hear someone put a cup of tea on the coffee table. I peer out from under the duvet to see the back of Sophie walking away.
I sit up slowly, like the crypt keeper rising from the dead, and take a sip of the tea.
“Do you want a bacon butty?” Sophie yells from the kitchen.
“Mmmm,” is as much as I can muster.
“Shit, girl, you look rough,” Kat offers, plonking herself down next to me on the sofa.
“Mmmm,” I agree, “a headache,” is all I can say.
“Sophie? Can you grab my bag?” she hollers.
“Ssshhhhhh,” I hiss angrily.
“Oops, soz,” Kat whispers. Then she pops tablets from their foil packet and places them in my palm.
After a bacon butty and another cup of tea, I am feeling a little better. It is still 50/50 if I’ll keep the contents in my stomach. And we have our return train to catch in a few hours.
The rest of the morning drags on, and I traipse behind the girls on the way to the train station, barely muttering a word. I am still not sure if I am going to be sick, and I am directed to my seat by the girls, who continue their loud chatter on the busy train. After about an hour and a cup of coffee, the girls persuade me to try the ‘hair of the dog’, this is kill or cure time.
One of the girls, I suspect Kat, has bought me a vodka and coke from the onboard shop, and I take a tentative sip. It tastes okay, and within ten minutes I am feeling surprisingly better than I have all day. I rest my head back on the seat and close my eyes, only to be disturbed by Kat wittering on from her position opposite me.
“You know what I fancy right now?” she asks.
I open my eyes and lower my head to her, “No, what?” I take the bait.
“I fancy a scotch egg wrapped in tin foil,” she declares.
Right oh. “Oh yeah?” I feign interest, thinking, What the hell is she going on about now?
We fall silent for a few minutes before she starts up again.
“You know what I also fancy?”
I raise my eyebrow at her. “No, what?”
“Well,” she ploughs on, “I fancy a cup of tea out of a tartan flask.”
“O-kay,” I say; now I am puzzled, but I am so tired I’m not sure I can figure out her game.
A few minutes later she tries again, “You know what, Mel? “She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I wish I had little cut sandwiches without the crust on; yeah, that’s what I want.”
Right, that’s it. I turn to look in the direction she is looking, and a few seats away, sitting at a little table, are two delightful old ladies who are unloading a dainty and very cute picnic. Kat is narrating every item that they remove, and I smile as they remove a slice of fruitcake.
“Oh no, don’t you dare,” I say to Kat, laughing.
“You know what, Mel? I fancy some Dundee cake right about now,” and she bursts out laughing.
I am laughing too. “Oh my god, Kat, you crack me up.”
Luckily, the old ladies seemed entirely oblivious to Kate’s silly game, and we laughed and joked about our childhood and the weekend, and all too soon were pulling into our home station.
Kate’s fella Greg collected us from the station, and he hugged and kissed her like he had missed her. I hope for that one day. Greg is a man of few words. Well, I guess that suited Kat, as I bet there was little room for him to exercise his vocal cords. She loved him too, I think, because he let her be herself; he never tried to change her; he accepted her juvenile tricks with amusement. It was the right combination.
Greg pulled the car up outside the apartment block, and I hugged them both.
“Let me have my underwear back when you’ve washed them,” she smiled as Greg lifted my bag out of the boot. He looked puzzled.
“Don’t ask,” I muttered, knowing full well that she would tell him as soon as they drove off.
“Speak in the week. Love you!” she yelled out the window.
I just waved weakly and did a silent thank you when I found the lift was working, albeit still covered in cardboard. I assumed more works had been done on the flat above, or at least a lot had been delivered, judging by the scuff marks and dents.
I dragged my case up the corridor and fumbled with the keys, finally barging unladylike through the door. Only Marmalade was there, and a note from David.
Hi, have been called in to do a quick short turnaround. I will be back on Sunday eve (late). Please feed Marmalade. Can’t wait to hear all about your weekend. Hope you got to see what a Scotsman wears under his kilt.
David xx
I smiled at his remark; god only knew what he would say about the wardrobe malfunction Al referred to. Marmalade wound around my legs to remind me he was there.
I need a shower and an early night, so I feed the little monster while I made myself a quick sandwich, and within an hour I am sitting on my bed having dried my hair and was feeling very sleepy. It was only ten, but I was done in. I hear nothing of David coming in, and the next thing was the noise of my phone alarm going off at 7am.
I crawl out of bed and pad to the kitchen.
It is lashing it down outside, and sheets of water run in rivulets down the panes of glass, and the sky is blue/black on the horizon. I can see the tops of the trees swaying in the growing wind. Manchester looks very dreary today.
I like the changing weather; I am unusual, in that I like the rain, the snow; I like any weather, on one condition –it has to be singular…What I mean is, rain or wind on its own, never together. Snow on its own is fine; snow and wind together are a big no-no.
So, today we have plural weather – torrential rain and wind. An umbrella will be a waste of time. Maybe it will blow over before I walk to work.
I skulk around the kitchen, grabbing a bowl from the cupboard, firing up the coffee machine and deciding on cereal for today. David has a varied selection of cereals, but he has a sweet tooth, so his decision is usually sugar-loaded Frosties or Lucky Charms. I manage to find porridge and make myself some. It is looking miserable, cold and wet, so I hope the porridge will give me a nice warm glow.
There is no sign of David when I’m ready to leave, so rather than wake him I leave a note near the coffee pot.
Hi love,
Had a great weekend, sorry I didn’t see you; let’s catch up when I get back later. I will cook.
Love Mel xx
I wait for as long as possible, and the rain eased off, but the streets were gleaming from the extended downpour, and the traffic lights reflect in the puddles that had formed at junctions. The drains were not able to take all the water away yet, and so they became deadly water assassins on unsuspecting pedestrians. Luckily for me, I knew how this worked – you just had to time it right to dash past the potential deluge cold spots, and I arrive relatively unscathed and not looking too much like a drowned rat. No sooner had I stepped into the foyer than the skies open and people run from doorway to doorway like scurrying mice.
I shake off my hood, deciding to leave the brolly in my bag. The main topic in the corridor was the weather – how very British. The banal weather-related discussions lasted pretty much all day.