Page 56 of The Layover
Shouldn’t I be making the most of it? ;)
You could’ve helped me with that
Made it one to remember
The words swim on the screen, the letters suddenly turning to hieroglyphics I can’t untangle. Muscle memory guides my fingers as I force myself to type out a reply – to enjoy the rest of his night, that I’ll see him tomorrow – but my stomach turns, and I have to press a hand to my mouth.
Not to contain an excited squeal because he’s being sooutrightin flirting with me this time, not to suppress a giddy cry because I’m on his mind and see, hewouldchoose me.
Because right now, in the light of everything Gemma and Leon have said, it just feels …
Cheap. Dirty.
Like I am not ‘the One’, not meant to be. I am just the other woman. One he would, apparently, willingly cheat on his fiancée with. It’snothis last night as a single man, because he’s not single, he’s so very far from it, but if I was there …
If I was there …
Would I stop it? I don’t think so, somehow. If we’d been enjoying ourselves, and I’d peeled away from the rest of the wedding guests to hang out with Marcus and his friends like the original plan was, and if he’d said something like that …
Would I have hesitated to invite him up to my room? To drag his mouth down to mine and let his hands wander?
Would I have felt cheap then, or like this was inevitable and he was finally choosing me?
If this is what him choosing me feels like …
Is this what he would say to another girl, if it was me he was marrying?
I squash that down and bury my phone deep into the large pocket of my jacket.Hisjacket. It feels chafing, suffocating, now, even if I’ve repurposed it, decorated it with my pins and worn it to death so it smells more like me than it ever did like him.
He thinks about us. That night, that kiss. He’s thinking about me now. He wishes I was there.
As I make my way back to the others, I try to cling to those thoughts, and try not to think about the fact that they taste like ash in my mouth.
Time until ‘I Do’
11 ½ hours
Chapter Twenty-eight
Gemma
With six hours and twenty-two minutes until our flight departs, thanks to yetanotherdelay, the emotional confessions and confrontations are a thing of the not-so-distant past. Fran got back from her post-dinner wander with red-rimmed eyes and flinched when her phone buzzed, but I wasn’t about to ask about that, and Leondefinitelydidn’t. And I certainly didn’t fancy diving into a deep therapy session about my childhood trauma, which really left us with only one solution: drowning our sorrows in drinking games.
Well. Drowning our sorrows and playing a game of ‘what outrageous way can we stop this wedding going ahead that’s even crazier than telling your sister you hate your new brother-in-law or trying to get the groom to jilt his bride at the altar for you’. Which is close enough, really.
It starts with me saying, ‘Maybe I should object during the ceremony. ClaimI’min love with Marcus, too.’
And Leon snorting and adding, ‘Say you’re pregnant with his baby.’
‘Or we could lock Kayleigh in a cupboard!’
Fran snorts. ‘We could lockMarcusin a cupboard.’
‘What, with you? Have the entire wedding party go searching for you, and the pair of you tumble out, Marcus with his pants around his ankles, I bet? Ha! Love it!’
Fran grimaces, but probably because the idea of being caught having sex somewhere public is so mortifying, or whatever. She says, ‘I could hide the dress.’
‘Sabotagethe dress,’ Leon says. ‘No, I’ve got it. Red wine onMarcus’s suit!That preening bastard would stop the whole ceremony if he thought he looked less than perfect.’
