Look. I was not even supposed to be a guest. I was supposed to be content. A plus-one of a plus-one, borrowed black dress, phone on 18 percent, the sort of evening where you take three photos of the flowers and leave before the speeches get wet. That was the plan. The plan lasted until the afterparty moved to a private room in Chelsea and the bar stopped asking for room numbers.
I keep telling Sophie I go to these things for the blog. She keeps saying I go because I like rooms where everyone is a bit too dressed up and a bit too available. Both can be true. I contain multitudes. Or I contain two espresso martinis and a lack of impulse control. Same difference, really.
How I even got in
The bride is someone I know in that London way. We have mutuals. We have been in the same kitchen at 2am twice. She once borrowed my eyelash glue in a club toilet in Soho and never gave it back, which I respect. When the invite landed it said evening reception, not ceremony, which is the polite way of saying please do not sit through the vows if you are only here to clock the outfits.
I nearly did not go. Saturday. Parsons Green. Mia had already opened wine at four. Sophie was doing that face she does when she thinks I am about to make a decision I will have to explain at brunch. I went anyway. I did my makeup twice. I looked in the hallway mirror so long I was late on purpose. First impressions matter. Even when you are not on the list properly.
The wedding itself was fine. Pretty. Expensive in that quiet way where nobody mentions money and everybody is wearing it. I took a photo of the tablescape and a photo of my own shoulder because the lighting was doing something flattering and I am not above that. Then the older people peeled off and the afterparty started properly, which is when a wedding stops being a wedding and becomes a night out with better glassware.
Table nine
I clocked her before I clocked him. Tall, blonde, the sort of calm that comes from knowing you are the one who gets to go home with the speech. Fiancée. Table nine. She had taken her heels off under the cloth and she still looked expensive. I remember thinking she had a nice laugh. I remember thinking that and then not thinking about her again for a good hour, which is the problem with me in a nutshell.
He found me at the bar. Best man. Dark suit, speech already done, that loose energy men get when they have been publicly emotional and now want to be privately stupid. He said he liked my dress. I said I liked that he had not cried in the speech. He laughed like I had invented comedy. I know that laugh. I have used that laugh.
We talked about nothing. The band. The fact the canapés had run out. How Chelsea after midnight always smells like perfume and wet pavement. He had a nice mouth. I am not going to pretend I was doing journalism. I was doing what I do. I was seeing if the night had another shape in it.
Open bar is a terrible idea if you are me. Open bar is a brilliant idea if you are me. Depends who you ask. Sophie would say terrible. Mia would already be ordering the next one. I was somewhere in the middle, which is a lie. I was leaning toward Mia.
The actual snog
It was not cinematic. Nobody dipped anyone. We were in that corridor by the cloakroom where the carpet goes thin and the music sounds like it is happening in another building. He said something about getting air. There is no air in a Chelsea function room at one in the morning. There is just heat and other people’s perfume.
I kissed him first. I should say that now before the comments start doing their little morality play. He leaned. I finished it. It was a proper snog, not a polite wedding peck. Teeth a bit. Hand on the back of my neck. The kind that makes you forget you have a phone in your bag and a flatmate who is going to ask questions.
Was he a good kisser? Yes. Annoyingly. The sort of good that makes you understand why someone would put a ring on it and also why that someone should probably keep an eye on him at afterparties. I am not proud of that sentence. I am also not deleting it.
We stopped because someone came out of the loos laughing too loud. He did that thing men do where they look down the corridor like they have just remembered they have a whole life attached to them. I did that thing I do where I already start writing the caption in my head. Neither of us said we should not have done that. We just stood there looking like two people who had.
Lipstick, cloakroom, her
I went to redo my mouth because I am not walking back into a room looking freshly kissed if I can help it. Vanity, yes. Also strategy. The cloakroom had that little round mirror that makes everyone look slightly famous and slightly unwell. I was mid-lip when I heard the heels.
It was her. Table nine. Fiancée. Up close she was prettier than from across the room, which felt rude of the universe. She did not shout. That would have been easier. She just looked at my mouth, then at the mirror, then at me, and said, very evenly, “That’s a bold colour for someone who was just with my fiancé.”
Awkward does not cover it. Awkward is when you wave at someone who was waving at the person behind you. This was the other thing. The hot, stupid quiet. I could hear the coat hangers. I could hear my own pulse, which is dramatic even for me.
I could have lied. I am good at lying when it is useful. I did not. I said I was sorry she had to see that. I did not say I was sorry I had done it. There is a difference and she heard it. Her face did this small, tired movement like she had been waiting for a version of this night and was annoyed it had arrived looking like me.
She asked if I knew. I said I had seen the table. That is not the same as knowing, but it is close enough that I will not dress it up. She nodded once. Then she took a tissue from the cloakroom desk, handed it to me, and said, “You have him on your mouth.” Which, credit where it is due, is a devastating line. I would have used it in a blog if it had not been aimed at my actual face.
I wiped. She watched. Then she left to find him. I stayed with the mirror like it was going to offer legal advice. It did not. It just showed me a girl who had come for content and collected a consequence instead.
The bit after the bit
I did not stay for the last song. I got my coat and I got an Uber and I sat in the back looking at my reflection in the window like a person in a film who has made a choice and is now pretending it was inevitable. The driver played something soft. I hate that. Put on something with a beat or let me sit in the mess properly.
He texted. Of course he did. Three messages, the last one a sad little “are you home safe” as if safety was the issue. I left him on read. Not because I am principled. Because I was already composing this in the notes app and I did not want his version muddying mine.
Sophie was still up when I got in. Hair in a clip. Tea. The judgement already warm. She took one look at me and said, “Who was he.” I said best man. She said, “And.” I said fiancée, table nine, cloakroom, lipstick. Sophie put the mug down like it had offended her.
Mia came out of her room in a big t-shirt and said, “Was he fit at least.” I said yes. Mia said, “Then we can workshop the rest in the morning.” Sophie said there would be no workshop. There was a workshop. There is always a workshop. It happened over toast at eleven with both of them talking at once and me staring at the lipstick I had put back on to tell the story, which is so on brand I could scream.
What I actually think
I am not going to do the bit where I discover empathy in the last paragraph and swear off other people’s men. I am bad at empathy. That is in the brochure. I know she did not deserve to find a stranger in a cloakroom wearing her night on her mouth. I know that and I still replay the kiss because it was good and I am honest about the ugly parts of myself. That is the whole point of writing this. If I start sanding it down I may as well post a flat lay of the invitation and call it a day.
Was I only there for content. Yes. Did I stay for something else. Also yes. Do I think he is a villain. Not really. He is a man at an open bar who liked being the best man a bit too much. Do I think I am a villain. Sometimes. In good lighting.
I have not posted the tablescape photos. Feels off. I did keep one picture of my shoulder from earlier in the night, before any of it, when I still thought I was just passing through. I look at it and I look like someone who has not done anything yet. I miss her a bit. Not enough to have left when the speeches ended.
If you are the fiancée and you have somehow landed here, I am not going to ask you to be okay. You do not have to be okay. You can think I am grim. You would not be the first person in my kitchen this week to think that. I will say this once. You were the most composed person in that cloakroom. That should have been me. It was not.
Anyway. That was Saturday. Today is a different dress and a different plan. Sophie has hidden my decent lipstick. Mia has already sent a location for tonight. I am going to look in the mirror one more time before I leave. Maintenance. Habit. Evidence. Call it what you want.
