‘I hope not.’ Rory exhaled.
I stared at him, confused, and he immediately realised what he’d said. ‘You know, because of the office bet?’
‘Right.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘It’s probably nothing anyway. Dating has never been my strong point before, so I don’t see why it would be now.’
I caught Maeve’s eye as she came out of the toilets and gestured to a booth in the corner. Booths screamed sticky leather to me, but she loved the intimacy of them.
‘Pen.’ Rory put the tip of his finger under my chin and swivelled me round to face him. ‘Don’t do the thing.’
I jumped to my own defence. ‘What thing?’
‘The thing where you push people away because you’re scared of getting hurt.’
The accusation was so far from true, I actually laughed. ‘I don’t do that.’
Rory nodded. ‘I’m just saying that –’
‘Hello, my favourite little dream team.’ Isla pounced on us, finally arriving with Joe in tow. From the hiccup, I could tell she’d caught up with Maeve and me and finished off the bottle of prosecco.
Rory dished out their drinks. ‘We’ll be over in a second.’
I tried to follow my brother, who winked at me, but Rory stopped me in my tracks. ‘Oh no you don’t.’
My pint sat on the bar, begging to go for a walk and join its friends in the booth. The sticky leather booth. I sighed. ‘I’m not scared, Ror. I just don’t want to waste my time.’
He nodded, hands in his pockets. ‘Right. And the sky isn’t blue.’
We were in a momentary stand-off.
‘Not every breakup ends with fifteen years of loneliness and refusing to change a pair of drab curtains. I promise. Look at Maeve.’
I did as he instructed even though it had been rhetorical. She was laughing her head off at something Joe had just said, dangly boob earrings back in her ears again.
‘I know that. I know.’ My voice sounded small.
Rory picked up the drinks again. ‘Just think about it, okay? I’ve known you a long time, and I know that you’re just as scared of letting someone in as you are of getting appendicitis in the middle of the night.’
It was a niche fear, but still very valid. We’d had a code in first year, a sequence of knocks I would bang on his neighbouring wall if I woke up in a panic.
‘I promise, whatever happens, you’ll always have me.’
I swallowed. How did some people manage to see the parts of you that you didn’t even show to yourself?
‘Anyway.’ He nudged me in the direction of the booth. ‘It’s time to get good and sticky on that leather over there.’
I shuddered. ‘Don’t remind me. Look at those perfectly clean wooden chairs on the other side of the room.’
Rory shook his head. ‘Maeve is still in her heartbreak quota I’m afraid. She makes the rules. The bright side of getting dumped is that if it did happen, we’d let you have the wooden chairs as long as you liked.’
I rolled my eyes, following him over.
Maeve patted the space next to her. ‘We’ve just been having a very important discussion over here.’
Joe nodded. ‘Possibly the most important aspect of this whole saga,’ he said, wincing as Isla elbowed him, ‘is entirely out of our control.’
Ah. The sten do. I’d spent years working side by side with a dreamer, forever the more practical when it came to shared projects with Rory. The man had no concept of limits, and this was no exception to the rule. He immediately jumped into the conversation now, and I willed him not to bring up his initial idea of us all flying out to the Maldives. I wasn’t sure airlines accepted magic beans as currency nowadays.
‘We have some tricks up our sleeve.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘But it will be a joint endeavour, of course. Exactly as you specified.’
This part of the plan was Joe and Isla’s only condition. No splitting of the sexes.
Isla beamed. ‘Goodbye horrid traditions, hello epic friend adventure.’
I winced at the word epic – we only had fifty-one days to plan this thing. Less than that, because the sten had to happen before the wedding, but not the night before. Joe’s other condition.
My brother rubbed his hands together now. ‘Excellent. Any more clues?’
In reality, we were between ideas. Rory’s ideas were slightly wilder, from a luxury holiday abroad to an afternoon of go-karting (which I knew Isla would detest). I was more on board for a weekend in a cosy lodge, with plenty of booze and a hot tub on the decking. This mismatch of ideas was usually our way when it came to brainstorming. Little by little, each of us would give, until we had a perfectly reasonable compromise. We’d perfected it to a fine art over the years.
I shot Rory a look across the table that said ‘we cannot let them know how undecided we are, given that it’s in seven weeks’ time’ and he nodded imperceptibly.
‘No can do, Joseph. No can do.’ Rory sipped his pint. ‘You’ve picked the best team in the world to plan your final weekend of unmarried life, just trust us with it.’
Maeve rolled her eyes. ‘They’re doing that creepy thing where they speak to each other without speaking.’
‘We do not do that.’
Joe, Isla, and Maeve just looked at me.
