The Mix-Up by Holly McCulloch
CHAPTER 15
Exactly one week to the day after our last meeting, I turn into the venue car park and see Chris standing outside, waiting for me.
Having refused another dinner invitation, apparently here and now is the only other time he has free to talk about the cake. Pippa is away with work and a number of things need to be picked and planned before she gets back. A large part of me wishes I had declined their cake, but the recent fix for my mixer isn’t permanent – she’s going to need replacing and I can’t currently afford the £5,000 it will take to replace her. I can barely afford the delivery and set-up. I’ve emailed Mika the cake designs I did at Noah’s house, but I haven’t heard anything back and silence is a bad sign in this industry. No news is never good news.
I take my time getting out of my car, collecting the contents of my bag and also my thoughts and feelings. They are a bit all over the place. Since our last meeting, I haven’t done any critical thinking as to how I actually feel, and meeting at a wedding venue feels like a bad choice.
As I reach him, I give him the briefest of hugs. I can’t avoid it. He’s been holding his arms out since I started walking over.
‘Some things never change, eh?’
‘Sorry?’ I look at him, confused.
‘Your car. It’s the same car you had when we were going out.’
Oh. ‘Right. Yes.’ I squint. The sun is behind him, making it hard for me to see. ‘The boot is big enough to carry my cakes, and it seemed silly to change it, so …’ The sentence trails off. ‘Shall we go in?’
He nods and follows behind me, once again putting his hand right in the nook. The nook where he used to belong, but no longer does. I try to walk a bit more quickly to shake him off. But like a murderer in a horror film, even though he’s still meandering calmly along, he seems to keep up with my pace.
We’re coming to the end of our tour. The wedding coordinator, Anisha, has been very thorough and very efficient, but part of me, a large part, wonders if she thinks I am the bride. We’ve taken a walk through all the highlights of the venue: where the reception will be, where the dance floor will be, where the bathrooms are, where guests can park, where guests should be picked up from, where the flower arch will go. The room we are in at the moment has been set up for a wedding, but it’s all mismatched. There are round tables, banquet tables, gold settings, grey settings, white settings. There are padded seats, benches and collapsible chairs. Balloons and flowers. Fresh flowers, dried flowers. Elegant wine glasses and rustic tumblers. I wonder which options they will choose. Definitely not the tumblers.
I look around, trying to distance myself from this weird situation. They are getting married in a beautiful, large orangery. I realize there must be a difference between an orangery, a conservatory and a fancy garden shed, but I would struggle to pinpoint exactly what it is. It’s just the kind of place I had imagined Chris would get married in. Traditional. Conventional. Very obviously beautiful, but slightly lacking in character and imagination. Kinda like a semi-naked cake. At least they have a theme.
‘Well’ – Anisha claps her hands – ‘I’ll let you two take a more relaxed look around by yourselves so you can make your decisions.’ She smiles a very white smile, mainly directed at Chris.
‘Thanks. I’ll come find you before we go.’ He shakes Anisha’s hand and then she turns away, leaving the two of us alone.
I look at Chris. ‘Do you think she thought I was the bride?’ I say it with a joking lilt to my voice, but he doesn’t laugh.
‘Oh, she definitely did. And once upon a time, she wouldn’t have been that far from the truth.’ He tucks his hands into his pockets.
I don’t know how to reply to this, so instead I plan to ignore and deflect. I look around the room for some inspiration so I can change the subject of my thoughts, and also his. I hadn’t appreciated how weird it would feel to be here, to have an insight into a wedding I once might have been part of, in more than just a baking capacity. ‘This is nice. I’ve walked around the garden before, but I’ve never been inside. It’s really beautiful.’
‘It is.’ His tone is a little off, so I instinctively look back towards his voice. He’s watching me. He’s watching how I used to hope he would watch me. Like he doesn’t want to look at anything else. ‘Not quite as beautiful as you though.’ I go still but he shrugs. Clearly my change of subject had no effect. ‘Since seeing you the other night, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. It was so easy to talk to you. It was so nice to reminisce. It felt so natural.’ He steps closer to me. ‘It’s made me really regret …’ He pauses and restarts. ‘I’m so sorry for the way that I acted back then. I was young and stupid. It’s not an excuse, but I wish I had acted differently.’ He is so close I can hear him breathing. ‘Better. You deserved better.’ He steps closer still. So close he could reach out and touch me. ‘You are so beautiful.’
I have remained completely still. Frozen in place in case I do the wrong thing, which seems very likely as I don’t know what the right thing to do is. These words, they are the words that I have wanted to hear him say for years. Years. But hearing them doesn’t quite make me feel the way I had thought they would.
It could have something to do with the fact we are standing in the middle of the wedding venue where he is meant to be getting married to someone else. It could also have something to do with the image of Noah that pops into my mind, an image that I squash as quickly as possible. Nothing screams heartache more than a hint of potential.
Chris briefly touches the side of my face, moving a wayward strand of hair back in place.
‘What are you doing?’ The words are out before I can stop them and I’ve stepped back, creating some much-needed space between us. ‘Why are you saying all of this?’
He tilts his head to the side as if I am the confusing one here. ‘There’s still something between us.’ He steps towards me, and the space between us vanishes. ‘You can’t deny it.’
I stay silent, because he’s right. There is something between us, I don’t think this would feel so weird if there wasn’t. But then I remember. ‘You’re getting married.’ I briefly wonder why I am the one that keeps bringing this up. I step back, and this time he doesn’t follow.
‘I know.’ He hangs his head. ‘But don’t you ever get that feeling where you just know something isn’t right?’
I swallow. Ignore and deflect. Ignore and deflect. ‘Let’s just decide where the cake should go.’
And I didn’t get far before my day went from bad to worse.
For the remainder of our meeting I stayed as far away from Chris as possible, but now, having finally escaped, my car, one of the few things that has stuck with me since leaving university, is refusing to move. I worry she is punishing me for my sketchy morals, and I can’t blame her. I should have said no to the cake. I should never have had dinner with him. I managed to pull over down a little side street, but now I’m at a bit of a loss. I know I have insurance. I know I have breakdown cover. Did I ever think I would need to know what to do with them? No.
‘Do you know what’s wrong with your car?’ The answer to this question is also no. Having finally found the phone number of my breakdown people, I had hoped they would help me, rather than test my (very limited) car knowledge.
‘No, I don’t. It just started making a really loud noise, so I pulled over and now it won’t start.’ I can’t imagine this information is going to narrow down the list of potential issues.
‘OK, no problem. Are there any warning lights showing?’
Oh! I know this. ‘Yes.’
‘OK, which one?’
Shit. I don’t know this. I look.
‘Erm … If I had to say … It looks like …’ I know I must be wrong, but I can’t think what else it could possibly be. I tilt my head to look at it from a different angle in case I am missing something. ‘Well, it looks like a … helicopter?’
On the other end of the phone I hear a cut-off laugh, and then silence.
‘A helicopter?’
Her tone would suggest I was right. I have said something wrong.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mean the engine light?’
Considering I don’t know what a car engine actually looks like, she could well be correct.
‘Sure.’
‘OK, great.’ There are keyboard noises in the background before she starts talking to me again. ‘We’re sending someone out to you now. They should be with you in half an hour. They’ll take you and your car to a local garage unless you can get someone to pick you up from where you are.’
The sad truth is, I have no real idea where I am. I had been blindly following directions.