Page 51 of The Wedding Game

‘Go to the hotel,’ he instructs. ‘Embrace your jet lag.’

‘Thanks, Max,’ I say, looking around to give a brief wave to a few of those who are sitting near me, who say ‘Bye’ in return or issue a quick wave and a smile.

Chris catches my eye and stands to talk to me as I near him. ‘You off?’

‘Under strict instructions from Max to sleep off my jet lag.’

‘If you fancy something to eat later on, drop me a message?

‘Thanks,’ I reply uncertainly, as I haven’t worked out what I am going to do for dinner. ‘I kind of thought I’d just hit room service.’

‘You can’t do that on your first night,’ Chris says, appalled.‘Sleep well and I’ll take you out for something quick to eat and have you back in time for another round of jet-lag sleeping.’

I laugh as I head towards the door. ‘OK, thanks.’

Back in my room, I call Josh and fill him in on my day and he tells me about his. We trade information about chic offices in New York and homely farms in the country.

‘I miss you,’ Josh tells me.

‘I miss you too,’ I repeat, meaning it.

‘I didn’t realise how much I was going to miss you,’ he continues. ‘Somehow you being so much further away than London does feel different.’

‘It is different,’ I say. ‘But it’s only two weeks. Then I’ll be home and I can pop down to yours. Now I’ve been thinking,’ I say.

‘Go on,’ he replies warily.

‘Have you got any hay bales?’

He laughs. ‘Why?’

‘You know why,’ I tease.

‘You want to have sex on a hay bale?’

‘Yes, I do, farm boy. I’m going to leave the logistics of that one with you. You’ve got a fortnight till I get home to assemble something in a barn.’

‘Specific,’ he says, chuckling to himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

When I wake from my nap it’s 8 p.m. and the sky is as dark here as it would be at home at this time of night. I look out of the window and take in the bright lights of the city, and of Bleecker Street and Greenwich Village. The English countryside is hard to beat for its lack of light pollution, but New York is beautiful in a raw look-at-me kind of way. I wonder if I could ever get used to this, as Chris has done.

I shower and put on jeans and a jumper and a quick dab of make-up. I’m hungry, so thoughts of falling back to sleep again fly out of the window in favour of finding something very ‘New York’ to feed on. Having never been here before, I want to try everything. Chris is right: I can’t order room service on night one. Or at all, really, if I want to do New York right.

Do you still want to grab something to eat or did you already have dinner?I tentatively send to Chris, taking him up on his offer. I still feel it’s a bad idea, but not because I don’t trust myself, and not because I don’t trust him. It’s more that I wonder if that initial connection we had is going to be hard to ignore. But now we’re friends, sort of. We’re probably less than that in reality, given our distance, but we’re certainly not more. Not now.

Yet going out for dinner with Chris still feels slightly disloyal to Josh, even though I’m trying to reason it out. Josh and Chris know each other from the stag-do. And while I did tell Josh that it was Chris who recommended me for the job, and that he’d be working in the same office as me while I’m here, we haven’t really had any discussion about what might have ensued with Chris – if anything between ushadhappened. Josh knows the basics, butnotthe intensity of how I nearly ended up on a plane with Chris. I’m assuming Josh isn’t concerned, given how easy-going he is. And I don’t want to worry him unnecessarily.

Chris doesn’t respond immediately and, when he does, I’m busy trying to force my feet into my trainers without bothering to undo the laces, because I’m going out, regardless of whether he’s coming with me or not. I stop halfway through as my phone beeps, signalling his response.

Love to. I’m starving,he types.Give me about forty minutes to get to you?

Forty minutes? Where do you live?

Greenpoint,he replies.

Where the heck is that?

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